“I would never leave like that,” I whispered. He gave me a sharp look, but I shook my head. “Not like that. That wasn't what I was doing.”
“Oh no? What, you were running because you loved me?”
He said it all snide, but I could still hear the hurt. And I was still scared, but I couldn't bear to hear that hurt in him, so I drew a breath and said very, very quietly, “Yes.”
I was still kneeling. I was still naked, still burning from his blows. He was crouched in front of me, staring, watching, but I couldn't see him now, not clearly. I couldn't see anything. I felt like I was glowing, like the heat from his paddling had bloomed in my chest and opened it up, sending my heart out in front of me, hovering there before him. Except there wasn't any terror now. There was just this. Me. Him. That word. Those other words. The waiting to see what he would do with them.
What he did was come forward, leaning until his knees met the floor, and then he walked to me on them, took my face in his hands and gave me a sweet, soft, tender kiss against my lips.
“Don't,” he said. “Don't run, ever again.” Then he kissed me again. And again.
I forget how we got back upstairs. He may have carried me. I remember that we kissed the whole way. I remember falling onto the bed, his body covering me, and I remember arguing with him when he reached for a condom, saying I didn't want one. Saying I'd been tested before Rapid City and was okay. But he said no, he hadn't been tested in a while, but he would go on Monday.
I remember that he made love to me, sweet love to me. I remember that he whispered in my ear, and then because he'd asked so nice, I turned him over and made love to him right back. I remember curling up beside him, dick and ass humming and happy.
I remember him kissing my ear and saying very softly, “I love you too, Roe.”
The next morning I got the box myself and showed him every piece. I explained what I had meant to do with them. I bit my tongue when I wanted to point out what was wrong with them. He wouldn't have listened anyway. He said they were all perfect. He was touched, I could tell. Pleased.
Loved.
He tried to wear them all at once, the idiot. I wouldn't let him, but he did insist on at least three. I have had to make him four belts since then, because he wears them out like crazy, because they're all he wears. The bracelet with his initials is usually on him too. But the circlet with the brand he gave back to me. He put it around my neck and told me it was to remind me that I belonged at Nowhere and that Nowhere belonged to me. Which I knew was his way of saying he belonged to me.
Which was what gave me the idea.
At Haley's next doctor appointment, I went down the street to the tattoo parlor with a piece of paper in my pocket. I came home with a slightly sore backside. That night after dinner I showed my backside to Travis.
He laughed. But it was a very happy laugh. “You branded yourself?”
“Yep,” I told him. Then I touched the necklace. “For when I have to leave this off.”
I got another kiss for that. Lots of them, actually.
Quite a few of them were on my new tattoo.
Chapter Eleven
The phone call came in the middle of lambing.
Literally. I was out in the barn, my hand up a ewe trying to turn the lamb when Travis came in and called my name. “Bit busy, boss,” I bit off, and tried for a better grip on the leg.
“Somebody take over for him,” he said, and I looked up, wondering what the fuck, and I saw his face. And I saw the phone in his hand.
I felt a cold wind blow across my neck.
I shooed off Paul and finished the lamb, but I did it in a daze. My ears rang as I went over to the sink to wash up. I kept my eye off Travis, but my mind didn't need my eyes to see him for it to tumble ahead and try and guess what this was about. I already knew who was on the phone. Well, I knew within three people. Probably two. And the fact that Travis had come into the barn during lambing narrowed it down to some grim options.
I picked took the phone from Travis, still not looking at him. “'Lo.”
“Hi, Roe. This is Bill.”
“It's good to hear your voice,” I said. It was the truth. It was weird, but it was good. I waited for the rest.
“Sorry to interrupt. Lambing?”
“Yep. Had a breech, but it's okay now. Got her out. They can handle the rest without me.” I cleared my throat and fought against the pit forming in my stomach as I gave him his opening. “What can I do for you?”
A pause. The longest, most hollow pause in the world, so loud it muffled the bleating of the ewes and lambs.
“Dad passed away.”
It hadn't mattered that I had been ready for something like this. You can't be ready for someone to tell you that one of your parents is gone. And I found out that it doesn't even matter that you parted on bad terms and had made the decision not long ago that it was better not to restart relations. It doesn't matter, not at that moment. Death changes everything.
