And I wasn’t ready for the questions they were going to throw my way.
I dug out the spare key from underneath the mat and slowly slipped it into the lock. I opened the front door, and it dumped me into a high-ceiling foyer, and when I turned to place the key back underneath the mat, I locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it into my house without anyone suspecting me, and I smiled when I shut the door behind me and leaned up against it.
“You should’ve used the back door.”
I jumped when I heard my mother’s voice waft from the kitchen, and I cursed underneath my breath before I closed my eyes. I knew I was cutting it close, and it was my fault I got lost in my own stupid memories while I was standing out in the driveway.
“Hey, mom,” I smiled weakly. I slowly padded down the hallway and stuck my head in the kitchen, and I saw my mother sitting there. If there was ever a woman that exuded country sophistication, it was her: back straight, shoulders rolled, hair neatly pinned, and her stud earrings she wore as part of her nightly appearance shone from her ears. Sure, the wrinkles of time and work had etched themselves into her skin, but her voice was light, her legs were always crossed at her ankles, and she always used her manners no matter the situation or person.
“Why don’t you come have some coffee?” she asked.
I watched as her body slowly rose from the chair. She placed her coffee cup down on the table, and I knew when she asked that question I really didn’t have a choice. That was the thing about my mother: she would always phrase commands in the form of a question to make herself appear unthreatening when really, she expected you to obey every word that poured forth from her lips. I never did figure out how to mock the grace and poise she had when I was a child, but my father always told me I wasn’t something to be harnessed.
“No, your father isn’t awake yet,” she said lightly.
I heard her pour the cup of coffee before a spoon began clanking around the ceramic. She padded back towards me, and she placed the cup down in front of me, and even though I sat back into the chair and tossed my wild hair back, she sat with her back straight and curled her delicate fingers around the jovially-colored mug.
“Where were you last night?” my mother asked.
“Went out with some friends after the rodeo,” I said before I brought the mug to my lips.
“When will I convince you I wasn’t born in a barn, Chelsea?”
I sighed into my mug and closed my eyes before the question that spewed forth from her lips graced my tired ear drums.
“Were you with Flynn?”
The mere mention of his name fluttered my heart and lurched my gut, and tears formed behind my closed eyes before I closed them and took a large swig of my coffee.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you have a productive… conversation?” she asked.
“Probably not the one you think I should’ve had,” I quipped.
“So, he still doesn’t know about Paris?”
I opened my eyes once I got my emotions under control, and I saw my mother shaking her head. My parents adored Flynn back in college, and my father always told me he was the one I was meant to be with. My mother thought he was the epitome of a southern gentleman, and my father knew he was the only one who wouldn’t try to tame the wild spirit that was my soul.
“He rides the buck. He don’t tame it,” my father always said.
And he was right. No matter what I did, I did with all the passion in the world and Flynn never once tried to stop that. He’d laugh and sometimes poke fun at my sincerity and passion, but he never tried to stop it or talk me out of it.
“You owe it to him to tell him, Chelsea. You broke that poor boy’s heart.” As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I know my mother was right.
“Yeah, and that’s all that seems to get brought up,” I murmured.
“Well, what else is there to say?” she asked.
“How about the fact that I hurt just as much when I walked away?”
“Then, why did you walk away?”
“Because Paris called and offered me my dream job, Mom!” I exclaimed. Why was she not able to understand that?
“And why did that require not telling Flynn?”
“Because I knew if he asked me to stay that I wouldn’t go!”
I felt my breath hitch in my throat before tears sprang to my eyes. I knew my mother meant well, but I’d never really talked about it with them. I never talked about how leaving Flynn that night really did alter me in some way, and how it altered the fashions I designed while I was working up the ranks in Paris. A little piece of him was in every design, and every fashion that went on a man I imagined on his body.
Images of his chiseled form came wafting back to my mind, and the sounds of last night began to echo off the corners of my memory before my mother’s voice broke through my musings and told me something that absolutely rooted me to the kitchen chair.
“Flynn came to look for you after you left. Showed up on our doorstep looking like a wet dog trying to figure out where you were. We had no idea what he was talking about until we found the note in your room about the job in Paris, but by the time we came back to show him the note Flynn had taken off for his car and skidded out of the driveway, and that sweet boy never did come back.”
“He… he came here?” I breathed as the blood slowly drained from my face.
“The day after graduation, yes,” she nodded.
I was stunned. Flynn had come to my house looking for me. After leaving him cold and alone in his dorm room after all of those graduation parties, he ran to my parents’ house looking for me. I felt a wave of guilt rise up in my throat, and I couldn’t stand to take another sip of my coffee. Tears ricocheted down my cheeks, and in any other moment in my life, I’d be embarrassed to cry in front of my mother. She was the epitome of emotional reserve, and I’d never even so much as heard her yell unless she was shouting across the barn at my father. But at that point, I didn’t care. I’d just left Flynn to wake up naked and cold and alone in a trailer five years after I’d done the exact same thing to him, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
“You owe him an explanation, sweetheart. If anything, to clear your own conscience.”
