Of course, it’s him, Allyson. He’s literally standing on the front porch with the juice Debra raved about. But I can’t help it that my brain cells are misfiring when he’s at my house, looking good enough to eat in worn boots, dirty jeans slung low on his hips, and a black T-shirt with the sleeves and most of the sides cut off like redneck air conditioning. I can see the sides of his torso, ridges and bumps that are new and tempt me to explore with my hands and my tongue.
Dear God, are you trying to torture me? Haven’t I earned some good favor by now?
Apparently not, because Bruce looks at me questioningly. “Where do you want it?”
It takes me a full three seconds to realize he’s talking about the watermelon water and not the other liquids my body is craving. His sweat on my skin, his hot mouth on mine, his thick cum filling me.
No. Get ahold of yourself, girl. No.
I remind myself to think about Cooper, my son, and how much football means to him. Fucking his coach would ruin all that. Not to mention, Bruce and me together is a supremely bad idea of epic proportions. Even though we still have chemistry between us—that kiss at Hank’s sure as shit proved that true—there’s been too much time and way too much has changed.
“Right in here.” I finally answer his question with something resembling a brain. I hold the door open and he steps into the living room. It’s always seemed like a perfectly respectably sized house, especially for just Cooper and me, but with Bruce in here, it feels absurdly tiny. Vaguely, I wonder if he stretched out his arms if he could touch wall to wall.
Deep inside, there’s a seed of niggling worry, but I’m easily able to hush it. Bruce would never hurt me, at least not physically. With the barest tease through my psyche, I realize that despite his overwhelming size, I actually feel safe with Bruce. I take that seriously, listening to my instincts.
I give him my back, a respectful sign he likely doesn’t even recognize the importance of, and lead him to the kitchen. “Here, let’s put them in here so they stay cold.”
I can see the condensation coming off the bottles, and Bruce tugs at the bandana knotted to his belt loop to wipe them down before setting them on the table. “One for them, one for me,” he explains, dropping the damp bandana to his side before pulling one out of his back pocket like a magician. He lifts his cap and swipes the fabric across his forehead before setting his hat back down and shoving the bandana in his pocket again.
I open the fridge, setting one jug inside, and then realize the proper thing to do here. “Would you like a glass? I haven’t had it before, but I hear great things about it.” I’m already pulling two glasses from the cabinet.
“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” His voice is flat, cautious like I might spook at the slightest provocation, which is understandable, I guess, after I ran out on him.
We drink, and I’m surprised at how good it tastes, even after Debra’s rousing endorsement. Bright, light, and refreshing. “Wow! So you make this?”
He snorts, almost choking. “No, I grow the watermelons or whatever Shayanne tells me to. She’s the genius in the kitchen. Has her own business now, a couple of them, actually. She makes goat milk soap with the supply from her herd and then has about a dozen recipes she makes seasonally. She sells all over town, to the resort, to folks in Great Falls, and she’s even shipping the non-perishable things out on special request. I’m just the delivery guy when she gets too busy to do it herself, which is damn near all the time.”
I scan my memories, finding an image of Shayanne. She must be around eleven or so, dirt-smudged on her freckled face as she hangs upside down in a tree by her knees, teasing Bruce and me. We were out on a walk on his family farm and she’d tagged along, not understanding our teenaged desire to be alone. “Guess Shayanne’s all grown up now, huh . . . guess we’re all grown up too.”
His mouth opens like he’s got something to say about that, and I’m already flinching as if it’s going to be a biting response, but Cooper comes sliding into the kitchen, saving me. “Coach B! I thought I heard voices! What are you doing here?” He’s excited and every word is a bit too loud.
Bruce smiles an actual teeth-flashing grin at my son, who doesn’t realize in the least what a gift that is. “Hey, Cooper! Just making farm deliveries, brought you some watermelon water.”
Cooper runs for the cabinet, grabbing a glass, and I hold myself back from helping as I watch him carefully pour himself some. He takes a big slug of it, not a care given to whether he might like the never-had-it-before flavor or not. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s pretty good! Where does this fall on the whoa-slow-go scale?”
I have zero idea what he’s talking about, but Bruce goes into coach mode before my very eyes. It’s a sight to behold as his stiff harshness with me melts into kindness. “Definitely a slow. The fruit’s good, but Shay adds a big dose of sugar syrup to it. And don’t drink your mom’s. Grown-ups sometimes like to add extra to theirs, and that’s a definite no for you.” He winks at Cooper, who’s eating this up as he bounces around like he just drank a Red Bull instead of one sip of sweet juice.
