Love Tangle: Riding Bareback

by S. E. Margaux

  Dear Sally,

  I know you don’t want to speak to me right now, but I need you to read this. I’m going to explain everything.

  I know I’ve been acting strange lately, and it will sound weird but I thought I was doing what was best for you, but I’ve realized that was wrong. I know I’ve hurt you, in the way I’ve acted. I should never have left without explanation; I should never have left at all. I should have been honest with you. For all of that, I am truly sorry.

  To explain everything to you, I have to go back a few weeks. What I’m going to tell you isn’t pleasant, and it may even make you hate me more. But I’m going to tell you the truth, even if it kills me.

  It was a Friday night, and you were working the next morning. You were having an early night, watching a movie with Jo I think. I said I was going to meet the boys, and that was what I meant to do. I was going to show Raoul the town, introduce him. But he bailed at the last minute, and Carter and Graham never showed. I was sitting by myself, nursing my whiskey, feeling sorry for myself, and I got chatting to Norah. We’ve never really chatted much before. But the bar was quiet, and as the night wore on I was the only one in. I’d buy a whiskey, and then there’d be another ‘on the house.’ She was knocking them back with me, we were playing music on the jukebox, dancing on the bar…

  I didn’t mean for what happened to happen, and you have to believe me, I felt terrible. I don’t know who kissed who first, but one thing led to another. I woke up on the road between the bar and the ranch. And Bella picked me up.

  She could smell the whiske1`y on me. She could smell the guilt on me. I don’t know how. She’s smarter than I gave her credit for. She said she knew what I’d done. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. But she said it again, she looked at me, and she said she knew exactly what I had done, and that she would tell you as soon as we got back home.

  You have to understand, Sally, that in that moment the thought of telling you this was the worst thought imaginable. I could already see the devastation and disappointment in your eyes. I could feel your heartache and your pain. I couldn’t have you look at me like that, I couldn’t be the person who made you feel those things.

  And so then I made a deal with the devil. I told her I would do anything. Anything. Anything, as long as she didn’t tell you what I had done. I thought she’d want money or sex. But she asked me to leave. She told me I had to leave — without making a scene — I had to walk away from the ranch, from you, and never come back.

  You’re probably wondering what has changed. But you see, when I left, my biggest fear in the world was your disappointment in me. The moment I left you, I knew that my biggest regret was not being true to you — not owning up to my mistakes, not begging for you to forgive me. My biggest fear had been losing you — and I lost you anyway, and myself along the way.

  I can take your disappointment, and I can take your hate. I deserve it. I will always regret your pain, I will always hate the sadness I have caused you. But I had to tell you the truth so that I can start to put right the things I made wrong, and so that you can have the closure you need. You deserve to be happy, Sally, and I’m so sorry that I wasn't the person to do that. You filled my life with so much sunshine — I’m sorry I was the storm.

  I will always love you, and I hope you find happiness with someone like I found with you.

  Love

  Connor

  The wind blew gently, rocking the swing in the breeze. Sally sat in shocked silence.

  Connor had cheated.

  Connor had left.

  Bella knew.

  Bella had lied.

  Connor had lied.

  Connor came back.

  Bella knew.

  Connor loved her.

  Find happiness.

  Sally burst into tears. She wasn’t aware how loud or how long she cried for. She just knew that the last few weeks had been the hardest of her life. There had been so much sadness it overwhelmed her, and it burst forth now like waves crashing to shore.

  She was hardly aware that someone sat next to her, or that they wrapped an arm around her. She could barely hear the comforting hushes. It was only when her crying slowed, when her sobs came in shudders rather than a torrent, that she noticed Raoul sitting beside her.

  “Are you ok?” He asked her gently. He saw the letter in her hand.

  “Honestly?”

  “Always honestly.”

  “No. I’m not ok. I don’t know, in this moment, how to be ok. It doesn’t feel ok, none of this feels ok,” she said, gesturing around at the ranch. “My home is in ashes, Connor is dead. My friend is a liar, my boyfriend is a cheat. Was a cheat. I--”

  “Connor cheated?”

