Chapter Twenty – Four
Gentry
I took a deep breath and gathered control of myself best that I could. In the last fifteen minutes I had been through so many emotions I was left feeling drained. And now I literally had been.
I tucked my tender dick back into my pants and looked down at my sweet Krys. Lord I loved this woman. I reached my hand out and pulled her back to her feet. Taking her hair out of her restraints, I ran my fingers through its darkness and let it lie over her shoulders.
She smiled meekly at me and I kissed her gently, tasting myself on her lips. I wrapped my arms around her tightly and kissed her forehead. “I don’t like doing this. Like this with you. It just feels … dirty,” I confessed.
“Maybe. But, it was fun and you feel better and you know it.”
“I still wish I would have hit him.”
“I know. I couldn’t have imagined what you thought when you saw Jimmy.”
“The same urge to destroy him as I’ve felt since the day I heard about you two. Fear that he came back for you and you decided to leave with him.”
“That is never going to happen,” her eyes were stern as she placed her hands on the back of my head forcing me to look her in the eyes. “Nothing in this world could ever make me choose him over you.”
I sat back on the hay bales and picked her up, depositing her onto my lap. “Doesn’t change the fear,” I mumbled, hating admitting it to her, hell hated admitting it to myself. She lie her head on my shoulder and burrowed into me.
“It’s not true. It will never be true,” she paused, “how much did you hear of all that?”
“Enough. I don’t want your money, his money, whosever money it is,” I rubbed my hands up and down her back and mentally ran through the conversation I had heard between Krys and Jimmy before laughing.
“What?” She asked sitting straight up. “What’s so funny?”
“Might be salty ground to discuss, but why did Jimmy carry on about you like you were the Virgin Mary when he got you?”
She tossed her hands up dramatically knowing damn good and well I was never going to let up until she told me. I could be a pesky annoyance too. She and Gloria didn’t invent that themselves. “Because, I was. To him at least. I was a virgin till my wedding night. Lots of booze, dark sheets imminently sent to laundry. It was easy to fake.”
“But why fake it at all? Was it a contractual to marry him?” I chuckled again thinking of her virtue in a pre-nup.
She shook her head with a pained look in her eyes and suddenly what little pleasure and comedic relief I had been experiencing in that moment vanished. “No, I was just. I was still waiting for you. To change your mind.”
I hung my head. If she only knew. If I had only known, our lives would have been a lot different.
***
“What the hell’s up your ass?” Ed asked as I stormed around the kitchen half – dragging my latest injury, a cracked femur along.
“Tired of being kept up in this house.”
“Bull shit. Been this way since your sister called last night. What the hell you fighting about now? Just go out for the holidays and she’ll quit nagging.”
“It’s not Gloria. I mean I agreed to go but it’s not Gloria.”
“She gave you one of those updates again didn’t she? About that old girl of yours.”
I huffed as I rummaged in the fridge. Wasn’t a damn thing worth eating or drinking in this place. “It’s been four years now. It’s time you move on, Son.”
“I have. She has too. She’s engaged Marrying some doctor or doctor-to-be. In Boston or New York, wherever in the hell she’s at now.”
“When’s the wedding?”
“Gloria didn’t say. New engagement, not date yet.”
“You have a little time then. Can’t do anything for a few weeks around here all racked up anyhow. You know how to order plane tickets,” Ed nodded at his bedroom door. “Still there in the desk and it’s still yours.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t want this back then. She sure as hell won’t want it now.”
***
I had been so terribly wrong. She waited and held on for me as long as she could until I all but forced to move on. Krys had held out a hell of a lot longer than other woman were even consider and a lot longer than any woman should have to.
I hated the thought of her in her dorm room, crying, waiting for the phone to ring, a letter to come in the mail, a knock on her door. Anything telling her that I was coming for her, that everything would be alright because I loved her. I did love her back then. I was just to stupid, to proud and to damn stubborn to make things right.
I couldn’t think of that though. The decade we lost when I stopped writing back to her and then stopped opening her letters altogether. Telling myself I couldn’t leave the ranch for even another day let alone the time she needed to be in Boston. But I still fled from the ranch and spent most of the next five years on the rodeo circuit.
If I let myself, I could imagine how perfect the last ten years could have been for us. I could see the children that would be running through the barn aisle past us right now as I held my wife in my arms. I was a nice picture, but thinking of it would eat me alive. It would destroy what we had together now.
We were still sitting, curled up in silence, holding on to each other for what we really were at this point, life support, when a knock came on the barn door.
“Safe to enter?” Brandon called out.
“Smartass,” I muttered.
“He’s not wrong,” Krys told me and yelled at Brandon to come in.
He opened the door cautiously still and stuck his head in. “Jake called. Said you didn’t answer your cell. He needs to know if your still on to ride this weekend. Said you’re down for cutting, roping, bull doggin’ and broncs.”
“I’ll him back,” I told Brandon and dismissed him with a small wave. I had forgotten all about the rodeo. Brandon shut the door and two green eyes looked up at me excitedly.
“The Angel Tree Program that ensures all children have a Christmas and the like, puts on an annual 50/50 rodeo. Fifty percent of tickets and entry fee profits pay for the Angel Tree and fifty percent pays the rodeo contestants. It’s the largest local charity event.
“And you compete in all those events?”
“For nine years now. Ed is an announcer, Robbie’s a bull fighter. The boys all ride, it’s a Mirror Lake affair.”
“But you don’t bull ride?” she asked almost challenging me to say yes. Rodeo events of any kind could be dangerous but it was basic knowledge that most bulls would prefer you if you didn’t get up again. I had faced down many a mean and frankly terrifying bulls back when I was praying for brain trauma and didn’t give a damn if I ever got out of the sand again.
But there was nothing more terrifying than pissing off Krystina DeLouch. She would do more damage than any bull ever dreamed if I told her I was getting back into riding them.
“I don’t ride bulls anymore. Ed and I have an agreement. I stick to roping and horse events and he doesn’t kill me himself.”
“Sounds reasonable,” she smiled and adjusted her hat.
“Ready to look deeper into my world?”
“Our world,” she kissed me.
“I am going to need a favor from you.”
“And what might that be?”
“Your horse. Or well my horse back for the weekend. Thunder Storm is my rodeo prize winner. I can’t be in an arena without him, so I need you to convince him to let me compete. I haven’t ridden him since you got here and I’m not so sure he will welcome the change again the way he’s fallen in love with you.”
“How long till the rodeo?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“I can spare him for that long,” she stood up and tossed me a head rope from a hook hanging on the barn wall. “You better ride. I’ll help Brandon on the frozen water pumps.”
“You’re not exactly mechanically inclined Krys!” I shouted out as she headed out the door.
“Always a time to learn!”