by Dani Collins
They arrived to a sea of high-end vehicles, boisterous conversation and children running to and fro. The men were big and muscled and oozed so much confidence it was an assault to the senses. The women wore real diamonds, designer jeans, and airs of superiority.
Their host and his wife, Don and Riki, welcomed them and Riki began introducing her around. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t easy. Skye faced a cross-section of society every day at the high school. She recognized the female cliques immediately: the cheerleaders, the fashionistas, the stay-at-home moms and the career women with their own brand of intimidating confidence.
And she knew she was summed up dispassionately as The New Guy’s Date. Not a wife, possibly not here for the season, so no use investing more than a few polite smiles.
She’d never been one to try penetrating these tight circles when it had been a means of teenaged survival. It was one of the reasons she and Terry had got together, she supposed. He’d felt like an awkward outcast and so had she. They’d gravitated to each other at the fringes, discovering similar tastes in movies, books, and music. It had been easy and had saved her from risking herself in this sort of environment.
Standing on the sideline of a group of women whose crossed legs and body language closed her out, she reminded herself that she hadn’t come here to lose. This wasn’t just about her comfort zone, but what Chase expected of her. She had to at least try and if they cut her down, well, Holly was good for one thing, at least. She’d learned to be philosophical about that sort of thing.
Picking up a thread of the conversation about trying to match tiles and drapes, she waited for a break and asked, “Which part of the city are you in? I was trying to get my bearings today when I was with the agent. Chase and I could use an insider’s opinion.”
There. She knew exactly what she was doing, putting them in the lofty position of advising her, but she had managed to sneak in that nice tidbit about the depth of her relationship with Chase. It pushed them all into sitting back, opening the circle to view her with new eyes.
Two ladies warmed right up to her, one saying, “Come over tomorrow and look at what we have. It’s an area still in the middle of redeveloping, so parts of it are shady, but it’s on the uptick and an easy drive to the stadium.”
One gal, however, the Queen Bee type, turned her attention to Skye.
Here it comes, Skye thought, and dug in her heels.
*
Chase didn’t like that Skye had been lured away from him, but it was the sort of thing that happened at any party. Men talked sports and power tools, women talked babies and home décor. He spotted her outside, something in her profile reminding him of her interactions with Holly, and extricated himself from the conversation he was in.
This was it. Some trophy wife with an inferiority complex was going to scare her all the way back to her safe life in Montana.
“…high school?” he heard as he approached. “How lucky for you to get a second crack at such a good catch.”
“Very,” Skye said in the tone he’d learned meant she was stuffing her feelings into the bottom of her sensitive heart.
She startled when he set his hands on her waist from behind.
“Hey,” he said, smoothing hands on her to try easing her tension. “Ladies.” He eyed the troublemaker.
“Skye was just telling us how you met in high school, but didn’t date.”
“True. I wasn’t smart enough to make a play.” He looked at Skye. “Probably because you were all the way out at the ranch and I was stuck in town without a car.”
“Oh, you grew up on a farm,” the woman said with false delight.
They’re not all like this, he wanted to say to Skye. Two of the other wives exchanged looks that told him they expected nothing less from this blond with the bitchy smile.
“Mom keeps a garden and a few chickens, but we don’t really grow anything but cattle,” Skye corrected politely. “And it’s twelve hundred acres, so we call it a ranch.”
“Twelve hundred,” blondy repeated in a tone that said, I see what you did there. “Land in Montana must be pretty cheap.”
“It was a few years ago, when the economy was so bad. We had the place appraised when Dad died and it barely topped twenty million. We were disgusted, not that we want to sell. Wolcotts have been on it since pioneer days, but I talked to Terry’s mom not too long ago.” She glanced at Chase as she mentioned her former mother-in-law. “She said she’d price it closer to thirty if we were testing to see who would bite, and still up around twenty-eight if we were serious. Million,” she clarified to blondy. In case she wasn’t getting the message.
Chase could hear the hiss on the bottle stopper, protesting the pressure. He made an excuse and steered her into the kitchen where their hostess was eager to pick Skye’s brain about how to handle a disagreement with her son’s teacher.
*
Skye was completely drained by the time they returned to Marietta and the scrutiny wasn’t over by any means. Chase hooking his arm around her after practice and kissing her openly was duly noted.
“Um…?” Chelsea questioned with a perplexed look on her face when she saw Skye Monday. “Did you have anything you wanted to share?”
“No,” she said, both sheepish and defensive.
Somehow she’d imagined going away with Chase would fill her with confidence that they were right for one another. Instead she was less secure, wishing they hadn’t gone public because if they didn’t work out, she’d be the talk of the coffee shops again and really couldn’t face it.
At the same time, she loved being with him, walking down Main Street exactly as he’d said he wanted to, holding her hand, stopping to chat with locals, waving at the Homecoming parade floats, feeling part of the very fabric of this community she loved so much. She saw people she hadn’t seen in ages. Joelle was back in town, she noticed with a wave, thinking she’d have to make a point of having coffee with her and catching up properly.
Evenings like this were like a family reunion. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling as comfortable and happy in the fast-paced, rotating door of Chase’s world.