  “Yes,” Sally said, bursting into fresh tears.

  “Oh god, Sally, I’m so sorry, I would never have given you that letter if-” he stopped, and she looked up at him.

  “Gave me the letter?”

  “I’m sorry--”

  “You had it? How did you get it?” she asked heatedly.

  “I... Sally, I’m so sorry. When we went to the barn dance, and he was there. I told him to leave, and he asked me to give you this. I didn’t know what to do. You said you didn’t want to speak to him, I didn’t want to ruin your night. So I thought, ‘I’ll give it to her when we get home,’ you know, something like that. You were drunk, I was going to give it to you the next morning, but I threw it on my desk and I forgot about it, until--”

  “Until he died,” Sally said flatly.

  “Yes. And I didn’t know if I should give it to you — I didn’t know if it would give you closure, if you would want to hear what he had to say. But I thought maybe it wasn’t fair, to keep it from you. I’m so sorry, Sally.”

  “So this was it. This was why he came over. This is what he wanted to talk about.” She looked at the letter, at this last piece she had of Connor. Then she turned to Raoul. She was ready to shout, ready to be angry, ready to do… something. But she saw the look on his face, the guilt and the fear, and the sadness. There had been too much sadness already. It was time for the sadness and guilt to end. So she sighed, and gently placed her hand on his knee. “It’s ok. It wasn't a happy letter. But it was necessary, I think.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I think I need to sleep on it.”

  He nodded and squeezed her hand gently. “Ok, that’s fair. You’re sleeping in Bella’s room, right?”

  Sally grimaced. She couldn’t go back to Bella’s room. She couldn’t see her lying, deceitful face. She was worried about what she would do. “I don’t want to wake her. She’s up early. Can I--” she paused, shook her head.

  “You can sleep in my room.”

  “It’s ok, I don’t want to bother you, I’ll take the sofa.”

  “Sally,” Raoul said gently, “you shouldn’t be alone just now.”

  Raoul wrapped a strong, protective arm around her shoulder. Sally let herself sink into the snug of his arm, felt the warmth of him. She felt safe for the first time in a while. “Ok,” she nodded. “Thank you.” She began to stand, but suddenly felt the piercing glass shards in her feet, and promptly fell back down in a shout of pain.

  Raoul jumped up and saw the blood on her feet. “What happened?”

  “I broke a glass. Drats. I didn’t even notice before.”

  Raoul shook his head. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” He scooped her up in his arms like she weighed no more than a feather. Her feet were pounding with pain, but Sally liked his warmth, the feeling of his strong, muscled chest. She felt secure.

  She felt secure when he sat her on the edge of the bath, and pulled the glass from her foot. She felt protected when he cleaned the wounds, patched them with strip tape, wrapped her feet in cotton bandages. She felt assured when he carried her to his room, was calmed by his close, silent presence. Something about Raoul was so beautifully sincere that she trusted him, at a time when she felt everyone she trusted had betrayed her. Exh
austed with sadness, with crying, with lies, she fell asleep curled against his chest, listening to the beating heart of truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  -

  Anita was sipping tea on the porch, letting the warmth of the morning sun bathe her skin in a golden glow. She didn’t turn around when the screen door creaked and slammed, and didn’t look to the side as someone sat down next to her.

  “I want to start with ‘Sorry,’” Tristan said, and she finally looked around. She met his eyes, sparkling azure in the morning sun with an intensity she hadn’t seen before.

  “Ok,” she said.

  “Anita, I mean it,” he said. He grabbed her hand, and she didn’t pull away. “I’ve done some stuff that’s hurt you. And that was never my intention.”

  She sighed. “I just don’t understand what you want.”

  “I want you.”

  “You have a really funny way of showing it.”

  “There’s nothing going on with Nikki and I. We’re just friends. Promise.”

