20.
Ollie
The dreams that had all but stopped were suddenly back with a force. Except now there was another element added to it, that image of Ditto, his cannon snapped, though in my dreams, all four of his legs were broken, yet he was somehow running on mangled stumps. We were on a beach, except the beach was covered in jagged rocks, and the ground moved, like a treadmill, so it didn’t matter how fast the horse ran, he never got anywhere and just decimated his legs even more.
All I could do was stand there, trapped amongst the rocks, watching the horse run even though I myself was unable to move, unable to look away, unable to do anything except stand there and know that this whole thing was happening because of me.
Sleeping became almost too much to bear. I drank copious amounts of coffee and felt wired, my mind sharp, my thoughts careening through my skull at breakneck speed. Wren was a welcome distraction, but I no longer found myself looking forward to sex and then drifting off to sleep together, because the dreams would find me there, too.
Wren had come over after I’d finished with evening chores, bringing her laptop so we could watch a movie. I thought that might be a good distraction, and it was, but then the movie ended.
“Should I get going?” she asked.
“No, you don’t have to. I don’t want you to leave yet.”
I got up and stretched, went over to the kitchen and got a glass of water.
“How are you doing?” she asked, watching me. “I mean, with the whole thing with Ditto and everything . . . .”
“I still feel awful about
it. The whole thing is stressing me out. I know Garrett’s pissed. And he has
every right to be.”
She pushed herself up off the couch and came over to me. “It was awful,” she
said. “For everyone. You, too.”
I rubbed my eyes. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but I deserve to feel like shit over this. I don’t deserve someone trying to make it better.”
“You know what you need?” she said, reaching for me. “You need a good fuck. You do deserve that. And I think maybe I can help you in that department.”
She pushed me back onto the couch, but instead of getting next to me, she stood in front of me and started to gyrate her hips a little. She pulled her shirt off over her head and swung it around on a fingertip before letting it fly across the room. She continued to move, dancing to some song in her head. I let myself fall back into the couch cushions and watch her as she shimmied that hot little ass of hers from her jeans, kicking them to the side. She was well muscled but slender, and those tits of hers were high and firm. She unhooked her bra, let the straps fall forward, and then she danced around a little before letting the bra fall to the floor. I felt my dick starting to get harder. She slid her underwear down her legs and stood there in front of me, not shy at all. Not that she should be—she was perfectly gorgeous, from her head to her toes.
“Come here,” I said.
She slinked over and then knelt down in front of me, unbuttoning my jeans, sliding them off. I pulled my shirt off and tossed it to the side.
“Lie down,” she said.
I stretched out on the couch, expecting her to get on top of me again, like she had before. Instead, though, she turned away from me and then got onto the couch, sliding back so her face was right above my cock, her pussy right above my face. I grabbed her ass cheeks and squeezed, felt her start running the tip of her tongue on me.
I’d gone down on Carolyn exactly once, but not because I didn’t want to. She’d been squeamish about it and, I think, a little embarrassed. Not Wren, though. She spread her legs further apart and moved her hips over my face, while she bobbed her head up and down on my dick. I was glad she was on top; I enjoyed the feeling of being trapped underneath her.
I licked her slowly, running my tongue over her clit and then down to her pussy, then back up again, over and over. She groaned, the back of her throat vibrating against the head of my dick, and I groaned too. I used the tip of my tongue and traced circles around her clit, slid my index and middle finger into her, worked them around, felt how wet she was. Her mouth was silky velvet and it felt like she had me halfway down her throat. She squeezed my balls, pulling them down gently, taking the edge off just a little.
And then, just like that, she stopped.
“Sit up now,” she said, sliding off of me. I sat up, my whole body buzzing, my head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. I leaned back against the couch cushions and she sat on my lap, facing away, so I could run my fingers down her spine, watch the way she arched her back. My cock slid in easily, and I clenched my jaw, squeezed her hips, tried to get her to hold still for a minute so I could acclimate. I wanted to draw this out for as long as possible, and if she started bouncing up and down right now, it would be over in a few seconds.
I took long, deep breaths, slowly relaxed my jaw, loosened my grip on her hips a little, and guided her movements. She went slowly, swiveling her hips, circles, serpentines, figure 8’s. Damn, she was good. The sensations rolled over me like waves, one after the other, each one a little more intense, a little better feeling, than the previous one.