The switch had flipped to Fall while they’d been away and the air was crisp in the morning and their breath visible when they arrived to watch the Homecoming game Friday night. Her nieces were doing a brisk business with their spirit towels, but took a break to greet Auntie Skye and ask after Chase and Flynn.
“They’re inside, getting ready for the game,” Skye answered Coralee, then saw Logan, friends with Stan since grade school and a teacher over at Livingston now. She often caught up with him at different regional or faculty events. He carried a little girl of about four and was talking with a woman Skye wasn’t sure she recognized.
They stopped to look at the flags and Skye said, “Hey, Logan. Who have you got there?”
“You can’t see her. She’s invisible.”
His flirty wink took Skye by surprise until she read the girl’s body language. She looked like a small animal fearing she’d be stepped on in the bustle of the crowd streaming around them.
Not unlike how Skye had felt when Chase had been mobbed by autograph seekers at the airport. Invisible would be awesome, she thought with private commiseration.
“Do you remember Samara? She was only here for senior year,” Logan said, drawing forward the woman beside him. She was around Skye’s age, fair with dark hair.
“You were a year ahead of me, I think,” Skye said. “Are you back for good?”
Samara explained she was freshly moved into a recently renovated heritage house that Skye had heard Terry’s mother covet more than once. Her daughter kept herself tucked anxiously into Logan’s protective grasp, but watched as the girls offered Samara a flag.
“I don’t know how long we’ll stay tonight,” Samara said with a glance at her daughter. “But thank you. This will be fun to wave as we cheer,” she assured the girls.
“Who will you be cheering for, Logan?” Skye challenged ligh
tly.
“The home team, of course,” he said, acting indignant, like there was no doubt, even though he was notorious for shifting sides when he was at work. To prove it, he added a dry, “This time,” as he walked away, leaving them all laughing.
“Big news about the trade,” Holly said. “What does it mean?”
Skye looked up from admiring her nieces’ work. “It means Chase has a good chance at playing in the Series next year,” she responded mildly.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” Skye said, feeling her mouth go tight as frustration took over. Why hadn’t she and Logan ever clicked as more than friends? He was sticking around, looking like a family man. And there was Holly, staring at her like Skye had chosen to fall for Chase deliberately to spite her when he was the last sort of man she’d been looking for. “Did it ever occur to you that you got exactly what I always wanted, Holly? The right guy who wanted to stay here and make a life? You think I’m living the dream, but it’s not what I wanted.”
She turned to walk away and barreled right into Chase’s chest.
He caught her by the arms. His face was like a vengeful god’s carved into obsidian. “I was coming to find you. To ask you to sit on the field with us.” He released her like she was covered in barbs.
Oh hell.
“Of course,” she said, and tried to find a smile, but it was impossible.
*
The last thing, the very last thing Chase wanted tonight was to stand on a podium and have the entire town applaud and cheer him for something he was proud of, but that was costing him the first and only woman he’d ever been serious about.
He couldn’t give her what she had here. He’d tried to help her navigate the week with his community, but the wives didn’t have the all day contact or the unified goal that a team did. Making new friends and feeling accepted was easy when you came into a new group loving the sport and wanting to win as much as everyone else did.
Skye was bright and funny and warm, but she didn’t flourish among strangers the way she did in her element. Here was her team, where the students rushed up with a last-minute question about decorations for the dance, and parents greeted her by name and she kept the entire program on schedule, including ensuring the previous Homecoming court was here to crown this year’s batch.
He’d been the King his last year. What’s her name, that cheerleader he’d been dating, had been the Queen. He’d give anything to go back in time and be standing here now with Skye by his side, keeping her from marrying the wrong guy and—
Hell. No, he wouldn’t give away all that he’d struggled to achieve. His father was here tonight, watching Flynn play and slapping Chase’s back after he accepted his award, breathing stale beer breath into his face.
Staying hadn’t been an option. Where would Flynn be if he had?
Flynn had worked himself back onto the team and scored the winning touchdown. The fans went wild, the place was in a roaring great humor as the stadium emptied, and he and Skye were ominously quiet as he drove her home.
His things were there now, not in his old bedroom in the house he’d bought for his father, but taking up space in hers. He liked the way she had made him feel at home there with a section of the closet and a drawer in the bathroom.
He wished he’d been able to give her the same sense of welcome.
But he hadn’t. He feared very much that he couldn’t.
They went to bed ignoring the tension and made love. It was good, really really good, but bittersweet. Afterward, holding each other in the dark, he said through a throat that felt like it was coated in sandpaper, “You won’t come with me when I leave, will you?”
*
Skye closed her eyes, even though it was dark, trying to catch back a sudden well of tears.
“I don’t know,” she admitted agonizingly.
Chase cursed and released her, turning to sit on the edge of the bed. For a long minute he just sat there, the stretch of his tanned back bowed. Then he stood and went into the closet. She heard the zip of his duffel and thought he was packing to leave.
Her heart leapt after him and she sat up, trying to catch up to it, ready to stop him, but he reappeared. Still naked, he came back to sit on the edge of the bed. Leaning out one long arm, he clicked on the lamp and showed her a wedding ring.
