Fall in Love

by Anthology

  She knew.

  This was the last, best stretch of fall in Montana. Rich golden days, endlessly clear nights, a last gasp of perfect weather before the bleak cold and endless dark ahead. Something to dream about when the snow started. Something to hold on to while the storms hurled themselves over the Rockies and reminded them why not everyone lived in a place like this, dreaming of the summers while winter did its worst. She knew.

  Just like the poem said, better than she ever could:

  Nothing gold could stay.

  Chapter Eight

  Chelsea was eating her usual school day breakfast of steel cut oats with a dash of milk and honey, staring out the windows of the breakfast nook off the kitchen that Mama liked to call her morning room, not seeing the tall pines or the town clustered along the river below or the white-tipped mountains in the distance. She was thinking about Jasper, lost in a cascade of extremely carnal images from the night before. His deep, hot kiss when she’d knocked on his door, his hands fisted in her hair. The way she’d knelt before him. The look in his eyes when she’d taken him deep in her mouth—

  Mama, who had been maintaining her affronted, chilly silence for more than a week, even through the wedding and its aftermath, cleared her throat. Pointedly. Making Chelsea jump and flush hot, as if she’d been broadcasting the images in her head all over the kitchen wall.

  “The rodeo is coming to town,” Mama observed from her usual place at the table, the paper opened before her, though her eyes were on Chelsea. “The streets will be filled with all the usual carrying on. Bad decisions and public embarrassments from here to Bozeman, just like every other year.” She stared at Chelsea, who had gone still in her seat, her oatmeal forgotten. “But then everything will get back to normal. You’ll still be a rural schoolteacher with a quiet little life. And he’ll still be a billionaire and the man responsible for destroying this family’s legacy. What then, Chelsea?”

  “What do you mean, what then?” Her voice was light, thank goodness. Not as wary as she felt. Not tinged with the darkness of all the things she feared. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I think he’s going to smash your heart into pieces, shame you and this family even more than he already has, and then disappear.”

  Her mother’s voice wasn’t cold then, or furious—both of which Chelsea could have handled. Instead, it was soft. Something like wistful. And impossibly, unutterably sad.

  “Mama,” Chelsea murmured, trying hard to be gentle, to keep her tone respectful. To keep her confusion and panic at bay. “You don’t even know him.”

  “You think I’m an old, silly fool,” her mother said then. “And I won’t pretend I don’t give you cause. But you’re not the first girl in the world to have your head turned by the wrong man, Chelsea. Look at what happened to that friend of yours. Men come and go. They mean what they say when they whisper it in your ear, but then something else comes along and it turns out they mean that, too. Usually more.” She lifted her hands, encompassing the sunny kitchen they sat in. The house. The view of Chelsea’s whole world right there outside the windows, like a finely-rendered painting she could see in all its perfect detail even with her eyes closed. “This is what matters. This is what endures. Your family name. Your history. Your place in the march of time, no matter what you did with your individual days. No matter what they whispered about you.”

  She wasn’t talking about Chelsea, or even Jenny’s wedding. It came like a flash, that understanding, and it was profoundly dislocating. It was easier to think of her mother as a cantankerous old character she had to work around, to placate, to care for. It was something else entirely to think of her as a person in her own right, possessed of her own, complicated history. And perhaps far lonelier than Chelsea had imagined.

  It wasn’t an understanding she particularly wanted, Chelsea realized, and that made her deeply ashamed of herself.

  “You’ve made your mark here,” she said after a moment. “Whether there’s ever a Crawford Museum or not, you have been a tireless volunteer for every single cause I can think of, Mama. The library, the school board, the new hospital. Isn’t that enough of a legacy?”

  “I understand my place,” Mama said after another long moment, and it felt to Chelsea like there were too many things unsaid in the air between them, thick like smoke and far more treacherous. “Oh, I dreamed of other things, other places. Who doesn’t? I wanted to go to Ireland and live a while in all that green. I wanted to be a dancer.”

  “I didn’t know you danced,” Chelsea said, absurdly charmed at the notion.

  “I don’t,” Mama replied evenly. “And I’ve never been to Ireland, either.”

  She reached over and slid a hand over Chelsea’s, and when Chelsea looked down, it was like looking at some kind of time-lapse photograph. Her mother’s knuckles were a bit larger, thanks to the Crawford family curse of arthritis, and the veins more pronounced, but their hands were the same. The same narrow fingers, the same shaped backs of their palms. The same size, even.

  “You’re kinder than I’ve ever been,” Mama said in a low voice. “Smarter, too, and I would have killed for that hair when I was young. But beneath that, we’re the same, Chelsea. You’re meant for this place, this town. Your brother and your sister were restless spirits, always looking for whatever lay on the other side of the horizon, but not you.”

  “Mama…” She didn’t know what she meant to say, but there was a great pressure on her chest then, like a band tightening around her ribs, and she knew only that she didn’t want to hear this. Whatever it was.

