Straddling the Fence

by Annie Evans

  Her breakfast was a piece of toast with the last spoonful of honeycomb from the bottom of the jar. She dressed in layers to ward off the damp chill, poured the rest of her tea into a travel mug and headed to the stables to assess the overall health of the farm’s latest arrival, a prized mare that would be bred on-site come February.

  Once Bellamy checked her conditioning, ruled out infections and any anatomic defects that could affect fertility, the stable manager would take over the mare’s care unless a health issue arose. She’d be gradually exposed to daylight in increasing amounts to ensure her cycles were regular and she was ovulating when the time came to breed her.

  Cool, humid air redolent with the scents of animal and grass reminded her of the morning she spent on the tractor with Eli feeding his cows. Like the memory, it clung to her skin as she made the short trek across the yard to the impressive stables. You could feed a small third-world country with the money spent on building the structure. The Warren family had spared no expense on even the smallest details.

  Distressed pine beams crisscrossed the ceiling and lined the walls. Old-fashioned schoolhouse lights with golden globes dropped from the center of the pitched roof. The flooring between the double rows of stalls was brown brick laid in a pattern that mimicked the intricate ceiling work, and the top half of the stalls were made of decorative black metal so you could see inside to the horses. It was a stunning piece of architecture, and no matter how many times Bellamy stepped inside the building, she remained awestruck by the craftsmanship.

  Horseracing wasn’t called the sport of kings for nothing.

  The sudden smell of musty hay and fresh horse manure assaulted her sinuses. Before too much longer, the stable hands would show up to clean the stalls, scatter fresh bedding, and feed and groom the horses. Bellamy scooped a handful of gingersnaps from an airtight container near the door and shoved them in her front pocket. Giving the young visiting mare a treat might help calm her anxieties about being in a strange new place with unfamiliar people.

  “Good morning, Doc,” said Elliott, Arrowhead’s stable manager, when she drew nearer. His voice was calm and low so as not to spook the nervous mare.

  Bellamy set her mug of tea down on a tack trunk and shrugged out of her jacket since the barn was heated, then took her first good look at the beautiful bay horse, holding her hand out for a sniff. “Morning. How’s our newest visitor doing so far?”

  “Just fine.” In his early sixties, Elliott had been caring for horses longer than Bellamy had been alive. He and his wife, Lila, lived on the farm as well, except in an older brick home much larger than Bellamy’s tiny apartment. In an attempt to make her feel welcome, she guessed, they’d had her over for dinner a few times. Outside of the resident horses and a curious black barn cat named Bat, Elliott and Lila were the only friends she’d made since she’d moved here. Her relationship with the Warren’s was amiable, but they could hardly be called friends, especially since they were rarely around.

  While Elliott kept a steady hand on the lead strap, Bellamy fed the mare a cookie and began her assessment with a gentle stroke to her neck, talking in soothing tones and making notes as she went along. The animal was fit, with a shiny coat, bright, alert eyes and near-perfect muscle definition. There was more to be checked, but she’d leave the invasive parts of the exam for later in the day, once the horse had time to fully relax and adjust to her new surroundings.

  When Bellamy was finished, Elliott led the mare to her stall then disappeared to attend to his other responsibilities.

  Having time to kill, she pulled her coat back on and wandered out of the stables to sit on a bench and watch the sun slowly rise over the rolling pasture. Seeing it turn the dew on the grass to diamonds made her think of Eli again. But then, he was never far from her mind.

  Sighing, she pulled her phone from her back pocket and typed out a text. You awake?

  His reply came less than a minute later. Always awake for u. What r u doin up at this hour?

  Early arrival. A bay mare to be bred in a few months.

  Pricey I bet.

  Yes. She’s beautiful.

  Not as beautiful as u. I miss ur face. Send me a picture.

  Just for fun, she made a quick trip back inside, snapped a photo of the mare and sent it to him.

  Worst selfie ever!! Try again.

  She posed with the rising sun over her shoulder and a cheesy but real smile on her face.

  Much better, but I prefer u naked.

