And Then You Fall (Crested Butte Series)

by Heather A Buchman

  “I guess you’re packed, would the condoms be hard to get to?”

  “Not at all little lady, I left ’em in the drawer of your night stand. And I counted ’em, there better be the same number left in there when I get back.”

  “You’re coming back?”

  “Soon as I can baby. Soon as you’ll let me.”

  Before they were through the bedroom door, Liv was pulling Ben’s clothes off. She tore at them until he stood before her, naked. “What now Liv?” he asked.

  She pushed him onto the bed, on his back, climbed up and straddled him. “My way this time,” she said and kissed him—seductively and wantonly; passionately and relentlessly. She bit his lower lip and it destroyed him. She ran her fingertips over his skin, each stroke felt like a flame. Liv touched his body, everywhere, as though she was trying to memorize it with her hands. Then she sighed and let herself cover him.

  “I need you naked too baby.” Ben rolled her over and began to tear at her clothes, the same as she had done with his. “Need you now. Right now. Can’t wait.”

  He wanted to go slow, he wanted to feel every inch of her skin against his, savor being with her, so in the days to come, he could remember this, every moment of it. But he couldn’t stop himself, his desire for her was all-consuming. His need to possess her overtook him and he buried himself inside of her. He went completely still, his hands in her hair, his face only inches from hers. “Liv—.” The words wouldn’t come, he longed to tell her that he loved her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. It was too soon. She’d never believe him. But he did, like he’d never loved before.

  “I need you,” he finally said.

  “I’m right here,” she answered, her eyes burning into his, questioning.

  “Come with me. Come home with me.” Give in to me, give yourself over to me was what he really wanted to say, to demand.

  “I can’t,” the words came out almost as a sob.

  He brought his head closer, his lips hovering just above hers, her hair still twisted in his hands. He started to move slowly inside her.

  “Come home with me, Liv.” He demanded again. He knew she wanted to, she just wouldn’t give in to him.

  “I can’t,” she said again, crying out as she did.

  “I need you,” he breathed. Never before had he felt this overwhelming need for a woman. He wanted to worship her body, treat her tenderly. He brought his lips to hers again, kissing her gently but deeply. He broke the kiss, needing to take another moment, again, just to look at her. When he closed his eyes he wanted to be able to see her face, just as it looked right now. He wanted the image seared in his memory.

  Her long hair fanned out around her and she gripped the back of his head, pulling her closer as their lips met again. Ben started to move faster, harder, Liv arched into him and cried out.

  “I’ll never stop needing you,” he gasped as he exploded into her.

  “Ben.” Just the way she said his name, every time, it was as though she reached in and squeezed his heart.

  ***

  They’d gotten dressed and Ben was out on the deck, the door between them closed, and he was on his cell phone. He paced as he spoke, his hand rubbing over the top of his head.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust that he handled the horses just fine earlier, it was more that she needed something to do with herself. The nervous energy was eating her alive. She longed to saddle Micah and take him out for a long, hard run, but that could wait, until Ben was gone. Just the thought filled her with an ache she couldn’t put words to.

  She walked over to the fence where Micah stood, clearly expecting she’d have a treat for him. She reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out a red Twizzler. She couldn’t stand licorice herself, red or black, but for her horses, there seemed to be no better treat. He nuzzled up against her, as though he knew she needed his affection.

  She heard the back door close and saw Ben walking toward her. The way he looked at her, such passion in his eyes, and when he smiled—Lord help her, her knees went weak. Did all women react to him this way? And did he know it?

  “Time to go?” She wanted to be the one who said it first.

  “Yeah, as much as I don’t want to, I’m already getting a late start, and if I don’t get on the road, I’m going to want to stay another night.” He pulled her hard against him, so hard it almost hurt. But even then the hurt inside overpowered it.

  “Come home with me.”

  “I’m already home Ben. This is my home.”

  “Just for a few days. I’ll fly you back when you’re ready.”

  “Ben, I’m not going with you.” She stroked the side of his face and reached up to brush her lips over his.

  “Next time?”

  “Maybe.”

  He held her so tight she couldn’t breathe. And when he kissed her once again, he took the rest of the air out of her lungs. She felt dizzy, but it didn’t have anything to do with breathing. It was just him. He made her feel that way.

  ***

  Liv didn’t watch his truck leave the driveway. It might have been nicer of her to turn and wave him off, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead she walked in the opposite direction and didn’t look back.

  She brought Micah into the barn and saddled him up. They headed east, away from the sunset and rode and rode and rode.

  When they got back to the barn, she felt ridden out. She got Micah settled and brought the other horses in. She swept out the barn and walked around, looking for something else to busy herself with. She pulled up a barn stool and read through the week-old newspaper someone had left behind.

  Finally she ran out of things to occupy herself with, she had to go inside the house. It was the last place she wanted to be.

