by Leslie North
Her gasps tore through the room, unbridled.
As her lungs gasped for replenishment, her shapely, hourglass back rose and fell against the seat. He gave her the moment, stalled within her. His only regret was that he had not seen her expression that his love of her elicited.
And there could be no regrets.
He slid free and lifted her in his arms. They climbed atop the saddle, Nat riding where he always had, January riding Nat.
Their gazes connected. Her irises were as green as the pastures after a month of April rains; her pupils swelled. They searched each other for signs of reluctance but found only acceptance in a shared smile. Gently, he aligned her to him and slid inside her. She was still as tight as new calfskin gloves. His body trembled. She wrapped her arms around him in an embrace. At his ear, she whispered, “I love you, Nathaniel James Meier.”
He closed his eyes to the hot tears that came and buried his face in the vanilla scent of her hair. God, he needed her in his life. She was light and joy and everything he had ever needed for as far back as he could remember. He couldn’t think about the loss—he wouldn’t—but he was no longer ravenous for her body alone. Nat wanted to possess her heart. On a hill halfway around the world. Inside an ocean current in the Far East. On the land that was now his beneath them. Now and forever.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back, his voice husky and gone.
Their final union was a rhythmic savoring, like a slow walk to the end of a pier, destined to part them again. He reached his peak, not with guns blazing, not in a hailstorm of passionate words, not even in a blinding flash where the world dimmed. His world was right here, right now, a climax that came on a tender, soul-snatching kiss, wrapped in the arms of the very last woman on earth he would ever love.
* * *
January awoke in two contradictory states of mind.
One was a slow climb from a fog not unlike the kind she witnessed in Newfoundland between the polar current and the Gulf Stream: tremendous, hypnotic, a tidal wave in magnitude. She was naked, toasty, wrapped in the quilt beside Nat, and she lacked the desire to resume anything about her existence past snuggling closer to him and allowing sleep to resume its hold.
Another disquieting thought tugged at her: she had to go. Not from Close Call, not yet. She had to finish packing, and she wanted to tackle a special project before she left. A gift for Nat that required her to call in a few of Mona’s favors. First, though, she had promised her mother she would meet her at the bank in town to take care of her inheritance transaction. With no cell reception, January had no choice but to give in to this much more pressing state of mind.
She allowed herself a minute longer to study Nat’s face. Skin at his lower lids was grayed with fatigue, from long hours getting the herd ready for auction, from carrying the family legacy alone. A mental map formed of the parts of her body still raw from the stubble that crowded his generous lips, slackened in sleep. Her mouth stretched to a smile that quickly faded. Time was sure to blur his features, as it had once before. Would she remember the precise shade of his sun-bronzed skin, no longer fleshy and boyish but stretched taut against his cheekbones? The cleft of his latent dimple where his long, symmetrical face transitioned into a strong, square chin? The more recent development of tiny lines at the creases of his eyes? Would she remember this series of breaths with absolute certainty?
That answer alone—no—nearly had her rethinking her life.
January dressed without rousing him. The plan was to leave him a note torn from her journal and take Brontë back. If the crew hadn’t yet sent a trailer for the animals, she could alert them. She scratched off one sentence—See you soon. Sending reinforcements. She had just gotten to the Love, J part when she was startled by his voice: strong, not at all sluggish, as if he hadn’t really been asleep.
“What are you doing?”
“I didn’t want to wake you. I have to go.”
He scrubbed a palm down his face and sat up. The quilt fell to his waist but left a tempting expanse of nude hip exposed.
“So you were going to leave. Just like that?”
“I wrote you a note.”
“That’s about right.”
His tone was low-grit sandpaper and sharp edges that rubbed her the wrong way.
“I don’t think you heard me, Nat. I said I had to go, not that I was leaving.”
“Are we really going to debate synonyms, J? You get up and you leave. That’s what you do.”