I could tell by the sounds she was making she was about to come, could feel the way her muscles contracted around my dick, and I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped her hips and thrust harder. It felt like all my senses were getting squeezed into the tiniest of fragments and then all of a sudden they exploded, and even though my eyes were closed a rainbow of fireworks bloomed across my vision. My lap felt like it was covered in warm fluid.
My eyes flew open. “What’s that?” I asked.
She was still rocking on me, but slower now, her breathing still ragged. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Don’t worry—it’s not pee. I swear, I didn’t just pee on you. It’s, um . . . happy juice?”
I laughed. “Oh, is that
what it is?”
“Errr, yeah. That’s the first time that’s ever happened . . . that much of it, anyway. Do you have a
towel?”
“Yeah. Should be one you can grab in the bathroom. I’ll just hop in the shower, though.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
As we walked the short
distance to the bathroom, I could hear the sound of distant laughter, and knew
that there was another bonfire happening. It wasn’t mandatory that employees
attend these things, but I knew Garrett liked it when we did, and were able to
mingle with the guests without having to be concerned with work. I felt a big
yawn coming on though, as I adjusted the water temperature. I just couldn’t go
out there right now, even after the sex, even after a shower. For the first
time in a while, crawling into bed and falling asleep sounded downright
appealing.
Wren slipped into the shower behind me, and we took turns standing under the
warm water. Then she grabbed the bar of soap and lathered herself up, had me
get her back, my hands running easily over her slippery, slick skin. She turned
so she was facing me and I soaped up her breasts, her belly, watched as the
rivulets of water washed the suds away. My cock started to get hard again, and
she stepped right against me, so the entire lengths of our bodies were
touching. She turned so her back was against the side of the shower, the water
flowing down on her right side, my left side. I took a wider stance and planted
my feet, hoping the soap and water and slickness of the tile wouldn’t make me
fall. She put her palm down on the soap ledge and used it for leverage so she
could get first one leg, then the other, wrapped around my hips, and I reached
around under ass, holding her up. She shifted around a little until the head of
my cock was right there, though the water was washing away any of her own
wetness, so for a second it almost felt as though our skin was sticking
together. But then she thrust her hips forward and I slid in, and inside, where
the water wasn’t, she was warm and wet and tight. She clenched those muscles of
hers and raked her fingers down my back and bit my earlobe, and with the water
cascading down on us, I just closed my eyes and felt like I was in heaven.
Afterward, we got out, and she laughed and said now she felt like she needed a shower after her shower.
“I’m just kidding,” she said. “I feel amazing. So amazing, in fact, all I want to do is crawl into you bed next to you and go to sleep for a very long time.”
That was about all I wanted to do, too, but I wasn’t sure how Garrett would feel about it.
“I’ll be up early to go into the restaurant,” she said. “I know you’ve got to be up early, too.”
And she was already walking into the bedroom, pulling back the sheets. As long as I was up when I was supposed to be, I guess it didn’t matter. It’s not like we’d be running around naked, waking up the guests, at three in the morning or anything.
So, I crawled into bed next to her, the sheets cool against my bare skin. She snuggled right up against me and kissed me once.
“You’re about the most
incredible man I’ve ever met,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep. “I love
you . . .”
Or at least I thought that’s what she said—I wasn’t completely sure because it
was almost a whisper, and then she was asleep and I wasn’t going to wake her
up. And maybe, she’d said something else, or she didn’t mean to say it, or . .
. any number of things. It didn’t really matter, anyway, because I was in bed
with a beautiful woman and all I had to do was close my eyes and go to sleep.
Except I couldn’t. Now that I was in bed, now that I was supposed to close my eyes, I was suddenly wide awake, my mind spinning. Sex had taken my mind off of things while I had been in the middle of the act, but now that it was over and I was just lying here, all I could do was think about everything that had happened recently.
Was I losing my mind? Was that it? The water being left on, the cinch being loose, Ditto’s gate being left open . . . .
In the morning, though, any residual good feelings I’d had were gone. Wren had to leave, and I had to get out there and get started on the morning chores. Ditto’s corral was empty. I couldn’t even look at it.
