"I thought about that too, some," Grace said.
"When? When you were eighteen?"
"Maybe a little before."
"Can I ask you something, Gracie? Don't answer if you don't want to," Justine added.
"Sure," Grace said. "You're here to talk things out and try to come to terms with things and maybe set a new direction in your life. What do you want to know?"
"How old you were when you lost your virginity."
Grace took so long to answer Justine wondered if there was a side to Grace she didn't know, a side she could actually relate to. "Like I said, you don't have to answer."
Grace turned and looked at her, and said, in a contrite voice, "It was when I married Marc. But it wasn't as if I didn't want to before," she added, as if in apology. "It's just that we decided it would be special if we waited."
Grace never asked her about losing her virginity, Justine noticed, and she knew exactly why. Grace knew when it was. "You're not surprised I was fifteen, are you?"
Grace shrugged. "No, but it makes me sad you thought you needed to do it. All the boys liked you."
"Well, now you know why. Not that I did it with all the boys," Justine amended. "Actually, in high school, only Ross and Mitch and maybe a few others, but mainly Ross and Mitch."
"Because Ross was captain of the football team and you wanted to be cheerleader, and Mitch drove a BMW and you knew his father had connections," Grace said, but not in accusation, just stating a fact.
Justine nodded. "I never gave marriage a thought, only that the boys would be a means to an end. Why have I always been like this?" she asked, "and why can't I be happy with a man like Jack. He's the perfect man. Don't get me wrong, Gracie. I look at Jack like the big brother we always wanted and never had, and his twin too, but even knowing Sam and Susan are having problems, I still don't see Sam as a potential love interest, and he's not the problem in that marriage. It's Susan. But why can't I want men like Jack and Sam? You never attracted the kind of men who'd screw you over. And Marc, he was devoted to you until the day he died."
"I guess I'm just lucky to have had the love of two really good men," Grace said.
"Do you still miss Marc?" Justine asked. "You were such a young widow, and I know you adored Marc, and he'd treated you like you were God's gift to him."
"I think about him when I see little Marc," Grace said, "but Jack's the love of my life. Jack and my boys. They are my whole life. All I want is to make them happy."
"Why can't I be happy with simple things?" Justine asked. "I've seen you and Jack walking hand-in-hand and talking and smiling at each other and not seeming to need anything but just to be together, but I've always needed action around me, rooms filled with people drinking and laughing and cutting each other to shreds and talking innuendo. I'm the one who laughs loudest at the lewd jokes, and I'm the one men at the top of the corporate feeding chain haul off to bed. But why do I go when I know it won't lead to anything but the glass ceiling?"
Grace stopped what she was doing and came over to sit beside Justine on the couch, and said, "You've stayed here several times but you've never ridden a horse, or hiked in the hills, or fished in the stream, or even watched the squirrels and chipmunks and birds at the feeders. A squirrel comes down, chasing the chipmunks away, but before long a Stellar Jay arrives with a squawk and makes such a commotion the squirrel leaves. And you've never walked on top of snow in snow shoes. It's awkward, and you step on your snowshoes at first, but when you can walk on the snow without sinking in and you're able to go into the hills and see the trees and everything covered in sparkly untouched snow, it just makes life worth living. That, and having a man like Jack in your bed every night, and a house filled with kids to make sure you don't stay in bed too long. The temptation's always there."
"So I noticed," Justine said, "along with the two extra stockings hanging on the mantle, so it seems you're expecting again, and obviously it's twins."
Grace put her hands on her belly. "We just found out. We don't know whether they’re boys or girls or one of each yet, but we're pretty excited."
"That's what I mean. I've never even babysat. You babysat all through high school while I was partying and drinking and having sex. I wouldn't have any idea what to do with a kid."
Grace squeezed Justine's hand. "I think you would, but you've never opened your heart in that way. You've been too focused on what you need to do to get where you want to go. But maybe you don't really know where that is. While you're here this time, I hope you'll try to enjoy what we have, and to get started, you and I are going to make a trip into town to a store that sells upscale resale wear and get you some ranch clothes."
"I've never been to a resale shop," Justine said.
"I know," Grace replied. "It's a beginning."
"Of what?"
"The rest of your life." Grace looked at her solemnly, and said, "You're here for a reason, Justine. Things will work out. They always do."
Justine smiled. Grace had the most hopeful expression on her face, like things would just fall into place as they had with Grace when, after an accidental mislabeling of two vials of sperm at a fertility clinic, Grace learned she was pregnant with the sperm of a stranger instead of the sperm of her dead husband, then ended up adopting the son of her dead husband, and marrying the stranger. Her Jack. Her perfect man. But that was Grace. She'd always led a charmed life.
Maybe because she made wise choices.
***
Justine reached over the stall door and placed her hand against the neck of the horse. He didn't move, just stood chewing the grain she'd tossed into the bucket in front of him. His coat was smooth and soft beneath her palm. Strange, to be petting a horse and feeling a sense of calm. She leaned toward the big animal and inhaled, then moved closer and took a deeper breath. It wasn't a bad smell inside the stable—fresh straw in the stall, the tang of molasses in the grain, the scent of horse. She moved her hand over the bony hump of the horse's withers but couldn't reach any further. She'd never imagined that petting a horse could seem, profound.