His voice resonated in her chest. He was too goddamned close to be stumbling into anger. She swallowed the dryness in her mouth, to give her time to summon words when none would do. “Wha—?”
“I thought that after what we shared—after all this…” He motioned toward the saddle corralled in the center of the room. “You might at least have the courtesy to be real with me this time.”
She watched him drop the quilt. Nat was erect and flawless in all his grand, first-wake manhood, but she was numb to the sight. He stabbed his legs into his jeans, not bothering to button them—couldn’t even if he tried because of her desperation to strip him—a desperation she could barely remember now, much less summon again.
“This is as real as I get, Nat. I’ve never shared myself with anyone the way I do with you.” Her words ripped uneven and raw from her parched throat. “This was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, knowing I had the power to hurt you again. The fact that you can’t recognize that as real puts us right back where we’ve always been.”
“Exactly.” He punched fists through the arm holes of his t-shirt and cinched it over his head. He was a bull set loose in a hallowed space. “Where us revolves around you.”
She swung her pack onto her shoulder and opened the cabin door. “I’m taking Brontë.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to realize you’re not enough to make someone want to stay? Not even after sex?”
“That’s not fair, Nat.”
“No, what isn’t fair is that I would leave this place in a heartbeat to be with you, but you would never leave all the other places to be with me.”
She shifted her weight from boot to boot while his words trampled through her ears and plummeted to her chest like a herd driven off a precipice. Their currency had always been honesty, but the truth made her feel cold, lifeless.
Nat reached for his hat on the stove but didn’t put it on. He kneaded the bill until his knuckles paled. His voice wavered, quieter now, behind the static rush of blood to her ears. “That peace you’ve been looking for? That place you think will magically make you feel whole? It ain’t on a map, J.”
His brows gathered above wounded eyes.
A sting filled her sinuses, yet even now, she thought only of saddling up Brontë and putting distance between her and this—this absolute unraveling of her good intentions. Why was she this way? How had something so special turned so wrong?
Revolutions of a diesel engine crowded the silence. Truck doors slammed. Men chattered.
Nat did nothing but hold her in his stare.
Mack filled the doorway. “Figured y’all might need a ride back.”
No one spoke.
“Air in here get any thicker, I could spoon it on a biscuit,” Mack mumbled, mostly to himself.
January pulled her gaze from Nat. She gave Mack a shoulder pat on her way out of the cabin.
“Thanks, Mack. The sooner the better.”
8
The Meier family burial plot occupied the highest elevation for a hundred miles. Before the coastal plains sank toward the Gulf, before the granite and limestone of the Texas Hill Country rose in earnest to the west, before more adventurous terrain mitigated strong, jet-stream winds that gathered out of the northern plains, there was this strip of Texas hilltop beauty. Clem used to say that God created Texas so people would be able to recognize heaven when the time came then turned up the heat to remind them there was an alternative—Oklahoma. Of course, the man who nearly stole Clem’s beloved out fro
m under him while he fought the good fight in Europe had been a Sooner.
Nat sat beneath the hilltop’s best feature—a cedar elm ninety feet tall, its spread nearly as wide—on a bench crafted from stones rumored to have been the first cleared from the land. The breeze stirred the canopy overhead into a song as familiar to him as Clem’s favorite Jerry Jeff Walker song. The only time this place was more breathtaking was during bluebonnet season when the hill became an island in an ocean of wildflowers. Three generations of Meiers stretched out before him, men and women who sacrificed everything in their lives so that he, and those who came after, could have so much more than a square of dirt to call home.
Difference was, they had each other. Nat had never felt so alone.
Willie had sent him up here when Nat nearly lost his shit in the tack room. Thought it might help him clear his head. Really, it served as a reminder that his family intended to stay here forever and that if he lost the ranch, his dearly departed loved ones would be eternal squatters on someone else’s land. And he wouldn’t even be a pin on a map.
Certainly not January’s map.