  ***

  Ben pulled up to his house just before ten. He thought about stopping at his parents’ place, but when he drove by all the lights were off, so he didn’t. He considered going back into town and swinging by the Goat, but it would be slow on a Sunday night this late in the ski season. Without a big crowd to distract him, being there would make him think of Liv. Everything did.

  He went inside and slung his bag on the floor of the laundry room. He walked into his kitchen, and only felt a sense of disappointment, in it and the loneliness of his house.

  Tomorrow his boys would be home and he hoped their antics were enough to distract him. He was always present when he was with them, the same way his father had been with him. His boys were his world, the two most important humans on the planet to him. But now there was another human, a person, a woman, who he could not stop thinking about.

  His arms felt empty, he longed to hold her. He’d gotten used to being able to hold her whenever he wanted to.

  He went back into the laundry room and picked up his bag. He took it into his bedroom, threw it on the bed and sat down next to it. He reached over and opened the zipper, pulling out the last thing he had packed. One of her scarves. He meant to tell her he took it before he left, but it had slipped his mind. Maybe by now she’d found his shirt, the one he left hanging on the knob on the back of her closet door. He’d left it for her on purpose.

  He brought the scarf up to his nose and inhaled deeply. He loved her smell, he closed his eyes and imagined she was with him. Scent was the most powerful of the senses when it came to remembering. He rested his head back on the pillow, holding her scarf close to him, and drifted off to sleep.

  ***

  Liv climbed into bed and slid under the sheets. They smelled of them, him and her together. She nestled into the pillow, breathing in the scent he left there.

  She rolled to where her cell phone sat on the night stand, and for the first time in almost a week, she checked Facebook. There was nothing. Twitter. Nothing there either. She scrolled through photos he’d posted before, some from months ago. There were so many of him performing. In some he was looking straight at the camera, smiling. She loved his smile.

  She wondered if he was home y
et, or if he was still out on the road. She hadn’t heard from him since he left, but she hadn’t expected to. And she had no idea when she would again.

  Chapter 9

  It had been three weeks since Ben left Liv’s house. They had now been apart longer than they had been together. In his first few days home he thought about calling her or texting her at least once an hour. She always answered when he texted. But never sent one on her own, one that wasn’t in response to something he’d said. He called and she’d answer. And they’d talk. Sometimes when he called he got her voicemail. She’d call him back. But she never called him otherwise.

  He kept her scarf tucked under his pillow, and now it smelled more of him than it did of her. But none of it, or any passage of time, changed how he felt. He still missed her as much as he had the first day he’d been home.

  The first week he’d kept busy with his boys. His mornings became about making breakfast, getting them off to school, and coming home to try to get some work done in the hours until he had to pick them up. At night they worked on homework, ate dinner and wrestled with bedtimes.

  A week later, when it came time to take them to their mom’s, he wanted nothing more than to pack a bag and head over the mountain back to Liv’s. But he didn’t.

  The next few days he spent thinking very hard about whether his feelings for her were as strong as he believed them to be. Was it because she held herself back from him, did that only make him want her more? Was she just a conquest he couldn’t give up on until he won?

  Or was his need for her just loneliness? He’d been so lonely after he’d gotten divorced that often he sought the comfort of any warm, feminine body he could find. He hated to think that Liv was nothing more than someone to soothe the ache of loneliness. He really didn’t think she was, he was sure it was more than that. But if she wasn’t feeling what he was feeling, how hard could he push? Maybe he needed to back off and give himself as much time to think as he was giving her.

  In six weeks, he and the band would leave on tour. Next week all hell would break loose when the dates were announced. He had so much work to do between now and then. Even if he wanted to go and see her, he wouldn’t be able to. She could come to him, but he knew she wouldn’t.

  The band was scheduled to play the Paramount in Denver at the beginning of June, and she’d be in Europe with Renie by then. He couldn’t imagine not seeing her before she left, just couldn’t fathom it, but he wasn’t sure it was as important to her as it was to him.

  He wished she’d give him something, just a sign that it was, but she didn’t. And if she did, he wasn’t seeing it, or hearing it, or feeling it.

  One of the other guys in the band had started handling their social media. The record company told them it should be less about Ben and more about CB Rice, so he’d stopped posting anything at all. He wondered if she had noticed. He hadn’t asked her.

  ***

  When Liv saw the black bear walking across the meadow below her back deck the day after Ben left, she took it as a sign. Dottie told her that if a bear crossed her path it meant she should hibernate. Symbolically it meant you should be introspective, bask in silence and solitude, focusing on rebirth and self-understanding.

  For the last three weeks she felt as though she had done nothing but hibernate. She’d been avoiding everyone. Even Paige had stopped dropping by. She still called and texted, but Liv didn’t always respond. Mark came out to see if she needed anything and begged her to, please, let them know if she did.

  “Liv, I just realized there’s no music playing. I don’t think I’ve ever been here when you are, that there isn’t music playing,” said Mark.