I was about to head up into the loft to throw down more hay bales when Garrett appeared, asked me if I would come on up to the house for a minute. “Jesse can take care of the hay,” he said.
I nodded. “All right.” I followed him up to the house, neither of us saying anything.
Inside, he had me sit at the kitchen table. Marie was there, too, and all of a sudden, I got a real bad feeling.
“Would you like some coffee?” Marie asked.
“Sure,” I said, even though my throat felt parched and my pulse was racing. They were going to can me. They were going to tell me to pack my shit and go. Thing was, I couldn’t blame them.
“Is everything all right with you?” Garrett asked. Both he and Marie looked concerned.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I feel fine. Well, I don’t feel fine after what happened with Ditto, but . . . .” I shook my head. “I just don’t know.”
“Has anything been going on to make you feel more stressed out lately?” Marie said. “Have you been sleeping all right? Eating well?”
“Yeah. Yeah, nothing has changed. Except . . . .” I paused.
Garrett and Marie both looked at me. “Except . . .?” he said.
Except Wren. And yeah, I did think about her a lot, she was on my mind. But I didn’t think it was so much that I’d be forgetting to do things that were basically ingrained in me.
“Wren,” I said softly, feeling like I was betraying her.
Marie reached over and patted my hand. “She is a lovely girl,” she said. “Relationships can feel all-consuming at times. Especially at first.” She looked at Garrett with a faint smile. “I remember when I first met Garrett, he was all I could think about.”
Garrett shook his head. “A relationship is no reason to let your head disappear up in the clouds,” he said. I could still hear the anger—or maybe it was disappointment—in his voice. I’d let him down, I knew it, and that felt worse than anything else.
“I know it shouldn’t,” I said. “It’s completely unacceptable. I’m having a hard time believing it myself, that I was so distracted I just forgot to do things that I’ve always done before.”
But it made sense, I supposed. I was used to doing all the ranch stuff—though I did have a seven-year hiatus—what I wasn’t used to was the girlfriend aspect. It had been different with Carolyn; I hadn’t felt nearly as strongly toward her as what I felt toward Wren. Marie was right—it was, in a way, all-consuming. Maybe other people were better equipped to handle that sort of thing. Maybe if I had a job in an office or at the grocery store, the worst thing that would have happened was I’d staple my finger or knock over a bushel of apples or something.
“There’s no excuse for it,” I said. “And I know nothing I say is going to change anything, so the last thing I’ll say about it is that I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. You guys have been there more for me than anyone else, and it means the world to me that you even wanted me back here in the first place. I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“We know you didn’t do it on purpose,” Marie said.
Garrett nodded, though I could tell he was having less of an easy time accepting the fact that it was merely an oversight. “The last thing we want is for anyone to get hurt—human or horse. Especially when it’s something preventable. I’ve been working in this business long enough to know that mistakes happen, and I’ve certainly made enough of them myself. So, I don’t want you to think we’re sitting here telling you that you need to be perfect, because we’re not, and we know that’s completely unreasonable. But we do expect a high level of professionalism, not just because it reflects upon who we are, but because it keeps people safe. It keeps the animals safe.”
“I’ll make it right,” I said. I didn’t come out and say it, but I knew what needed to be done, even though it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do.
But I wasn’t going to put it off; I’d been down that path before and knew just where it led. Wren was planning to come over that afternoon, and I figured I’d just let her. I could tell her then. I couldn’t let myself think about it anymore than that—it had to be done.
When she got there, we went into my cabin. She tried to put her arms around me and give me a kiss, but I pulled back.
“Wren,” I said. “There’s . . . there’s something we need to talk about.”
“What’s that?” She pulled my face toward hers and gave me a kiss, her lips lingering on mine.
“You can’t be kissing me when I tell you.”
She nipped my lower lip,
then let go. “Okay,” she said. “What is this big announcement you need to make?
That’s so much more important than me giving you a kiss?”
I swallowed. “I think I have to break up with you,” I said. To my surprise, she
started to laugh.
“Oh, you’re hilarious,” she said. And then she leaned over and tried to kiss me again.
“No, I’m not joking,” I said, putting my arm up to hold her back.