Waking in the cabin hadn’t been his finest moment. But watching her gather her belongings without confronting what had happened between them, leaving him twisting in the wind of uncertainty about her plans and any possible future, felt like an electric cattle prod to an old wound—all high voltage and low current. His every intent to steer clear of January Rose had gone south. Argentina south. Now he had to push her out of his head enough to keep this square of dirt for another year.
“Two days, Grandad. Then we’ll know for sure.”
Nat leaned forward, elbows on knees, toward a headstone whose ending date felt like a kick to the nuts most days.
“I expanded this year, like you did all those years back. Mason Dekker passed away last summer. Too many years of whiskey and Virginia leaf with you.” Nat smiled, remembering the two friends on the porch most nights, old stories and the sweet burn of honey-infused tobacco drifting straight through his window. “His kids didn’t want the ranch anymore. Seemed like the right time. East perimeter was a little short-sided, and I wanted to make you proud. Thing is, I think I made a mistake. And I’m really scared that I lost everything that you spent a lifetime building. I could really use your help.”
“You got it, brother.”
Nat’s heart slipped off-beat. The voice—that voice…
He shot to his feet and turned.
Wes stood in his sand-colored fatigues, sleeves rolled, hair sparse on his head—no beard, no hair—the way Wes hated it. The way Nat hated it, too. That close crop of jet-black hair straight from their mom’s gene pool signaled the Marines had a stronger hold over Wes than his family. Still, Nat had never been prouder to be a Meier than when he saw the name tape on his brother’s uniform.
Nat’s gut shot to his throat. “Hey, man.” He didn’t try to hide the tears in his voice, already riding high from begging the dead for assistance.
Wes closed in, always the first of the two to charge forward. Nat supposed that came from his combat training. The hero part. Nat just told cattle where to eat and crap.
They embraced, a bit longer than usual, as if Wes was afraid that Nat might detonate if he let go. Must have seen some bad shit this tour. Nat gave himself to the hold for as long as his brother needed him. Even gave him a few rough smacks on the back, a covert reminder of his sibling seniority. When they split apart, Wes’s grin was the best thing Nat had seen all day.
Well…
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back? I’d have met you in Houston.”
“Busy time, little brother. You don’t need to spend it at an airport.”
“I would have come. No hesitation.”
“I know. But it’s all good,” Wes said. “Willie told me I’d find you up here. Didn’t say I’d find you crying to Grandad like a pussy.”
Nat gave one appreciative bark of laughter then raised three tight fingers and peeled the outer two. “Corn stalk, man.”
When Nat was twelve, the Meier brothers perfected the art of saying fuck you to each other in as many pre-adolescent boy variations as there were blades of grass on the ranch. Chance was the most creative—musical instruments, elaborate mime routines that ended in a grandiose display of the forbidden middle finger. Wes, named after their father’s historic collection of Smith & Wesson firearms, favored the gun varieties of flipping off his brothers. Usually double-action with a ton of kickback.
“Always were Grandad’s favorite, weren’t you?” said Wes.
“After you gave his favorite steer a heart attack with those black cat fireworks.”
Wes tossed his head back and laughed. “Hoss jumped like a jackrabbit.”
Nat joined in the laughter. After that July Fourth, they had renamed the cow St. Elmo, after the weather phenomenon that turns the tips of a steer’s horns to fire, and he spent the rest of his days coddled by their grandmother.
Not unlike January and MooDonna.
Nat sobered.
“What are you doing up here, man?” said Wes. “Such a sad place.”
“It’s peaceful. Good spot to think.”
“You’ve always done your fair share of that.”
Nat sat on the bench. Wes filled the space beside him. His brother sat straighter, taller, his nose to the breeze. Shoulder to shoulder with Wes, alive, fucking alive, felt good, lifted a cloud. Like maybe Nat could do this ranching thing, after all.
“How long are you here for?” asked Nat.
“Long enough to help you sell some hide.”