When I was able I said, “When?”
“Couple of hours ago.” There was another pause. It was very heavy, and when Bill spoke again, I could tell that each word was a lead weight on him. “I wasn't watching close enough. He got the keys and tried to drive into town.”
I shut my eyes and didn't say anything.
“The good thing,” Bill went on, his voice shaky, “is that he didn't hurt anybody else. You remember that concrete median at the T-intersection down by Coppit Corner? He hit that at about sixty-five. They said he died instantly, or real close.”
He paused, like it was my turn, but I didn't know what to say. What did you say when your brother, whose voice you hadn't heard in five years, called and said your dad had died?
My dad. My dad was dead. I would never see him again. Ever. I stared straight ahead of me, but I didn't see a thing. The last words he'd said to me had been “Get that north forty done.” After that all I got was looks of disappointment and revulsion. They would be all I ever got. There was no more Dad. The thought just kept rolling over and over in my head, stuck. No more Dad. No more Dad. No more Dad.
“I was hoping you would come home for the funeral,” Bill said.
I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet. “Yeah.” Then it hit me what “coming home” would involve. I cleared my throat again. “You sure about that?”
“That I want you home for our father's funeral? Yes, Roe. I'm damn sure.”
But I could tell. I could tell already this was going to be grim from the tone of his voice. I saw Travis move out of the corner of my eye, and I turned, finally, and met his gaze.
Sometimes it hits me how patient Travis is. He knew about my dad, I realized, because he wouldn't have given Bill to me for anything less. And he wasn't leaving my side until he figured out how I was. He didn't know what to say, either. But he was there. Waiting.
“Whatever you need,” Travis said, “we do. You need to go home, we go. Whenever and for however long.” I glanced at the lambs and opened my mouth to object, but he overrode me. “Tory can handle it. If you want to go, find out the details, and we'll get ready to head out.”
We. It hit me that he kept saying that: we.
We will go
. Not me. He wasn't offering, either. He was going, if I was.
I reached out, fingers shaking. He met my hand halfway, and he gripped it tight. I felt his strength come into me, and I think I took my first real breath in ten minutes.
“Roe?” Bill said into my ear.
“I'm coming,” I said, looking right into Travis's eyes.
We were coming.
Haley came with us too.
She was seven months pregnant and then some, and she had gone, in my mind pretty abruptly, from cute little baby belly to as big as a fucking house. Both Travis and I told her no, as did her mother and her father, the latter with an emphasis that shook the very earth.
She came anyway.
“I have my records,” she said as we got in the truck to go and I tried, one last time, to get her to stay home. “I have my entire medical file. I know the number of every hospital between here and Algona. I have a cell phone. I also have a month and a half to go. You're talking about a few days.”
“Haley,” I said, exasperated, “this is going to be some sonofabitch thing where we're at the funeral and my family starts fighting and you go into labor in the middle of it all.”
“You told me your family doesn't fight, that they just give long, cold stares.”
“Well, I figure you're going to pick a fight!”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. And if I do go into labor, I go into labor. They have babies in Iowa too, I'm almost sure of it.”
There was no reasoning with her. There was certainly no arguing with her. So she came along.
Of course, because she came along, we stopped a hell of a lot more for bathroom breaks. We had to head all the way up into South Dakota to get on I-90, and we took that into southern Minnesota to Highway 71 and then all the smaller roads that wound us in to Algona. The trip took nine hours without stopping, but it was a solid twelve for us, because of all the rest breaks. By the time we hit the Super 8, it was ten o'clock.
It was hard to be back home. It had gotten harder with every mile that brought us closer. And as soon as we hit the Iowa border, I really started to itch. In Algona itself, I felt like every eye was on me. I thought of how they would all know about how I was coming from Nebraska, and we were in Travis's truck, so the plates said Nebraska, and they'd know it was me. They would all be talking about me already.
I shouldn't have come back. I should've stayed at the ranch.
The desk clerk at the Super 8 saw me come through the door, and she smiled a sad smile and came at me with her arms open.