“Got it.” Cooper nods, taking mental notes on every word Bruce says. “Hey, you wanna stay for lunch? Mom’s making sandwiches, and you can have my strawberries if you want.” Cooper loves strawberries, so for him to offer them up is suspicious as hell. I eye my son, who looks innocent as a newborn angel. But I’m well aware of his scheming and genius-level gymnastics to get his way.
“Cooper, Bruce probably has other deliveries to make,” I say, trying to give Bruce an out. Or if I’m honest, myself an out. I don’t know if I can sit here with him in my kitchen like everything’s fine when it’s most definitely not fine at all.
I want to hate him. I want to love him. I want to kill him. I want to fuck him.
It’s too much. I shut down with the overwhelming litany rushing though my brain on a loop.
Bruce’s barest hint of a smirk dares me, though, a silent ‘challenge accepted’ passing between us. “Actually, a sandwich would be great. Mama Louise packed me a lunch, but I’m a growing boy, so an extra sandwich would be just right.” He rubs his hand over his flat stomach, making the cotton hug his rippling abs.
Is he doing that on purpose? Is he flirting or trying to drive me mad? My mouth feels like I just swallowed cotton, but it’s definitely the only thing dry around here.
My legs squirm, and I chug a solid drink of watermelon water, hoping it’ll cool me off a bit. But the smug satisfaction I see in Bruce’s expression tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.
Asshole.
“Fine. Let me get everything together while you boys wash your hands.”
Cooper drags Bruce down the hall to the bathroom, and I wash my own hands in the sparkling clean kitchen sink before pulling out bread, chicken, cheese, mayo, and lettuce.
I can hear their voices down the hallway but can’t make out what they’re saying. Even the rumble of Bruce’s voice partnered with Cooper’s high-pitched, excited one makes me yearn for something I can’t define. It feels homey? Or like home, I realize with a shudder.
Nope, not doing that. Not even going to allow myself to pretend or play the ‘what if’ game because there’s no going back. There’s no ‘what if we hadn’t broken up?’ or ‘what if this was our life?’ or most painfully, ‘what if Cooper was Bruce’s son?’
Bruce and I screwed that up way too long ago for anything like this happy little family life to have been a possibility.
When they return, I’ve got sandwiches arranged on plates around the table and every wall I can construct up and fortified.
Cooper, in his glorious obliviousness, asks, “Coach B, you said you and Mom are old friends?”
My eyes meet Bruce’s across the table, and I’m damn near scorched by the heat I see there.
It’s not orange flames of fresh fire but rather black coal embers that have been burning below the surface for so long. A single poke is all it’d t
ake to bring them back to a flashpoint, though.
I answer, wanting to set my own narrative for Cooper. “Yes, honey. Bruce and I went to high school together. We were good friends back then.”
Bruce’s teeth grit for a second as he swallows whatever it is he wants to say, and then he takes a big bite of sandwich. With his mouth still full, he tells Cooper, “Yeah, we were best friends, used to hang out all the time. Your mom ever tell you about the time she went muddin’ in Mr. Sampson’s back field and almost got arrested?”
He grins around the food, taking evil delight in throwing me under the bus.
“Mom, you did not!” Cooper yells, indignant that I might have been a bit of a rebellious hellion in my younger days. Little does he know, I was mostly a good girl until I met the man across the table. With him, I was bad—sneaking out, going to parties, having beer, and later, having sex. All the things a wayward teen isn’t supposed to experience, but I’m thankful for those experiences because otherwise, my high school days would’ve been stuck in the boring rut of schoolwork and cheer practice, the same routine on repeat that life was before Bruce.
I glare at Bruce, wishing he hadn’t chosen that particular story to tell my kid. “Bruce might be exaggerating a little bit, but I did go mudding. And there might’ve been a very friendly conversation with one of Great Falls’ finest officers. But there was no ‘almost arrest’. He just told us to leave.”
Cooper looks skeptical as his eyes jump from Bruce to me, trying to decide which version of events to believe. “Just one question. What’s mudding?”
Bruce drops his sandwich to his plate. “What the hell are you teaching this kid, Al?” His voice booms, and I jump but laugh at my overreaction, feeling silly. I see Bruce catalogue the response before explaining to Cooper, “First off, it’s muddin’, not mudd-ing. Second, muddin’ is when you take a big truck with special tires and drive through mud. It’s messy, slippery, crazy fun.” He makes a few growling sounds that mimic an engine working its way through the mud, and the shock of his joking around with Cooper surprises me.