Her face froze, and then she frowned and bit her lip. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be doing this.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because.” I stopped. How was I supposed to explain this without hurting her? There really didn’t seem to be a way. If I tried to do it without hurting her, I’d just end up not being clear. It would be so unclear, in fact, that she could very well think I wasn’t breaking up with her at all.
“That’s not a good enough answer,” she said.
“It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I’m getting too distracted by you. I think about you a lot. About . . . the stuff we do, about us. And it’s been causing me to fuck up around the ranch. Not just little shit, but big things. Ditto wouldn’t have gotten out. Wouldn’t have cracked his cannon bone and had to be destroyed. That’s my fault. I killed that horse. I might not have pulled the trigger, but it was my own damn fault. You were right there—you saw how much fuckin agony he was in. And it was my fault.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “And maybe you did forget to lock the gate, but it happens! Not everyone is perfect. People forget to do things sometimes.”
“Yeah, they do, but it usually doesn’t result in something dying. I just can’t take the chance of something else happening again. Something worse, even. Garrett was the only one who was there for me when I got out of prison, he gave me my job back, he’s been there for me this whole time. I can’t let him down by fucking everything up.”
“So, you don’t want to see me anymore.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I do—Trust me, I do. You make me feel better than anyone ever has. I love being around you. But I’ve got to do this. I’ve just got to.”
The frown on her face was deep. I hated seeing her so unhappy, hated knowing that I was the one causing her to feel this way.
“Do you remember that talk we had?” she asked. “And you told me how you hadn’t done things right with Carolyn, but you were going to do them right with me? Do you think this is right? Breaking up with someone that you ‘love being around’? Because in case you didn’t know, once we break up, I’m not really going to want to be around you that much. Or at all, really. Maybe some girls can handle that shit, but I’m not one of them.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to want to be around me,” I said, already feeling sad at the thought of never getting to hang out with her again. But then that image of Ditto reappeared in my mind, and I knew I couldn’t retract my statement. This was the best thing, even if it hurt, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. “I’m sorry, Wren.”
Her chin trembled, ever so slightly, but her eyes were dry. She was blinking fast, though, and I knew she was trying not to cry, which just about broke my heart. How was I supposed to explain to her that I didn’t want to do this, yet I had to? It hardly even made sense to me, other than I knew I had to put my job first, I had to put Garrett and the ranch first. At least for right now. I couldn’t let him down, and I couldn’t keep doing things that were a danger to people and animals.
“What are you going to do if it keeps happening?” she asked. “What if we break up now and you stop thinking about me, but then you forget to close a gate again? Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
And I really didn’t, but I was almost one hundred percent certain it wouldn’t happen. That the forgotten gates and cinches would simply stop because I’d remember to latch them, I’d remember to tighten them. I’d never forgotten that stuff in the past, and she was the only thing that was different about the whole equation.
“I think you’re making a big mistake,” she said. “And I don’t mean that as a threat.”
“I know you don’t.” I wanted to take her in my arms, just wanted to hold her to me until that look disappeared from her face, but I was the whole reason that look was there in the first place. The best thing I could do right now would be to end the conversation, to let her go, so she could start moving on. She’d forget about me soon enough, I hoped. I didn’t want to think of her with another guy, but at the same time, I knew it wouldn’t be hard for her to find a date at all. “But really, Wren, it’d probably be better if you just forgot about me.”
The expression on her face went from disbelief to shocked to angry in about two seconds. “I can’t believe you just said that.” Her voice shook. “I can’t believe you think that I could forget about you, just like that. You can break up with me right now if you want, you can forget all about me, but I will never be able to forget about you! Even if we hadn’t started seeing each other, even if we never met each other again after you got out, I will never be able to forget about you.”
I felt simultaneously elated and completely shitty to hear that.
“You know I love you, don’t you?” she said. “I’ve never said that to a guy before. I’ve never said it because I never actually felt it. I do now, but I’m beginning to realize that doesn’t matter.”
Tell her you love her back! Tell her she’s about the most amazing person you’ve ever met and you never thought that you’d ever stand the chance with someone like her.
I wanted to. The words were there, right on the tip of my tongue.
But I bit my lip and didn’t say a word.