"You're kind of big," she said to the horse, but didn't know why she'd talk to a dumb animal. Still, the horse stopped chewing and flicked an ear in her direction. "So you understand humans," she said to him, finding a little chuckle in her throat to be talking to a horse. Sean wouldn't be caught dead talking to a horse, or petting one.
She put her nose to the horse again, so the tip touched his coat, and inhaled. "I wish I knew your name," she mused. The horse raised his head and bobbed his neck.
"Dan," a voice came from the direction of the stable entrance.
Justine turned around and stared at the man from the cabin. Was he as totally out of his element as she? She had no idea what his element was. She knew nothing about the man, not even his name, and for now, she didn't want to know it. She didn't want to get close to the man.
She turned back to the horse and stroked his neck again. "Well, Dan," she said, "I've enjoyed this chat, but I think we're done here. Someone just broke the spell." She turned and started toward the door, but the man clearly planned to block her exit.
His eyes roamed up and down the length of her, as he said, in a sober voice, "Why did you come down last night, and why did you run off?"
"I wanted to see what you were doing," she admitted. She hadn't told him that before, only that she was restless and couldn't sleep.
"Why?" He reached out and pulled on the zipper tab, opening her jacket.
"I was curious," she said, wondering what he intended to do, yet making no move to stop him. One of her shortcomings. Leaving herself wide open to disappointment.
He raised his hand to the collar of her western-cut shirt. "You didn't sleep in this morning. I saw you leave. Was it to buy this?" His fingers toyed with the collar, but the heel of his hand was against her chest.
"I'm trying to fit in," she said, looking steadily at him, finding him looking back, although his fingers were still on her shirt collar. Most men woul
d have tugged on her shirt and pulled her to him and kissed her by now. She was ready for this one to, but if he did, she'd be disappointed. She wanted to believe he'd be different, yet, she didn't know why it mattered. He didn't matter. He was just a nameless man, nothing more.
He zipped up her jacket and dropped his hand. "Did you finish the book? Your light was on till five this morning."
"So, you were watching," she said, still looking at him. The lines of his face were hard—the angle of his jaw, the jut of his chin, the ridge of his brow. Put together, he was a man's man. Nothing soft to lean against, just hard, unyielding muscle. Yet, she had to resist the urge to place her hands on him where his parka gaped open revealing a plaid wool shirt that hugged a thick chest. Not a western-cut shirt. This man was not a cowboy.
He touched her chin to raise her gaze from his chest, and said, "I saw your light from my bedroom window. I thought you might look out again."
"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked, moving her chin from his finger, wanting to break the connection.
He shrugged and dropped his hand. "I get by on little sleep. It's become a pattern. Did you rearrange the ending of the book?"
"I never finished it," she said. "The words kept drawing me into the mind state of the author. I'd go back and ask, what was he thinking when he wrote this scene?"
"What scene?"
"Different ones. When he found the bodies of the women and children. I couldn't help wondering what kind of mind would write such a gruesome scene. It was very graphic, and very disturbing… women and children mutilated."
"It's a book. Pulp fiction. Trash. No one died."
"How do you know? The author's mind is twisted. Maybe he knows too much. Maybe there's something he wants the reader to know about him so he can be stopped."
"Do you always get into the head of the author when you read a book?" he asked.
"No, only this one. He's different."
"How so?"
"His writing is gripping. And vivid. And troubling." She moved away from the man so he was no longer in her personal space where he could reach out and touch her. He hadn't tried again, but she didn't want to be disappointed. Still, she waited for his reply, but he didn't respond because his eyes were fastened on something behind and above her.
She glanced over her shoulder and looked up to see what had captured his attention and saw, hanging from a beam, a rope with a hook on the end of it, which she figured was for lifting hay. But when she turned to the man again, his eyes were fixed on the hook, and his face was drained of color, and he looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Or maybe something out of his past.
And then she realized it was the face of a man in shock.
Expression frozen. Eyes dilated. She saw his hands start to tremble, like a man with palsy, and he started shaking all over. Then he clenched his fists and turned abruptly and left. She again looked up at the rope with the hook.
Then it came to her.
The scene in the book. Women and children, mutilated. And hanging from hooks.
She realized then who the man was and knew he'd witnessed the gruesome scene he'd described in his book, that the ghosts from his past were still haunting him.
Knowing he was in trouble, she started after him...
CHAPTER 2
Heart racing, sweat pouring down his face, soaking his shirt, Brad ripped the wool thing from him, heard it tearing, couldn’t get it off fast enough... felt the vise grip in his gut... saw the hooks through their bellies... a little girl not more than five... a castrated boy... a pregnant woman whose breasts had been cut off... eyes bulging... faces distorted.
Death. Everywhere around him... Death hanging from hooks...
He started trembling... shaking uncontrollably... jaws clenched... teeth chattering... couldn't stop... the hooks... bodies hanging... pulse racing... mortars firing... frozen in place... hooks everywhere... and death...
And then her arms were around him...