  “Silence is my music these days,” she’d answered.

  When Liv was about to reach the one month mark AB “after Ben,” Paige showed up at the barn.

  She walked in, took Liv by the shoulders and said, “Enough! You either need to go and see him, or let him come here, or figure something else out. But this has to stop. You’re behaving as though you’re in mourning, and Liv—he isn’t dead. Look at yourself. This isn’t you. You need to snap out of it.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, this is me. I am a very solitary person Paige, I always have been. I don’t know how to handle this thing with Ben. It’s the type of thing I don’t have any experience with.”

  “Look at me and listen. Go and see him. Call him, right now, and go and see him.”

  “I . . . can’t . . .”

  “Why in the world not? There isn’t a single thing stopping you other your own stubbornness. He wants you to, you know he does.”

  Liv got up and walked to the front of the barn, not answering.

  “Liv, are you listening to me?”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “No, I haven’t. It isn’t my place to. But I don’t need to, I know you well enough to know exactly what’s going on.”

  “And what is that Paige, what do you think is going on?”

  “You’re living in limbo. You’re waiting for Renie to come home so the two of you can leave for Europe. In the meantime, you’re waking up and you’re going to sleep without much else in between. Remember when we came back from Las Vegas and I told you I thought you kept yourself on the outskirts of life?”

  Liv nodded.

  “Well it’s gotten worse, if that was even possible. Call him Liv. I’m going to sit right here until you do. Call him and tell him you want to come and see him.”

  “The horses.”

  “The horses will be just fine. Mark will come out and take care of the damn horses. Call him Liv. Call him right now.”

  “What if-—”

  “Don’t. No ‘what ifs.’ Just call him.”

  “Okay. I’ll call him.”

  “Now. I’m not leaving until you do.”

  Liv took her cell phone out of her back pocket and called.

  ***

  Ben was in the middle of jotting lyrics down and absentmindedly hit the talk button without looking to see who it was.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Ben?”

  “Liv? Is that you? Sorry, I was in the middle of something. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt.”

  “Oh, do you need to get back to it?”

  “No, no, of course I don’t. I’m so glad you called. How are you? What’s up?”

  “I was wondering . . .” Ben could hear another voice in the background but couldn’t make out the words.

  “I was thinking about . . .” Oh my God, she was killing him. What was she trying to say. “Liv? What is it?”

  “I was wondering if you’d like some company.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. He was in shock. Every day for the first two weeks he was back he asked her to come and visit him. Each time he did, he knew her answer would be no, and it was. He’d stopped asking. And never once, did she invite him to come back and see her.

  “I would like some company, very much, as long as you were the company.”

  “I wouldn’t be intruding?”

  “My door is always open to you Liv, you are welcome here anytime.”

  “Your boys?”

  “They’re with their mom this week, but they would love to meet you.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Never more sure of anything. When?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like Paige is there.”

  “What was your first clue?” She laughed too.

  “Today?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “It’s a long drive, Liv, especially by yourself. Say the word and I could be there in less than hour by plane.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t keep you prisoner here Liv. I’d fly you back when you wanted to leave. I promise.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Liv walked out of the barn, where Paige couldn’t hear what she was going to say. “I’m sca
red,” she whispered.

  “I know baby. I’m a little scared too.” He wasn’t about to let her change her mind though. “Four o’clock. Ask Paige if she can give you a ride up to the airport.”

  “When?”

  “Today. And if she can’t, I’ll rent a car and come down and pick you up.”

  “No, not today. Tomorrow.”

  “Liv, I’m flying over this afternoon. If you don’t want to leave today, I’ll just come and help you pack.”

  Ben hung up and called his mom. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Anytime, you know that.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right over.”

  ***

  Ben’s parents, Bud and Ginny Rice, owned the Flying R Ranch on the south side of Mt. Crested Butte near East River Valley. It had been in their family since 1853. He and his brothers, one older and one younger, grew up on the ranch and it remained their home. When Ben’s oldest brother, Matt, turned twenty-five, their father gave him a fifty-acre parcel where Matt built his house. When Ben and his younger brother, Will, turned twenty-five, their father gave them each fifty acres. The parcels were situated in such a way that when their parents passed away, the ranch would be split into three large parcels, four hundred acres each. The boys could then choose to keep it one working ranch or divide it, and work each parcel on their own.

  If you looked at an aerial view of the ranch, each of the three boys’ houses sat at the furthest points from the center of the ranch, where their parents’ house and the ranch’s outbuildings were located.

  Ben and his brothers were very close, they had decided long ago that the ranch would never be divided, they would always run it as a single entity.

  The drive over only took a few minutes. Both his mom and dad were out front waiting for him when he drove up. Ben joined them on the porch, and told them about Liv.

  “And what about the boys?”

  “I don’t have the boys this week, but if she stays through the weekend, I think they’ll be fine with it.”