Oh my God. Her heart rolled like a tumbleweed, fast and uncontrolled down the valley opening in her chest.
“This isn’t what you think. Not quite,” he said. “I always carry it. It’s a bit of a charm for games. It was my mother’s. There were so many games when I didn’t have anyone in the stands, I got in the habit of carrying it as a placeholder, but it’s also a symbol of a broken marriage so it would be bad mojo for me to propose to you with it.”
Her equilibrium took a dip and a turn. She shifted, settling the blankets across her waist as she watched his thumb and finger work the plain band of gold.
“Then why…?” she prompted, voice so thin it almost wasn’t there.
A flinch of painful memories tore at his expression. “She left it on her note for Dad that said she was leaving. She and Cindy were friends and Cindy had moved in because she’d walked out on her own husband. Her and Dad started fooling around and she was five months pregnant when Mom realized what was going on. I know Mom had to leave. Sometimes I even think we all enable Dad where Mom was strong enough to draw the line, but I’m still kind of mad at her.”
“How old were you? Did she ask you to go with her?” Her inner being ached for the boy he’d been. It must have been so hurtful and awful.
“Nine. She lived above the dollar store for a few years. I went back and forth until she remarried and moved to Florida. By then Flynn was four. I couldn’t leave him. Cindy was barely scraping by. I was already watching Flynn so she could work and I got my own job as soon as I could to help her out.”
“You shouldn’t have had so much responsibility pushed on you that young,” she murmured, unable to help herself.
“It’s not that. And I don’t have mommy issues or an abandonment complex. I just remember keeping this in my room in those early days, thinking Mom would come back for it. I used to think, if I had a wife and she left her ring and told me she was leaving, I’d go to her and give it back to her and tell her I wanted her to keep wearing it. I’d do whatever I had to so she would come back. It was a kid’s view of the situation. Obviously it wasn’t that simple.” His mouth twisted with frustration.
“But you still wanted your father to fight for her. To win her back and put your world into order again,” she guessed.
“That, but it also molded my feelings on marriage. I promised myself that if I married, it’d be for life. No fooling around with another woman and messing up my kids with drinking and divorce.”
Her breath bottomed out. Was he telling her that if she couldn’t match that commitment, they weren’t meant to be? She searched his expression, but it remained somber and inscrutable. He pressed the ring into her palm.
“That’s a promise to you, Skye. Stay here in Marietta if you have to, but I’ll come back for both of you.”
“But—” If she took this ring, he’d have no one in the stands again. “Chase,” she said helplessly, not wanting to protest when this was such a huge thing to offer her, but she couldn’t do that to him.
“I realize we live a lot faster outside of Marietta. I’ve been rushing you, I know that. I do want to lock you in, Skye. I know, in here,” he tapped his chest, “that we’re meant for each other. But take some time if you need it. I’ll keep coming back to you, trying to talk you into coming with me.”
“Oh, Chase.” She squeezed the ring so hard it hurt her palm. “You make me feel like such a coward!”
“I’m not trying to—”
“No, listen.” She dipped her head against his chest, lips grazing the smooth skin near his shoulder. He smelled good and felt even better. Manly and smooth and firm. If she’d only shown
an ounce of courage and foresight back in high school, a willingness to compromise and move, she might have been with him all this time. They might have had half-grown kids by now and so many good memories she’d be delirious. “I’ve always had such a terrible crush on you and I was convinced you were out of my league. I still can’t believe you want me.”
“I do, Skye. I don’t know how to convince you—”
“Shhh. It’s my turn.” She tilted back her head and let him see all the frightened bunnies cavorting through her mind, but she tried to let the other stuff shine through too. The part where she admired him with every blood cell in her. Her pulse was racing and just being close to him made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt. “It’s not easy being in love with the most amazing man ever.”
“Yeah? You love me?” His features softened with deeply touched emotion. “Sweetheart,” he choked and crushed her into his arms, hot lips pressing a hard kiss to her temple. “I love you, too.”
They had to kiss then and it was loving and sweet and tasted just enough with hesitation on her part for him to life his head and prompt, “But?”
“Don’t laugh at me, okay? I have to explain how small my aspirations are for you to fully understand why this is so big and scary for me.” She drew back a little, pulling in a cleansing breath. “Mom is a homebody. It’s the only thing that she and Dad ever fought about on a regular basis. She wouldn’t ride out with him, preferring to stay in the house or the garden, maybe visit the neighbor at Christmas and only go into town for the doctor or the fair. I’m honestly not much better, but at least I live in town. You’re starting to laugh.”
His big body was shaking.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to, but you really are living large by comparison, aren’t you?” he said with a chuckle. “Look at you, going to the gym.”
“Sometimes I drive into Bozeman just for the day, to shop,” she stated loftily, making him laugh even more. “It’s not an actual diagnosed phobia,” she defended, able to mock herself, but aware she would always be the nesting sort. “It’s just that I prefer to be in my own place and do things at my own pace, whereas the way you live is really, really big. And fast. It’s hard to get used to.”