“Roe Davis. My word, how many years has it been? So sorry to hear about your dad, hon. He was a good man.” She cottoned on to the fact that I was a stiff board in her arms, and she withdrew and gave me a laugh. “You don't remember me, do you! It's Missy Letts. We were in school together. I was one grade behind you. You sat beside me in freshman English.”
I blinked, trying to remember. I had been high through most of freshman English both times I took it. “Oh,” I said, trying to pretend. “Sure. Hi.”
Her face was very round and shiny, but when she saw Haley, it got rounder and shinier as she beamed. “Ooh, and is this your wife? Oh my word, and you're going to be a daddy!”
I wanted to run so bad. Travis must have figured it, because his hand came down on my shoulder. Haley, arms folded over her belly, gave the clerk her “I'm nice, but don't fuck with me” smile.
“No. My boyfriend knocked me up and ran. I'm Haley, Roe's friend.” She nodded at Travis. “This is Travis Loving. Roe's partner.”
Travis's hand tightened, keeping me in place. I swallowed hard and waited.
Missy Letts's eyes had gone wide. Very, very wide. Her mouth had fallen open, and for a second we all just stared at one another, me terrified, Missy shell-shocked, Travis probably blank as a slate, and Haley making it clear anybody fucking with me would be answering to her. And then, carefully composing herself, Missy smiled again.
“Well! That will teach me to go assuming things, won't it?” She let out a breezy, slightly nervous sigh and patted me on the arm. “It's good to see you, Roe.” She winked at Travis. “And your partner is a handsome one. Good catch.”
Then she bustled back around to the other side of the desk, and as if she met up with gay dropouts who'd sat beside her in freshman English every day, she booked us our rooms, asking us if we wanted adjoining, upgrading Haley's for no charge with a wink and a smile to a suite with a whirlpool tub in it. “For your back, hon. I remember that stage. Don't make it too hot, but soak as much as you want. And make these big strong boys carry all your luggage.”
Haley had liked that, but I knew she liked Missy's easy acceptance of me more than anything. I was ready to get upstairs, but Haley kept us down there, asking about Missy's kids, about doctors in town “just in case.” And to my annoyance, she kept dragging the conversation back to me and to Travis.
“It's so wet here,” she said, amazed. “It rained all the way down from Minnesota, and from the look of it, that's all its done all week. We don't get much of that in Northwest Nebraska.” She nodded at Travis. “You could use some of this rain on the ranch, I bet.”
It was such a blatant “Hey, Roe's man has a ranch!” plug that I wanted to kick her, pregnant or not. But Missy ate it up, because this was good dish. She turned to Travis with new appraisal.
“Oh-ho! Handsome
and
has a ranch? How big is your spread?”
“Seven hundred head of American Beltie cattle and six-fifty head Merino sheep on three thousand acres,” he replied. “Can't make up my mind if I want to stick to one or the other, so I keep expanding both.”
To Iowans, that kind of acreage sounded like a king must run it, and Missy gave me a look that said, clearly, “Don't let this one go, boy!”
I opened my mouth to tell her that this was just a hobby ranch, but Haley had taken over again. “Roe started out as a hand there. My dad is the manager, and he says nobody knows sheep like Roe does.”
Started out! I still
was
a hand!
Missy smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes. The Davises have always been good farmers. In the blood, see.”
It was another ten minutes before we got to get our things and go upstairs. We had to take a few trips to get the cooler and everything, and when I passed through the lobby to head to the elevator, I saw Missy on the phone in the back office, speaking intently and waving her hands at the wall in excitement as she spoke.
I didn't know who she was calling, but I knew exactly what she was saying.
“Don't worry about it,” Haley told me as she lingered in the doorway between our rooms. “You're here for your family. For your dad.”
“My family ain't going to like those rumors flying around,” I told her. “Dad wouldn't either.”
“Tough,” she said, kissed me on the cheek, and then closed the door.
I heard the tub water start to run shortly after. I got undressed, showered, and lay down on the bed beside Travis, who was surfing the Internet on his laptop. When I leaned against him, he shifted his arm to pull me in tighter.