  But her mother didn’t stop. “When they looked up at the stars, you were sinking your feet deep in the ground where you stood. From the time you were a baby.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Chelsea whispered, stricken.

  “Yes,” Mama said, matter-of-factly. She squeezed Chelsea’s hand once, hard. “You do.”

  ***

  She found him in the lower level of the depot late that afternoon, after she’d finished with another day of teaching and then a good hour or so of sitting in her classroom, putting off the inevitable. Chelsea walked inside, taking a moment to appreciate the graceful old lines of the building, the little flourishes that whispered of the lost Old West, and the light still streaming in from outside.

  She wanted to do anything but this.

  Jasper had his cellphone clamped to his ear while he leaned over a drafting table in the far corner of the great room, making notes on the blueprints he’d showed her before. He was talking about his taproom and tasting room, his brewing tanks and the complicated state laws that governed beer production, and Chelsea tuned out the words as she stood there.

  It was that voice of his she loved, that deep, raspy drawl. It was the hard perfection of his very male form, packed into jeans and a tight-fitting Henley, that made her mouth water involuntarily. It was the way he shoved his hand into his hair and raked it back, and that sexy crook of his mouth when he looked up and saw her standing there.

  “I didn’t expect you until later,” he said when he finished his call, tossing his phone carelessly on to the table.

  She wanted to stand there forever. She wanted to soak him in, drown in him, until she couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them any longer. The way she felt when he drove her to that edge and held her there, before hurling them both over the side and into oblivion. She wanted to stay right here, right now, right in this moment, like nothing else existed or ever could.

  But Mama had been right. No matter how Chelsea had tried to rationalize it away. Mama might be a snob. She might have been huffy and quick to take offense. She might even have caused more than her share of trouble, because she’d always been a character. But that didn’t make her wrong about Chelsea.

  Roots and history. Marietta down into her bones. That was who Chelsea was, who she’d chosen to be. That was who she’d stay. She’d become her mother because she was already like her mother, and maybe, deep in
side, she’d always known that. Maybe that was why no matter how hard she’d dreamed and plotted and pretended, she’d never tried very hard to get away from Marietta. Maybe this was her own little half-hearted rebellion about the inevitable.

  But if Jenny’s wedding had taught her anything, it was that she liked the inevitable. She liked her small town. She liked all the characters she shared it with. She liked being part of their story. That wasn’t going to change. She wasn’t going to leave.

  And Jasper Flint was like those stars her brother and sister had hungered for throughout their youth, a brilliant mess of light against the dark Montana skies, and much too far away no matter how close he seemed. Never hers. Not really.

  She wasn’t sure he knew that, but she did. And she also knew that she’d fallen heedlessly and foolishly in love with this man, practically from the first moment she’d set eyes on him. If she didn’t walk away now, she never would.

  Mama was right about that, too: he’d crush her when he left.

  And Chelsea had no doubt that he’d leave. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. That was what men like him did. Like Charles Monmouth had done on his wedding day to Jenny, like winter followed fall. It was who Jasper was. She could no more begrudge that than she could damn the stars above her head for their shine.

  But he was walking toward her in that same low, confident way he’d done the morning they’d met, and she knew that if she let him touch her, she’d lose the will to do this. And she had to do this.

  “I’m not coming later,” she said, blurting it out before she could convince herself not to do it, to wait, to think, to put it off a while longer. “I only came now to say goodbye.”

  He stopped walking all of two strides away, and then went still.

  Too still.

  “Are you going on a trip?” His tone was too even, too polite. She knew better than to believe it.

  “This can’t work,” she said, screwing up her courage and tipping her chin back as she threw it out there. “We both know that. I think it’s time we ended it, before anyone gets hurt.”

  “I think someone always gets hurt, Triple C. That’s the game.”

  “I don’t want to play games.” She cleared her throat, tried not to melt at that look in his eyes. “I don’t want to play at all.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked softly, and she wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them, melt into him, let him hold her. But she couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t want to lose herself any more than she already had. “The gossip?”

  “I don’t care about gossip,” she bit out, holding herself tight and still, like she didn’t know what she’d do if she eased up on her own grip.

  “Of course you do,” he contradicted her. “You live here.”

  She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised they’d come such a long way in so short a time, that the two of them should switch positions like that. But then again, if they hadn’t come so far, this wouldn’t hurt.

  She couldn’t let herself think about how much it hurt.

  “I’ll come and have a beer in the spring,” she told him. “When you open.”

  “Is that supposed to be my consolation prize?” His drawl was more pronounced, his eyes narrowed and bright with temper, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Lucky me.”

  “Please don’t make this hard.”

  “Did you think I’d take it well?” He laughed, short and unhappy. “I spent most of last night so deep inside you I forgot my name. I know how you taste. I’m not okay with this, Chelsea.”