  God, she craved him like junkies craved their next fix. Flashbacks and her fingers just weren’t cutting it anymore. She was lonely for no one but him.

  Of course you do, she replied.

  What kind of socks are you wearing?

  Seriously? You wanna know about my socks?

  Yes! I know they have some animal on them.

  Grinning like a fool, Bellamy checked, then texted, Owls.

  Figured. Miss seeing those silly socks & ur hot body. Really miss being able to do dirty things to it.

  I miss all parts of you. Then after a moment, she added, please don’t send me a dick pic, tho!

  Shame to waste such impressive mornin wood.

  Bellamy’s outburst of laughter sent birds scattering from nearby trees.

  That is a shame, she replied.

  U should b here to see it. Bet we could put it to good use. ;)

  Despite the playful tone of the conversation, her fingers curled tighter around her phone. The hollow ache in her chest sharpened to the pain level she felt when she’d first put Serenity in her rearview mirror. Another reminder that her feelings for Eli hadn’t dimmed even a smidge. In fact, they’d grown stronger, deeper.

  I wish I was there with you, she thought, but typed, how’s Clover?

  She misses u too. So does Vixen & Soldier & Ruby & Fritz & Kai & Sage & Grace & Tucker. But most of all ME.

  Your thumbs must be getting sore but point taken. :)

  Still hoping, Bell. Get back to work. Call me later.

  I will.

  Long after she put her phone away and the sun topped the trees, Bellamy sat on the bench, picturing Eli in his bed, rumpled from sleep, that dark hair mussed and covering his eyes. Or sitting on the seat of the tractor watching the cows eat their breakfast while he pondered his future. Almost a month after she’d left him and he was still hoping she would someday be a part of it.

  She’d made a mistake.

  Being an adult meant knowing when to admit you’d screwed up, and boy, had she ever screwed up. All along, she’d thought taking the dream job was the responsible thing to do for her career and her future, but she was so wrong. Instead of following her heart, she’d followed her fear and some lofty expectation she’d put on herself way back in college that simply didn’t apply anymore. She’d worried too much about money and saving an empty house that didn’t need saving.

  There was a reason why her grandparents had stayed in Serenity long after their children were gone and they’d grown too feeble and tired to farm the land—contentment. Could be that’s the same reason why Nana left her the place. Not because she expected Bellamy to live in that great big empty house for the rest of her days, but because she knew Bellamy belonged in Serenity. Perhaps Nana McCoy had always sensed that Bellamy felt a connection with them she hadn’t found anywhere else, even with her parents. The house was just a way to get her there and make her feel that sense of place again.

  Eli tried to give her roots, yet her grandmother had planted the seed a long time ago and fed its growth. The house was just a house, like he’d told her, but Serenity had become home. It was where she belonged, with Eli.

  Kai’s store, Ruby’s kitchen, a backyard swing, the Millers’ goat pen, in a pig sty with Penelope or a paddock with Soldier and Huckleberry, a field full of Hereford cattle, or a corner booth at the Cottonwood.

  Wherever Eli was, Bellamy wanted to be.

  Sometimes your eyes were trained so hard on something off in the distance, you failed to see wh
at was standing right in front of you.

  She’d made a mistake, but she knew how to fix it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ripping a page right out of Bellamy’s untested playbook, tonight Eli was planning to drown his disappointment at the bottom of a bottle. His choice of tranquilizer was whiskey instead of tequila, except there was one problem with that decision—there wasn’t enough Jack Daniels made in Tennessee to fill the gaping, empty hole in his chest.

  Still, he planned to give it his best shot, literally, as he grabbed a glass from a cabinet, plunked a few cubes of ice inside and doused them with liquid fire. He took the bottle with him into the living room and settled on the couch, fully intending to polish off the entire fucking thing. An alcohol-induced coma seemed like a nice way to forget, albeit temporarily.

