Chapter Five
Krystina
Thunder Storm carried me cautiously behind Doc. A sensible beauty of a horse while he lacked some of the striking gall that Doc’s testosterone fed him, he was left more trusting. Gentry said he answered to Thunder to Storm, Personally, I preferred Storm, for no particular reason.
The break at the ridge proved everything Gloria and Gentry had told me growing up. That there was simply no words to completely capture the feeling you had upon seeing the lake come in view.
I had questioned Gentry about the small cabin like shack in the distance along the waters edge. He had just told me to follow. It had been hard to swallow down feelings of seeing Gentry in his element. In his dream. If there was a cookie cutter look of a cowboy Gentry was it. But with a whole lot of extra icing and sprinkles on top.
More than once I got a small hot flash – that was nothing to do with him – as he talked about his family land. It was nice. He said more to me in five minutes than he had in the eighteen hours we had been in the same space.
We rode through the melting snow and clopped to the cabin. Gentry dismounted and I followed. He tied the horses to an old hitching post and I itched to stretch my back but I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing that. Giving him more ammunition to prove me unfit.
The cabin was small. About the size of my bedroom in New York. He opened the door to show off the one room space. Yesterday I would have been cautious and concerned about what my high heels were stepping in. Before the divorce, I would have been obligated to turn up my nose.
But today that wasn’t the case. Today I saw the beautiful rustic sanctuary away from the ranch. A sanctuary inside a sanctuary.
“I don’t think anyone’s been out here in a month or more. Lately it’s just been a fishing cabin,” Gentry said as he struck a match to an old kerosene lantern and opened up the boarded shutters on one of the windows. An old black woodstove served double duty in one corner as heat and cook stove. Cast iron and tin dishware stored neatly on the walls. A small bed heavy with an old quilt and old furs were on another side. A small wooden table with two chairs and a few other supplies sat around the room.
No bathroom I assumed, disappointedly. That would be the extra small wooden building behind the woodpile. Outhouse.
“Before,” I asked. “What was it before lately?”
I turned to face Gentry. A small crease under his two-day bearded smile threatened to turn into a full mischievous grin. “Well, the original Mrs. Sutton didn’t want to build here. She didn’t want to pervert the beauty of the Lake. Four kids in the house before all the additions made it crowded so her husband built this place as an escape for them. Had two more babies after that.”
I smiled. “So, this is your great, great, great, grandfolks love shack?”
“And every couple after,” Gentry’s grin finally broke loose. “Don’t worry, the blankets have been changed.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh at it. Half the Sutton kids were probably conceived here, except for Gloria and myself.”
“I laugh because it’s you and me here.”
Gentry stepped forward, closing the space between us, his already deep voice lowering an octave. “What so funny about that?” He sprawled his left hand over my right hip, gripping tightly and pulling me to him. My heart stopped beating for a moment before going full force.
I cautiously looked up at him as he looked down at me, being Gentry stood a full head taller than I. He lowered even further, by passing my mouth to let his lips graze my ear.
“Don’t worry Krys, it’s a honeymoon cabin not a fuck shack.”
He released me instantly stepping back. “Just giving you shit Krys,” he went to the stove. “Figured your back and rear was starting to tense and you could use a break and a stretch. I can build a fire if your cold.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll just walk out some of the tenseness and we can head back. I’m sure you have things to do”
I went outside leaving him in the ‘love shack’ and strolled a short length of the lake, stretching my lower back as I walked suddenly it wasn’t so beautiful anymore.
The ride back was silent. The almost – whatever in the hell happened back there was the wettest blanket on what had been a very happy and carefree mood.
I searched my mind for words, for something – anything to say. But there was nothing. Instead I accidently fell into memories.
***
“Come on DeLuch!”
“No! Leave me the hell alone Hollis!” I screamed at him, grabbing my bike and heading down from the city pool.
“It was a joke Krys,” he jumped in front of me.
“You have a disgusting sense of humor! I don’t know why you have to be such a, a, a jerk! Just because you’re a whole year older? Just because you’re the popular freshman and varsity football player?”
“It rhymed and you laughed.”
“Yeah. Two days ago when it was just me, you and Gloria. Not the whole damn football team.” I pulled my cover-up even tighter around my body. Gentry was shirtless, dripping water in grey swimming trunks.
“Krystina DeLuchie Choochie coo is funny,” Gentry smiled at me and I punched him dropping my bike in the process.
“Not the way the whole football team says it. It was… dirty the way they said it. Really, dirty.”
“They’re just assholes.”
“Assholes I have to go to school with this fall. All of them!” I shouted back fighting the tears.
“Not all of them. Some of them are going to college. They just think you’re pretty and don’t know how to approach you.”
“They’re just excited I got my mom’s tits,” I had just developed boobs and plenty of them in the last few months. Skipping more than one bra size completely.
“Hell, everyone’s excited about that,” Gentry had tried to pull my hands away from my chest to get a private glimpse of the twins in my bathing top.
I pushed his hands away and while I was distracted by that, he grabbed me around the waist, hauled me to him and kissed me. One second he was playful and the next he was serious and demanding as he moved his lips over mine for a brief moment with skill I didn’t possess.
That was my first lesson that Gentry Hollis was demanding at only fifteen even, and took what he wanted more than most men I’d ever meet. He would make you want it too. Make you want to give more than he asked.
The kiss ended quick as it started. Gentry had given me a half smile and strode back inside the gated pool, leaving me to wonder if it had really happened.
***
“My tit’s are better than my moms anyhow,” I muttered back in present day.
“What’s that?” Gentry asked from ahead of me. It was the first thing he had said since the cabin.
“Not a damn thing,” I answered.
Riding into the ranch yard I saw two men I hadn’t met before loading a truck of fencing supplies. Based on Gentry’s current mood I probably wouldn’t be meeting them now either.
I followed Gentry to the barn where he dismounted and began un-saddling Doc and pulled off his bridal. I did the same for Storm.
“We should try to be friends Gentry,” I finally said when I could take no more silence. “I’m going to be here for awhile at least. Make the most of it. It wasn’t so long ago we were friends…”
He dumped his saddle on a stand in the tack room. “Maybe you should just stay the hell out of my way and you’re visit short.”
In true Gentry fashion he stormed off leaving me in tears.