“I appreciate it, man. But I’m sure you have things you’d rather do now that you’re home.”
Wes shook his head. “It’s funny. Growing up here, all I could think about was doing something else, you know? God, I hated mucking stalls. I never took to this place the way you did. But over there? Some days…some days were so fucking dark, I’d have traded a limb to be back here, working the land beside you.” His bottom lip quivered on a sigh.
Nat looped his arm around Wes’s shoulders and tugged him close. “Missed you, brother.”
Wes blinked toward the breeze, sniffed.
“Now who’s the pussy?” said Nat.
To which Wes promptly hiked his pantleg up from his boot with a strategic middle finger.
“Saw January up at the house.”
Her name, the mention of it, was a sucker punch.
“Did you?” Part of Nat wanted her gone. The other part wanted her at the house, doodling cartoon additions to the kitchen wallpaper until their grandbabies walked underfoot.
“She get tired of the world yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well? What are you going to do about it?”
Nat shrugged. He didn’t want to get into it.
“Did you know Mona sends me a care package every month? Usual stuff—hand wipes, pistachios, glittery notes from the church youth group. Her chocolate pecan bark. Countries could win wars with troops eating that. Know what else she sends? Every one of those girly columns of yours where you preach about missed opportunities and living with intent. They were kind of a thing in our unit. We’d pass them around. Read them to stay awake on duty. Use them for toilet paper.”
Nat shook his head and smiled. Always from the moment he returned stateside, the brotherly ambush.
“Nah, they’re good, man. Aside from the guys calling my brother Aunt Anus.”
“Your point?”
“It’s time to take your own advice.”
Wes cupped Nat on the neck, shook him a bit as he stood, and started back down the hill. “I’m fixin’ to crash, man. I’ll be up to help with evening chores.”
He hadn’t made it ten yards before Nat stopped him. “Wes?”
“Yeah?”
“Welcome home.”
Wes gave him a half-assed salute and cleared the shade of the elm. For Nat, quite possibly, the best view of all.
* * *
/> With Wes home, Nat’s workload was cut in half. His brother had showered and crawled back into bed to sleep off his jetlag. The house was quiet. Nat found himself in his stable office hours earlier than his usual midnight, not a thing left on his to do list but anguish over the sale.
He pulled the five journal sheets he had written on the cabin roof from the desk drawer. His handwriting was crazed. The words belonged to him, but he didn’t remember writing them. All he remembered was the transformative nature of January’s head in his lap, her lids closed, the even cadence of her breath the only inspiration he needed.
Nat studied the room. Claim the space and you claim the dream. January’s words sounded like more advanced bullshit, but no more so than the advice he dished out with every column. What kind of hypocrite tells people to live with intent and doesn’t do the same? He reached for the spur, turned the rowel, touched the things that belonged to Clem. Then he packed it all away. Everything but the spur and the honey-soaked Virginia leaves in a corner tin.
Slate clean, he opened his laptop and finished his novel.
* * *
January had poked her finger with a needle no less than four times. The gauzy material in her hands was perfect for curtains, not so ideal for someone with two left thumbs and no thimbles. She found the domesticity of sewing oddly therapeutic, however. Or maybe it was simply her plan for Nat’s gift coming together in the way she hoped.
Twenty-four hours ago, they drove back to the main house in silence, Mack behind the wheel, Willie in the passenger seat, trying to make small talk and failing. When the terrain swelled and caused Nat’s knee to bump hers, he shifted away. Hours earlier, their bodies had been playgrounds; after their dust-up, incidental touch made him recoil.
She had known it would happen. To the deepest cell in her body, she knew he would hurt. Nat lived life like he was a china cabinet: hardwood and sturdy on the outside; inside, filled with the fragile things in life—porcelain hearts and feelings—taken out on special occasions and polished but rarely ever enjoyed. What January hadn’t counted on was feeling like a broken dish herself.