I didn’t sleep worth a shit last night, too busy reliving the day’s events in my mind. Not just Pedro’s injury. As horrible as it was, it comes with the territory of breaking a wild horse. Granted, it wouldn’t have happened if Oli hadn’t been where he shouldn’t have been. But it could have easily been a dog that spooked her or, hell, someone’s hat blowing by.
No, the vision that keeps haunting me is the look on Greer’s face before she left. The defeat that was plain as day. Just looking in her eyes, I suddenly understood all those fears she talked about the other night. Whereas before, I could play her concerns off as an exaggeration because she hasn’t found the right man yet, but now I get it. Now I know why she has never bothered trying to bring anyone else into her fold. Because she’s right.
Single moms have to put up with shit all the time, but to have a child with a disability and a conduct disorder at that, makes it that much harder. She can’t trust that anyone would want to be a part of her life because it will always be hard. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. What her life with Oli is now, will be her life forever.
What Greer doesn’t understand, though, is I think she’s worth a shot.
Pulling up to her house, I see her car in the driveway. Good. I didn’t tell her I was coming, so I’m glad she’s home. I don’t want to wait to talk to her. I have too much to say.
Grabbing the flowers from the passenger seat, I hop out of my truck and set my plan in motion.
Her expression when she swings open the door isn’t surprising. I know she wasn’t expecting me. She’s dressed in sweats, hair up on top of her head, and not a stitch of makeup on that I can see. I like seeing her like this.
“Ace.” It’s not a question about why I’m here. More like a statement making sure she’s not seeing things.
“Hi, Greer. Can I come in?”
She hesitates momentarily before snapping out of her thoughts. “Oh! Yeah. Sure. Come in. Um, can I get you something to drink?” she offers, closing the door behind us.
“I’m good, thanks. These are for you.” Handing her the flowers, she brings them to her nose and inhales.
“How did you know I’d like purple daisies?”
“I saw you admiring the field when the wild purple flowers were blooming. They reminded me of that day. You were beautiful, staring off into the horizon, your hair blowing in the breeze.”
“Ace,” she whispers, and I know she wants me to stop. I know she doesn’t trust I’m man enough to handle anything Oli can give, which is exactly why she needs to let me show her.
So I stop divvying out compliments and decide to give her what she really needs—truth.
“Can we sit?” I gesture to the couch, and she nods.
It doesn’t go unnoticed by me that she puts distance between us in the form of an entire couch cushion’s worth of space. Placing the flowers on the table in front of her, she turns her body toward me. “Oli’s out of the program, isn’t he?”
I can’t stop myself from moving forward and taking her hand in mine. “No, Greer, he’s not.”
Her eyes snap up to mine, and I can see disbelief written all over her face. “What?”
“Oli isn’t the first kid to disobey, and he sure won’t be the last. Yes, he broke some trust, and for that, he’s going to lose some privileges, but he is exactly the kind of kid we started this program for. He has a shot at learning life skills that will help him become independent and productive. We’re not gonna throw in the towel at the first major incident.”
The tears are flowing freely down her face now. “But Pedro could’ve been killed.”
She’s right. But I wave her off anyway. “Pedro’s got nothing but a concussion and some wounded pride.”
A laugh bursts out of her through the tears, and I like that some of her anxieties are being relieved.
“There’s more.” She takes a deep breath before nodding for me to go on. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversation we had the other night at the dance hall, and in light of recent events, I think I understand.”
She looks at me quizzically but doesn’t interrupt.
“I understand why you don’t trust that anyone would want to be part of your life, because it’s hard and it always will be.”
“Ace.” She quietly turns away, but I reach over, cupping her chin and turning her back to me. I want her to hear what I have to say. To really focus on what I mean.
“Greer, just let me say my piece, okay?”
She nods again, and I know I only have one chance to get this right. “My baby brother was a late-in-life baby. Almost immediately, my mama knew something wasn’t right. Even when she was first pregnant. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t planning on another baby, but there he was, and she was going to embrace the challenge. She and my daddy both.
“When he was born, he was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. And that made not one bit of difference to her. It made not one bit of difference to my father and made not one bit of difference to me. My mama and my daddy agreed they were going to take it one day at a time. Do the best they could and trust it would all work out.
“When my daddy passed suddenly, I came back home because somebody had to run the farm. That fell to me. I couldn’t let it fall apart. I didn’t necessarily want to come back, but I knew I needed to. But it was more than that. I knew, we all knew, at some point John’s care would fall to me. And that’s when Mama and I came up with the idea to do the co-op side of All Hands Farm.
“Since that time, we’ve built up the facility to teach skills to kids like John, like Oli, so they would have a place to go. A place to belong.”
I turn to face her, our knees touching, and grab her hands.
“I know I’m not biting off more than I can chew by dating you. The lifetime care of my brother fell to me when my mama died. I know what that felt like. It put everything else on hold. I knew my life would never be my own, but what choice did I have? I could either grow to resent the situation, or I could find the joy in the hand I’d been dealt. That’s when I decided to continue building the farm. To branch out into other areas like a little bit of breeding and letting Pedro break in some horses.”
“He really does do that anyway?”
I chuckle, because of all the things I’ve just said, she’s still most concerned with Pedro’s safety over her own happiness. “Yes, baby. He does it all the time. Breaking horses is part of his job. This particular mare is proving to be a little more difficult.”
“Oh.” She sniffles and rubs her sleeve-covered hand over her eye, grimacing when some mascara ends up on her shirt. There’s some under her eyes too, but I don’t care. She’s beautiful to me.
“Greer, there is no better person in the world to date than me, because I get it. I get that raising Oli is a lifelong thing. It doesn’t scare me away. If anything, it makes me feel like fate intervened with us. Who else is going to understand his issues more than I do? Who else is going to be able to help you better than I will? I don’t know what the future holds for us. This thing between us is still new. But I would like to see you more. And I don’t want you to hold back because you’re afraid Oli is going to do something to scare me away. He’s not going to make me change my mind. I’ve already been where you are, so I know exactly what I’m getting into.”
A stray tear falls down her cheek, and I wipe it away.
“We could last forever. But if we don’t, it’s going to be because we aren’t meant to be. No other reason. But I’d really like to see if we’re meant to be. If that’s okay with you.”
She nods, and I hold myself back from hooting and hollering like my best friend would be doing right about now.
“I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t treat Oli like he’s different, ya know?” I nod because I do know. We used to get the stares and whispers. “But you treat him like he’s just a person. Like he’s important and special.”
“He is important and special. Just like Julie is. And just like you.”
When she looks up at me with her big brown eyes, I realize how close we’ve gotten since the conversation started. I glance down as she licks her lips, and I realize what perfect timing really is.
Leaning in a few more inches, I capture her sweet lips with mine. Our kiss is slow and deliberate. Nothing rushed or hormone fueled. Just two people getting to know the feel of each other, the taste of each other, the scent of each other. Breathing each other in so deep, there’s no way we’ll be able to untangle from each other again.
We pull apart, foreheads still touching and smile at each other.
“I hate that Pedro was right.” She crinkles her brow in confusion. “He said I needed to stop being gentlemanly and kiss you already.”
She laughs out loud. “Pedro was right.” Her giggles are cut short when I take her lips back in mine.
We kiss for what feels like hours, never doing anything more than that. There’s no need. There’s no rush.
I already know this is the beginning of something amazing.