  “And Sally?”

  “Just friends.”

  “And Callie?”

  Tristan breathed in sharply. “How do you know about Callie?”

  “I--” Anita blushed. “I saw the letters. I didn’t mean to.”

  “She’s an ex.”

  “She didn’t sound like an ex.”

  “Those letters are old.”

  “Why do you still keep them?”

  “We’d just broken up when I started traveling. I guess I wanted them with me so I could work out what happened — so I could look back on all the mistakes I made. She was my girlfriend. And we were engaged. She was friends with my brother, Julian, we met at a party and we started writing. It was a long distance from the offset, it was always a strange setup…”

  His beautiful blue eyes darkened. Anita looked at him sadly. “Were you in love with her?”

  He smiled nostalgically. “I thought I was. I think I did love her — but maybe I wasn't in love with her. There were a lot of things happening at that time. My father died, and she was close to my family. At the time, it felt like the right thing. Everyone kept saying we had to pull through together. But I was being pushed into a job, a role, a relationship that I didn’t want. As it turned out, it was a relationship my brother wanted.”

  “Your ex-fiancé and your brother…?”

  Tristan grimaced. “Yeah. They said nothing happened while we were together. It was just ‘feelings’. But that’s worse in a way, isn’t it? Anyway, we broke things off. They’re engaged now. I don’t know that Julian and I will ever be friends, but… Callie is happy. He’s happy. And, against all odds, I’m happy.” He smiled at Anita and squeezed her hand.

  “I — wow, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s ok, I think it all worked out for the best.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So are you going to tell me about you and Raoul?”

  Anita blushed. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “Not as much as I do, promise.”

  “I thought you were with Nikki. Or Sally. Or Callie. Or all of them. And — honestly, there’s nothing happening with Raoul and I. It was a one-time thing. It should have been a no-time thing.”

  Tristan shrugged. “Thanks for being honest.”

  Anita smiled. “You too.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the summer morning birdsong. “I just don’t really know what you want from me--” Anita began to say when suddenly a yell and a crash inside pulled their attention.

  Rushing into the house, Anita and Tristan met Jo in the hallway. “What’s going on?”

  Jo yawned and stretched. “I don’t know, I just woke up.” The past few days had been exhausting, and what Jo wanted most of all was to sink back into sleep and forget about reality — not be woken by fighting in the kitchen.

  “Are they fighting about Nikki again?”

  To Anita’s surprise, it wasn’t Nikki who was cornered in the kitchen when they went in. Bella, scooped up bits of glass in her hand, was standing with her back against the kitchen counter, her usual stoic expression broken, replaced with guarded apprehension.

  “How could you?” Sally was shouting. “How could you? After all I’ve done for this ranch, and you decide to drive away the single person I love the most, for, for what? For jealousy?”

  Meanwhile, Nikki was on a rant of her own.

  “I can’t believe you would do that, Bella. I thought we were in this together!”

  “You couldn’t bear to see us happy together, you felt bitter? Is that it? So you drove him away? Or did you hope to save me from a cheating boyfriend?” Sally was in tears.

  “We would have figured a way out of the financial problems, you know, you didn’t have to burn down a house! Who does that?”

  “‘Poor, innocent, helpless Sally, can’t take care of herself, I’d better manipulate her life for her without telling her anything.’” Sally was screaming in a mock-version of Bella’s voice. “What, you think I can’t take care of myself? You think I can’t deal with relationship issues? No? What is it?”

  “Are you really so heartless that you would do that to your friends’ home? That you would jeopardize their safety? I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. And to then let the blame fall on me. Good for you, you had the perfect excuse, didn’t you? Blame it on Nikki, because she wants to leave, she must be up to something. It can’t possibly be because not everyone sees their future as playing out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, no, let’s use her aim for a better life as proof for arson!”