"Yvette?" She didn't answer, just lay on the bed beside him, holding him, running her hand up and down his back until the images begin to recede. Still, he couldn't stop the shaking. But she was there. Yvette had come again. Soft, and warm... He nuzzled for her breast... wanted to be flesh on flesh... snaps came apart... his mouth captured her nipple and took it in... perverted... needing his mother's breast... Yvette was here... understanding what he needed... what it took to make the images go away... her body against his... arms around him... hands stroking him...
He let out little plaintive sounds that helped quiet his heart and settle his breathing, all the while she rubbed his back and stroked his head and let him suckle until the sound vibrations in his throat ceased, and he could hear her heart beating steadily, and the images gradually released their grip, and he could drift into mindless sleep...
He awakened sometime later, stirred by movement beside him. It was okay. The memory was still there, but he could deal with it now.
And then he saw her standing above snapping together the front of her western shirt. No bra. Just a shirt. "Who's Yvette?" she asked.
"No one. Someone long ago." He didn't want to talk about Yvette to this woman. Yvette was the only person who'd ever seen him like that, curled in a fetal position needing his mother's breast to stop the rush of adrenaline that made his heart seem about to explode, and release the vise gripping his gut, and keep his eyes from feeling like they might pop from their sockets. She came to the hotel to meet him and found him after he'd trashed the room, shaking and incoherent. She knew intuitively what he needed and gave it to him. Not sex—that came later—but a warm body to hold, and hands to stroke him, and a breast to suckle while he negotiated the demonic minefield playing out in his mind and allow him to drift off to a place where he could become disassociated enough from the world around him to slip into a state of emotional numbness.
"You loved her," the woman said.
"I only knew her for four days," he replied, dragging himself up to sit propped against the pillow, on top of covers still damp with his sweat.
"But she was there when you needed her," the woman pointed out.
Brad looked at the woman. "You should go now," he said, angry that she'd seen him that way. Yvette had been the only other one to do so.
The author's mind is twisted... maybe there's something he wants the reader to know about him so he can be stopped...
The woman knew too much. She'd gotten into his mind and that bothered him. Readers weren't supposed to get into the mind of the author, only the characters. He wasn't his character in the book. That was a different man. But this woman saw through it, saw into his soul, and he wanted her to go, leave him be to lick his wounds alone, but instead of leaving, she sat on the side of the bed.
"You saw that scene," she said, looking at him but not touching him. "You were there in the Sunni Triangle and you saw it and you can't forget. You wrote about it to forget but it won't go away."
He let out an ironic laugh. "So now you know what wasn't mentioned on the back cover of my book. Brad Meecham's a pathetic shell of a man who needs his mother's breast." He shoved a cigarette between his lips and struck a match. He hated the things, but they took away some of the anxiety, and he could suck like a man. He took a long draw and exhaled. "I couldn't even screw you," he said. "Too pathetic to get it up."
"I didn't come here for that," she replied, looking at him, not with disgust but with understanding. No, not understanding. Pity. A pathetic man needing pity.
He took another long draw, and exhaled. "Then why did you come?"
"You needed someone," she said, her hands clutching her forearms.
"Do you always give men everything they need?" Harsh, and she didn't deserve it, but he hated the useless man he was when it happened… hated that she knew. Normally he slammed his fist into something to get back to reality, but she came to him in the throes of it, and in his distorted mind he saw Yvette with her gentleness and her warm body and he took what she offered. Only once before had he don
e that with Yvette. She made it seem right then. But looking at the woman staring at him, knowing it had been her, it seemed perverted. He also hated that he wanted her and could have her right now. She was sitting there, waiting for him to take her.
The daughter needs to get away from men... all her life she's been used and dumped...
The woman shrugged as if the hurt in her eyes didn't matter, and said, "I can't be Yvette, but I don't regret what I did, and I don't fault you for what you did. You needed to get through it. I was here so just leave it be."
He took another long draw on his cigarette. "Can you leave it be?" he asked, pride motivating him to ask, humiliation wishing he hadn't.
She stood. "If you mean, will I say anything about what happened. No." They both knew that what happened was a pathetic man needing his mother's breast. "Have you talked about what you saw to anyone besides Yvette?" she asked, making no move to leave.
He looked at her, standing over him and peering down at him, and said, "I wrote about it. It didn't help." He flicked his ashes into a dirty coffee mug to give him a reason to look away. The woman knew too much about him. She'd peeled away years of armor in an instant, took him back to infancy and exposed him, and he didn't even know her name.
"Talking's different from writing," she said. "Readers don't care who you are. All they care about are your fictitious characters. They matter to readers. Readers cry over them. But no one's crying over you and you're hurting."
"I'm fine," he said. "It was the hook in the stable. It won't happen again."
"Because you don't intend to go in the stable again," she said, peeling back another layer. "But you could see a hook at a butcher shop, or on the end of a crane at a building site, or holding up a car behind a tow truck. You have to confront your demons and get rid of them. You need to go back and look at that hook, and you need to talk. I'll listen."
"Who are you?" he asked. "I know you've been shafted by a man, many men, and you want my fictitious hero to lose his balls, but why are you at this ranch?"
Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) Page 21