  Never again would he question or wonder why Fritz had behaved the way he had after Kai left Serenity. He totally got it now. Got the moroseness, the irritability and the urge to pound the shit out of something, be it person or bottle. Loving someone and watching them walk away hurt like a mother, and with every passing day, the ache grew deeper and more acute, sharp as a new blade.

  At what point did it start to get better? Three months, six, a year?

  Never?

  He was starting to think that keeping in contact with Bellamy, even if it was only through texts and phone calls, was the wrong thing to do. Maybe if he gave that up too, he would eventually start to feel normal again. But what was normal now? He sure as shit didn’t want to go back to his old soulless lifestyle, screwing girls he had no interest in talking to, let alone ever seeing again.

  Jesus Christ, he was pathetic.

  Part of him wished he’d been selfish and asked her to stay. But no matter how much he loved her and didn’t want to see her go, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. He couldn’t imagine having to face her every day knowing he’d asked her to give up something that meant so much to her. Sure, it might be okay at first, but after a while, she’d start to regret giving up the chance. Regret turned into cancers and ate you up from the inside out. She’d come to resent him, then possibly hate him, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing all that beautiful light die in her eyes.

  “Here’s to playing the lovesick martyr.” He toasted the empty room and polished off what remained in his glass.

  He was pouring his second drink when his phone rang. Glancing at the display, he saw that it was Sage, not Bellamy, so he ignored it. No sooner had the ringing stopped than it started up again. If he ignored it a second time, Sage would be banging down the door in a few minutes, trying to talk Eli into going to Sam’s, where they’d have to pay for their liquor and Eli would wind up hurting some nice girl’s feelings because he didn’t want to flirt or dance or fuck.

  On the last ring, Eli barked, “What?”

  “You sober enough to drive?” Sage asked, but there was something in his tone that instantly cleared the building alcohol fog from Eli’s brain, a breathless urgency he could hear and sense through the line.

  A sudden icy alertness washing over him, he sat up and put his fresh drink down. “Yeah, why?”

  “Get over to Bellamy’s place right now.”

  By the time Sage said “now”, Eli was at the back door stomping his feet into his boots and grabbing his keys. “Sage, what’s going on?”

  “Her house is on fire. Try not to wreck on your way over. I’m almost there.” Sage hung up.

  The news stopped him cold in his tracks, panic momentarily disrupting his ability to walk and think at the same time, before he forced his feet to start moving again. Running, actually, thoughts flooding back into his brain in random chaotic jolts.

  Is she there?

  The fireplace.

  Did that goddamn squirrel chew through wiring?

  Heart pine burns like kerosene.

  Bellamy…

  He barely registered opening his truck door, let alone most of the drive over, but the sight of Bellamy’s house fully engulfed in flames brought everything into razor-sharp clarity. His heart did something weird and painful inside his chest, as if it was being overinflated with a tire pump, getting ready to burst and shred him to pieces.

  Please, God, don’t let her be inside that house.

  Cars and trucks were parked along the sides of the highway, people stopped to watch a tragedy unfolding. They stood beside vehicles, hands covering mouths and hearts as the raging fire swallowed whole what Bellamy held so dear. Eli didn’t care about the house. Not really. All he cared about was where she was and if she was safe. That she was anywhere but here, trapped inside or watching it burn.

  He plowed up the drive, the engine under the hood of his truck whining over the abuse, dust rising behind him in a dense, swirling cloud. Local fire trucks sat parked at a safe distance from the structure, lights flashing strobes of red and white across the field, mixing with the steady bright-orange glow from the flames. They rose so high they blocked out the trees, black smoke rolling up into the night sky to smother the stars.

  Then he caught a flash of a silver vehicle, her work truck.

  It felt as if his heart had finally burst and shattered every rib. But common sense told him that it wasn’t parked in its usual spot. Instead, it sat toward the back of the property, near the old shed, her little blue car parked next to it.

  Odd.

  When he parked beside Sage’s truck and scrambled out, he was stunned to see the firefighters were standing around with their hands shoved in their pockets or crossed over their chests, watching the fire burn like spectators, not doing a damn thing to douse the flames.