I didn’t know if I could tell him. How could I look at the only boy I’d ever loved and tell him I didn’t trust myself around him? How could I look at the man he had blossomed into and tell him that he’d tamed the strong, untamable woman? How in the world was I supposed to look at the man I’d now left twice to wake up alone that the reason I left him behind was because I didn’t think he could come with me if I offered. That I didn’t feel he had a place in Paris.
How in the world could I possibly tell Flynn that the reason I left the way I did was because I wasn’t strong enough to do it any other way?
I felt the bile rise to the top of my throat before I pushed my coffee mug away, and when I shoved myself away from the kitchen table and headed for the staircase I knew, deep down, I had to talk to him.
I had to tell him everything.
I knew, deep down, my mother was right.
Chapter 7: Flynn
I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them be for so long. I had no intentions of staying overnight in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from my past. So, I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, give them plenty of sweetened water to drink, and went ahead and opened their stalls so they could get some fresh air in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons today, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place.
My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman lit up my world back in college. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experie
nce with her, and every night I woke up with her in my arms was like the first time I’d ever woken up next to her. The light would always catch her hair just right, and her light snoring would always make me smile. There wasn’t a morning where I’d grind into her back that she’d push me away or tell me she was too tired.
God, I missed slipping in between her wet heat in the mornings.
. Nothing could mimic the feeling of sliding into her from behind every morning before I got up and made us coffee, and every morning it happened, I knew it was where I wanted to be.
Until she up and left and never looked back.
It was disgusting, really, how much I loved that woman. I told with the guys at the rodeos that she was just my lucky charm, but, she was the woman I planned on spending the rest of my life with. The week after we graduated, I had a ride planned. I was gonna take her with me, and if I won, it would give me $5,000.00. I was gonna take that money and buy her the ring she deserved, and I was gonna get down on one knee at the next rodeo, in front of God and everybody else, and ask that woman to be my wife.
I wanted her to bear my children and be my family. I wanted her to sell her fashions out of a store she dreamed. I wanted to build that store for her alongside her father with my bare hands in between my traveling to rodeos, and I wanted to have a farm full of animals to retire to so we could watch our grandkids run around with the ponies and puppies. I wanted to wake up every morning and smell her heat on my skin. I wanted to slip behind her in the shower every evening and slowly press her back against that tile wall. I wanted to make her dinners and take her out and experience family vacations with her. I wanted to yell and scream and fight behind closed doors before pounding her into the wall while grunting how sorry I was and how beautiful she looked wrapped around my cock.
But she took all that with her when she left without a word and never looked back.
Hell, she didn’t even tell her parents where she was going!
I made my way out to the bulls and fed them good before I headed on over to the little heifer barn I had. I didn’t keep too many heifers around, just enough to breed with the bulls who were retired so I could sell the calves they birthed for the rodeos, but I’d always made sure they were reared to a certain age before I ripped them from their mothers. Some breeders sold them the moment they plopped, but I wanted my heifers healthy. There wasn’t any reason to give away any calf that was born before their first birthday, and I kept it that way on my farm.
Just because I made money off my animals didn’t mean I had to be cruel.
Once the bulls were taken care of, and the few small babies I had were tended to, I trotted on over into the heifer barn. Right then, I had eight of them, and three were already reaching an age where they wouldn’t be able to bear calves any longer. I had two that were pregnant, and I made a mental note to call the vet and come check on them. One wasn’t due for a few more months, but one we were keeping an eye on. She had been due two days ago, but she was still upright, and the calf was still growing regularly, so the vet wasn’t fussing.
But I guess I just worry too much about my animals.
I milked the cows in the barn before I fed them their next meal, and I went over to pet both of my pregnant heifers before giving them some words of encouragement. I snaked my phone out of my pocket and dialed the vet up the road, and he agreed to come by and take a look at them. I told them I didn’t think she was in labor, but I did want to keep an eye on her in case something were to go wrong. If she was carrying a bull, I could use the money, and if she was carrying a heifer, I could use one to replace the three aging out in my little population.
Chelsea would’ve done wonderfully in this type of lifestyle.
As long as I’d known her, she’d loved animals, but horses were her favorite. The first time we ever went horseback riding together was on the weekend in between one of her family’s camps, and I just couldn’t get over how beautiful she looked on that majestic animal. Her hair blew back in the wind, and her hips rolled graciously on top of the horse’s galloping form, and it was the first and only time I’d ever fallen off the back of a horse. She turned herself around and galloped back towards me, and I could see the worry in her eyes before a smirk upturned on her face.