  “You don’t have to be okay with it,” she said quickly, ignoring the images he’d thrown into her head. Ignoring her body’s reaction to it, to him, like clockwork. “Though I suspect you’re just unused to someone else making a decision for you.” She smiled at him then, and making that smile look real was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she managed it. “You don’t want me, Jasper. When the novelty wears off, you won’t remember why you ever did.”

  That hurt her more to say than it could possibly have hurt him, despite the way he flinched, like she’d hit him. Chelsea turned around and started for the door, determined to get away from him. It was done, and that was what mattered. The pain was something she’d just have to figure out how to survive—

  But his hands were on her, suddenly, turning her back around to face him, and then his mouth slammed over hers.

  That damned fire.

  That wild, impossible need.

  It roared through her, scalding her. Making her shiver and burn. Making her melt into him the way she always did, meeting each hard kiss, each claiming stroke of his tongue. She couldn’t resist him. She didn’t want to resist him—

  But that was all the more reason she had to leave him.

  It actually caused her physical pain to wrench herself away from him.

  “This is bullshit.”

  His voice was harsh. Succinct. And Chelsea couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at him.

  He was still holding her shoulders in his hands, and he was so close to her, that beautiful face of his so close and those bright hazel eyes of his searching every part of her, tearing her asunder, shining a light where there had never been anything but shadow.

  “You don’t have to hide anymore,” he told her, his voice low and determined. “You don’t—”

  “Jasper.” Even his name hurt. Misery almost knocked her from her feet to her knees, but she stepped back, away from him, and somehow she didn’t fall. “This is temporary. This has never been anything but temporary, and I have to go. You have to let me.”

  “I don’t want to.” Fierce and sure, and was that pain in his gaze? Thick and sharp at once? She didn’t understand that. She couldn’t let herself look any closer. “I don’t understand this.”

  “You will,” she said, not letting herself waver. Not letting herself reach out to him the way she wanted to do, so much that her fingers ached with need of him. “Sooner than you think, I’d imagine.”

  And then, finally, she turned and ran.

  ***

  Jasper stood in the howling emptiness she left behind her for a long time, thinking about the word temporary.

  He’d made it the cornerstone of his life. Growing up, he and his brother had vowed they’d get the hell away from their father at the first available opportunity, so they’d never let themselves get too attached to any of the places or people they encountered while under his mean, violent thumb. When they’d built the business, they’d been solely focused on money. Becoming solvent. Then becoming rich. Then making sure they’d be very, very wealthy for the rest of their lives no matter what they did.

  But each step in that process, Jasper had known it was temporary. He’d known that damned house in Dallas wasn’t permanent. He’d always envisioned himself somewhere else, which was why he hadn’t much cared what Marlene and her decorator did with the place. He hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but he supposed that he’d always thought Marlene was temporary too. God knew, when he’d announced he was selling the company and leaving the oil business entirely, he hadn’t expected her to come along with him on whatever his next adventure was.

  What exactly are you planning to do with your retirement? she’d asked, not pausing in the series of crunches she was performing in their home gym. He’d always admired Marlene’s commitment to what, he supposed in retrospect, was her business: that flawless body of hers. She’d sounded mildly curious, at best, and not in the least bit winded.

  Jasper had shrugged. I don’t know. Sell everything. Wander.

  Marlene had paused then, meeting his gaze from across the room, hers very cool. Very direct.

  Do you expect me to accompany you on this journey into the life of a vagabond?

  And he’d laughed. He’d never imagined that, he was certain she’d never imagined it, and he hadn’t been particularly surprised when he’d found her in bed with her personal trainer shortly thereafter. Not pleased
, certainly, but not surprised.

  Temporary.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there in the very beginnings of what would be his microbrewery, but the shadows were long when he finally shook himself out of his daze. He found himself outside, walking down Main Street as the sun dropped toward the far hills and the colder air swept in.

  Marietta sparkled in the last of the day’s golden light. Banners welcoming the rodeo this coming weekend hung in all the shop windows, and there were lights strung up from lamppost to lamppost, creating a canopy of twinkling lights down the length of Main Street. He’d lived in this place all of a week and a half, and yet at least three people said hello to him as he passed. A very friendly shopkeeper. The rancher he’d met at the coffee shop one morning, who’d engaged him in a lively discussion about construction while they waited in line to get breakfast. The older woman who worked in his realtor’s office, who’d brought him a welcome basket his first night in town.

  He paused for a moment on the corner and let it settle in on him, the fact that he lived here now. That he really lived here. That unlike in Dallas, where he’d lived behind electronic gates and didn’t know the names of his own staff, people expected to know him here. They greeted him, even when he had the kind of look on his face that could only be described as forbidding. This little jewel of a village he’d glimpsed from far off, that had looked exactly like the fantasy of home he’d carried around in his head all these years without knowing it, was home.

  He was home, at last.

  And nothing about what he felt about this place—much less about Chelsea—was temporary.