  The heat from the blaze was so intense he could feel it on his skin, the acrid smell of burning wood assaulting his nose. The first fireman he reached was an ex-classmate, and the only reason he paused was because it was on his way to the back of the house.

  “Jack, what the hell? Why aren’t y’all trying to put it out?”

  Jack shrugged. “She told us not to waste a single drop of water, unless the field caught fire.”

  Definitely something Bellamy would say. Hope bloomed inside him, brighter than the flames. “She?”

  “The owner. Miss Haile.” Jack pointed in the general vicinity of the backyard.

  Eli took off at a run again, not slowing until he caught sight of Sage standing under a magnolia tree well away from the burning house with his arm wrapped around Bellamy’s shoulders. Tears glistened on her cheeks, set aglow by the flames. Tiny rivers of gold streaking her perfect skin. Relief flooded through his veins in such a rush he almost grew lightheaded. She was alive and safe and back in Serenity.

  Sage stepped aside and Eli swept her into his arms before she barely knew he was even there. He held her too tight and too long, but she didn’t utter a peep of protest. Her hands gripped his shirt at his waist then slid up his back as she buried her face in his neck.

  “You scared fifty years off my lifespan, darlin’.”

  “I’m really sorry.” Her voice was muffled by his shirt. “I lost my phone in the yard somewhere when I was moving stuff out. Besides, if I called first, you would’ve just tried talking me out of it.”

  “Probably.” He drew back, hands roaming greedily over her body, reassuring himself that she was real before kissing her mouth hard enough to bruise. “Are you okay?”

  “I am, now that you’re here. Except the whole town will probably think I’m certifiable after doing this.”

  “Did you set your house on fire, Bellamy?”

  She nodded slowly, then let go a shaky, watery laugh.

  Unable and unwilling to loosen his hold, he pulled her close again, feeling just as shaky—a hangover from all the nerves. “Why’d you do it, honey?”

  She sighed so deeply he felt her body move against his. “You know why.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  There was no way she was letting anyone get near that house with a bulldozer. If it was coming down, it had to be her hand behind the
destruction.

  “I agreed to sell the land to Mr. Treadway. We shook hands on it this afternoon when I got back to town, but he’s having the contract drawn up first thing Monday morning to make it official.”

  “You sure about this? We could probably still find someone else to lease the dirt without much trouble.”

  From the smile she gave him, Eli could tell she was finally at peace with the decision to part with the place. “I’m sure.”

  He smiled back. “Well, okay then.”

  Eli tucked himself against her back, wrapping his arms around her waist while they silently watched the flames gobble up her relic of a house. A tinderbox, really, made of materials sure to burn fast and hot. The second floor collapsed down onto the first, sending millions of sparks dancing up into the darkness. Gray ashes drifted off with the light breeze and the spectators lining the roadway began to dissipate, their apparent thirst for drama slaked.

  Kai, Fritz, Ruby and Joe showed up, but they weren’t in a state of panic because Sage had called them beforehand and explained that Bellamy was fine. They were simply there to offer their support, like a close family should. After an hour or so, they all hugged Bellamy once more and left, along with Sage, leaving her and Eli alone. Only the firefighters remained to drown the embers once the fire burned itself out.

  “You know, there was probably ten thousand dollars’ worth of heart pine flooring in there,” Eli mused next to her ear, a bit sad over the loss.

  “Probably,” she said with a long sigh.

  He chuckled. “You’re not the least bit sorry you burned it down, are you?”

  “Nope. Well, I might’ve had a moment or two of panic once I actually saw flames. But I had to do it.”

  “I’m proud of you, Bell.”

  She turned in his arms, nodding toward the antique farm table leaning against the magnolia tree behind them, two of its legs broken off where they joined the top. He assumed the injury had been caused in her struggle to get the monstrous thing out of the house without help. The sum total of her material possessions sat next to it, her nearly nomadic existence distilled down to three cardboard boxes, a squatty filing cabinet and two suitcases. Her lumpy excuse for a bed hadn’t made the cut, thankfully.