“Got them bulls under control, but can’t handle a little horse?” she had quipped.
To this day, it’s my favorite memory of her. She was concerned, but confident. Graceful, yet dominant.
My god, the life we could’ve had.
I finished tending to the cow barn and slowly made my way over to the chickens. It was egg collecting time before I sprinkled down some seed, and I could hear my dog howling at my presence from the kitchen window. Lord knows the mess my beagle probably made while I was gone, and while Chelsea continued to flood my mind, I couldn’t be angry at myself. I had gotten another chance to lay with her. To feel her skin underneath my fingertips and hear her sounds whispered into my ear. God, she felt just as warm and tight as the first time I had laid with her in college, and it was as if I could feel her legs still wrapped around my waist. I mindlessly gathered the eggs from the nests as the memory of her scent wafted up my nose, and my hand shook while I fed the chickens as her groans and grunts filled the caverns of my ears.
She had flooded my soul in college, and she wiggled her way back in, and while I was mad at being weak, I couldn’t be mad at caving. That woman was a mystery I had yet to decipher, and I had to admit that I’d still give quite a bit to spend my life trying to figure out why.
I might not give everything, but I’d still give up a lot more than I should for a woman who left me the way she did.
I still wonder to myself why in the world she left...
I guess I technically could have asked her last night, but damn, I was so fucking shocked to see her at my door. Of all the people that could’ve come knocking on my trailer door after that ride, it had to be her. I should’ve asked her why she was there… whether she came to see me or if it was just a coincidence that I was riding that particular day. I should’ve asked her why the hell she left. I should’ve yelled about how much I loved her, how much I cared for her, that her leaving threw me off a bull I couldn’t stand to get back on. I wanted to blame her for so much and yet, I still wanted to throw her onto that bed and fuck her body senseless into the mattress in that rickety trailer.
So, that’s what I did. I threw away my anger away the moment she began crying on that fold out couch and I decided to show her what she left. I decided to show her exactly how I had memorized her body. I decided to shower her with my affections just like I would have every day in between our last meeting and our current one.
But I didn’t want to shower her because I was angry with her.
I wanted to show her because, deep down, I really was hoping, that this time, she would stay. Whatever made her leave the first time, I was hoping to trump it. To be better than it. To show her that I supported her and cared for her and that I would give up and do anything to make her happy.
But I still woke up alone.
That’s what actually made me angry. That’s what really made my blood boil as I ripped the egg basket and marched for the house.
It wasn’t the fact that she left.
It was the fact that I didn’t want her to leave… and it was the fact that she didn’t care that she did.
Chapter 8: Chelsea
I should’ve headed straight back for that trailer, but as I was traveling along the highway, I saw those same trailers being pulled behind trucks to go be stored for the next rodeo. Obviously, he’d woken up yet again to an empty bed, and it made me sick. Yet again, I’d left the only man whoever made me feel worth something and important alone in bed after bearing his soul to me.
I made me physically ill to think about.
I thought about traveling around town to find him. I thought about going to his parent’s home and asking if they knew where he was. I wondered if they were still alive, rickety in their old age an
d still rocking on their porch, or if they had passed. I wondered if they were buried somewhere I could visit. Somewhere where I could shed tears over not being there for their funeral.
Flynn was close to his family, and I adored every single one of them. He was an only child, but his mother adopted many boys and girls around the neighborhood. Not legally, of course, but they always seemed to be in and out. She’d feed them, give them a place to sleep, and even gave out keys to her own home in case they wanted to come over instead of going home. Flynn and I, we were fortunate to have loving families, but a lot of the kids around here weren’t as lucky. Some had abusive homes, and some had poor homes. Some had homes with too many children, and some had homes with absent parents. Flynn’s mother was never able to have the house full of kids she wanted, so she took in everyone else’s when they didn’t have a place to go.
I decided to drive by their old home, just to see if anyone was there.
The house was up kept really well. The porch looked to have been repainted, and the roof was obviously new. The old rocking chairs were swaying with the wind on the porch, but no one seemed to be home. There were no cars, there were no lights on, no children were frolicking around the property. I mean, Flynn’s mom kept a good house, but their house wasn’t new by any means.
And then my eyes drifted to the “For Sale” sign in the front yard.
I parked my car and got out to pull a slip of paper out from the open box, and when I slipped back into my car, I looked over the information. Four bedrooms, two and a half bath ranch-style home with a basement that sits on nine acres of land. Wrap-around porch, forced heating, central air conditioning, hardwood floors… the works.
“Someone really put a lot of work into this home,” I murmured to myself.
The home and property were trying to be sold for $200,000.00, but I could tell it had been on the market for a while. My eyes watered at the idea of Flynn experiencing the passing of his parents by himself, and it made me sick to my stomach with guilt. I should have been here to help him.
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