Chapter Seventeen
Krystina
The days passed and I did all I could to work through my shit, alone. I tended to the horses and rode Storm as much as my body could handle. I loved the horse and found extra pleasure in knowing he was extra special to Gentry.
Tensions with us were still high. We had exchanged only a few mandatory words. I kept my calls with Gloria short and those with my realtor long. It was time to leave Mirror Lake Ranch.
Friday I made the announcement at breakfast to Ed and Gentry.
“I’m going back to New York on Monday. It’s been an entertaining week but it will be easier to house shop from the city.”
“Don’t go just yet. Seeing you as little as I do who knows when or if an old man like me will get the pleasure again?” Ed said and it made me smile.
Gentry was quiet until there was a sudden jerk under the table. Ed had kicked him. “You know you’re welcome to stay.”
I half smiled at him. His jaw same as healed although I never did find out what happened to it. “It’s time Gentry,” my voice was softer than I had planned.
“Time for what?” Ethan and Boots asked in unison as they stumbled in the back door half pushing each other like children.
“New York on Monday,” I told them.
Boots half smiled at me. He hadn’t brought up seeing me in the barn. He had gone out of his way to be nice to me and cold to Gentry I noticed. Another time, another life. . .
“You’re set on it,” Boots asked and I nodded.
“Well good riddance I say!” Ethan joked playfully and I punched in him in arm. “Still gives us two days eh, Trophy Wife?”
“Yes, two days.”
“Storm will miss you,” he said giving me a hug.
“I plan on riding a bit. Maybe go back down to the lake this afternoon.”
“May I join you?” Ethan asked, I nodded and Gentry mutter something inaudible behind me.
“How’s one?”
“Perfect,” he leaned over the table and snatched a waffle and a piece of bacon off of Gentry’s plate.
“I’ll cook some more if you’re hungry,” I offered him.
“I’m set,” he said inhaling the bacon.
“I’m not,” Gentry protested looking down at the empty plate.
“Cook some more your damned self then. You know how,” I told him and went to find my boots.
***
A few hours later Storm and I followed behind Ethan and his old mare Pinocchio down towards the lake.
“You think you will come back and visit us?” Ethan asked and I couldn’t hold in the laugh.
“No. I would have loved to but I won’t come back and you know why.”
“He’s a good man.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“You don’t know! When I met him you don’t know how he was,” Ethan said raising his voice.
“I don’t?” I was growing bitter. “Is this what this ride was? To trap me and bitch about Gentry Hollis?”
“Not originally or intentionally. But you should know.”
“Fine. My flights booked and it doesn’t matter anymore anyhow. So tell me, tell me about Gentry.”
“I got a two years on him. Found him on the circuit down around San Antonio. He wasn’t twenty yet. He rode like hell and was a damn good performer in the ring. The old timers saw it right off. I didn’t, not at first. He was good because he had no fear. He didn’t care, living or dying it was all the same to him.
“He drank like a fish and fucked like a whore. To the outside world Gentry Hollis was the rise of the cowboy, cream of the up, he was the perfect image. But you spend enough nights in cramped bunks with someone you find out a lot they don’t want you to know. He called your name, drunk or sober, every night in his sleep for the better part of three years.
“I never told him. I don’t know if any the girls ever did but there was a reason they never stayed. Loving you, you leaving. It damn near killed him. He spent three days in a coma from a bull he never should have gotten on but I couldn’t stop him. I was there, when he woke up. He just looked at me with a sad smile and said ‘I wasn’t lucky enough for brain damage, I can still remember her.’ He was twenty-five. Ed flew out, kicked his ass from Oklahoma all the way back here. Made him get his shit straight.
“This was all a crock of shit. Neither one of you had to listen to Gloria. You both wanted a chance to destroy each other and you know it.”
I was crying now. I couldn’t help it. It felt that was all I was doing anymore. Being with Gentry proved much harder than emotionally then my entire divorce process. “I left him! That’s how you think it went? I changed course? I broke his heart?
“My whole life he wanted this ranch. I knew where he would end up. But he came here sooner than I thought he would. That was my fault, I tried to come I did. I couldn’t. I spent months applying to every college and university. He knew that. Knew I got into Boston, knew the financial aide and scholarhsips were the best I could get there.
“When the scholarship money ran out I was coming here. Close as I could get I was vigilant at applying here. But you know how expensive law school was? I had $100,000 in loans. It should have been way more if not for the aide. Seven years Gentry and me, back then we couldn’t keep ourselves from drowning. This ranch is well enough, but not for that. I was trying to protect this place! A place I had never seen!
“So I went to Boston. I asked him to come. Two – years, three at tops. He said no. It was him who stopped the calls, him who never wrote back. If he ever got a fucking e-mail account I never knew it. The things I did, I went through, I waited. I hoped. I prayed. It was him who left me. It was him who changed his mind!” I was sobbing as Storm and I rode off.