  “Spit it out. It was you, wasn’t it? You set fire to the guest house. I was too miserable, I wasn’t pulling my weight, so you thought if you got rid of my home I’d have no reason to stay. Never mind that I was in it, I don’t think you’d be that stupid. You were probably hoping to get the insurance money, right?”

  Jo looked back to the entrance hall. Anita was crying. Tristan looked deeply uncomfortable.

  "What is this?" she asked Anita.

  "It's Sally," Anita said. "It's Bella. It was Bella who made Connor leave. And he wanted to explain, the night that... The night that the guest house went up. And..." She gave a sob. Tristan gingerly placed a hand around her shoulders, and Jo noted that she didn't pull away. She turned around, to ask the others, but found Bella, furiously storming out of the kitchen.

  "You know what? I'm done. I'm done. All I've wanted to do all this time is help out. Help the ranch. Help us. I need some time alone, you're all nuts."

  "What, now you think you can just walk out on us?" Anita asked. "You can't just leave, you owe us..."

  But Bella had already slammed the door shut.

  "Seriously, guys," Jo said, shaking her head. Nikki looked at her, incredulously.

  "'Seriously, guys?’ What do you mean? I'm sorry you were too busy sleeping in, but in case you missed it, Bella set the guest house on fire. Your house. Your home. She set fire to it with Sally still inside it, and it was she who made her break up with Connor, just because she wanted him to leave for the money!"

  "She was jealous," Sally interrupted, "she was jealous and she did a terrible thing, and now Connor's dead. He's dead, Jo, and it's Bella's fault. You can't just ignore that."

  "Sally..."

  "No! I'm done being walked all over, alright? My opinion is just as valid as anyone else's! That woman deserves to rot in hell. Nobody should get away with the kind of thing Bella did. And you know what? She won't. I'm calling the police." Sally stalked into the hall and towards the living room.

  "Wait!" Jo said, holding her back. "Wait. You didn't even hear her out. Just wait here for two minutes. I'll go and get her." She let go of Sally's arm, tentatively. Sally scowled but made no further move towards the phone.

  Bella was in the stable, saddling up Artemis. She looked up briefly when she heard Jo come in but then went back to adjusting the stirrups.

  "You should take a helmet," Jo said.

  "I'll
be fine, I know my way around."

  "Look, Bella, I think you should..."

  "You think I should nothing. It's fine. I get it. I get what you all think of me."

  "I don't think that," Jo exclaimed, "I've been awake for twenty minutes, you think I'm going around accusing people of murder this early in the morning?"

  "It's quarter to twelve," Bella said.

  "I'm not joking, Bella. You owe us all an explanation.”

  “I thought you didn’t think badly of me.”

  “I’d like an explanation too, though. I’m not accusing you,” she added quickly, “I’m just confused. So are the others.”

  “They didn’t sound confused,” Bella said, hoisting herself onto the gray mare’s back. “They sounded pretty sure, actually.”

  “Because they’re stressed! And tired, too, some things you can’t just sleep off. Sally lost her home and her boyfriend, of course she’s upset. Nikki was in your exact situation just yesterday! Don’t you think you’d want an explanation if you found out that it had been me all along, and I blamed you for it? You told me,” Jo said, pointing at Bella, “you said, that if you can’t talk to your friends, who can you talk to? So talk to me. Talk to us.”

  Bella bit her lip but then shook her head.

  “No. I’m not going back in there. If they want an explanation, they can come and apologize first. I tried to apologize to Sally, and she just started shouting at me. I deserve a chance to explain myself, but I’m not going to do it if all they’re going to do is shout accusations at me. Don’t look for me.” And without another word, she kicked Artemis into a canter and was gone.

  “Bella! Bella! Darn it.”

  Back at the main house, everyone was standing around, waiting in silence.

  “Well?” Sally snapped, “where is she?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  -

  “Bella’s gone,” Jo sighed, letting the screen door slam behind her. “She said not to follow her.”

  “Well, we have to go after her!” Sally cried. “She can’t just run off. She lied to me, she lied to all of us. She set fire to the guest house.”