Cooper’s eyes are as big as saucers. “I wanna do that! Mom, can we do that?”
“Probably not, honey. We don’t know anyone with a mudding truck, and it’s not exactly the safest thing to do.” I’m trying to let him down easy, but his face falls anyway.
Bruce clears his throat, and I glance over to see him silently asking permission to take Cooper. I look over my shoulder toward the front windows but can’t see his truck in the driveway. I wonder if it’s still the big green monster of a diesel truck he drove in high school. Good Lord, the things we did in that truck.
I correct myself. “Well, I take that back, I guess. Looks like Bruce might be willing to take you out. As long as you don’t go in Mr. Sampson’s field.”
“I’ll take you both,” Bruce declares.
I look at him, and something electric passes between us, sending an unwelcome jolt through my body.
“Oh yeah, going muddin’, that’s right!” Cooper’s oblivious to anything between Bruce and me, instead doing some crazy version of a celebration dance with his knees knocking together as he twirls an invisible rally towel over his head. I notice that he’s changed his pronunciation to match Bruce’s twangier version too.
Cooper’s wild joyfulness is the break for Bruce and me, anger dissipating and heat cooling. It’s not a truce, more like a momentary lull in a war that we agree to with a searching look in each other’s wary eyes.
Bruce high-fives Cooper and throws a smile my way that makes my belly flutter. It’s so similar to what he used to look like, happy and fun, but in a masculine, grown-up way that his younger self promised to be. My breath catches in my throat at the cruelness of the world. This is who he was meant to be, but somehow, it all went wrong.
For both of us.
I want to disappear to when things were simpler, easier, and surer. “Are you so surprised that I might’ve actually been cool once upon a time, Cooper?” I pinch at his cheek, grinning when he pulls away and scrubs at his cheek as if he can wipe away the affection. “I’ll have you know that your mother” —I tick off on my fingers— “went mudding, was the top of the pyramid, which means I had to jump down like nine feet, went swimming in the no-swimming-allowed river, won a teddy bear as big as I am at the fair by throwing softballs at a milk can, and did all sorts of crazy things.”
I want to add more to the list, but I can’t exactly tell my son about skipping school to go to the movies, or the pasture parties with big bonfires, or any other things I did that might just give him ideas for his own teen years. I’m willing to spill a little in the interest of being cool to my kid, but I don’t want to give him ammunition to throw in my face later.
Bruce has no such reservations.
“Listen to your mom, Cooper. She was the coolest person I knew in high school. Did she tell you about the time she made an actual one hundred on a huge science test on the same day she led the pep rally for the whole school?” Cooper listens raptly, eyes glued to Bruce. Honestly, I’m listening just as closely, not remembering the day he’s talking about but somehow not surprised that he does. “And then after we won the game, she led what had to be almost the entire school in a rousing rendition of the school song. Everyone was singing along.” He sways a bit in his chair, humming under his breath, and I remember.
What he’s leaving out is that all that happened at one of those back-pasture bonfires and that we were all a little tipsy, some on beer we shouldn’t have had, but mostly on the excitement of the win and the buzz of possibilities. He’s leaving out that he picked me up by my waist and helped me stand on the roof of someone’s truck, keeping his big, rough hands circled around my bare thighs so I wouldn’t fall as I conducted everyone’s off-key singing like a choir director. He’s leaving out that after we all sang our fool hearts out, he’d helped me back down and my whole body had run the length of his as my feet met the grass. He’s leaving out that we’d made out in the bed of his truck that night, going further than we ever had before.
I don’t recall the test or the pep rally, but I remember the feeling of his hands on my breasts through my sweater that night and the way he’d moaned the school song against my neck while the bonfire burned out. I remember that part like it was yesterday.
One look at Bruce, though, puts a damper on those memories. He’s smiling lightly, like none of that has even occurred to him. It’s just a silly story to tell to a kid about some high school fun.
I take a breath, forcing my mind into the past with an open heart. I can do this too.
“What Bruce is forgetting to tell you is that he won the game for us that night,” I say brightly, smirking at Bruce, who shakes his head at me in warning. Oh, two can play this game. “He might not’ve scored any touchdowns, but he literally stopped the other team from gaining a single yard all night.”
Cooper’s excitement bubbles up. “Tell me everything,” he says dreamily, hands tucked below his chin and elbows resting on the table.
We do.
Somehow, Bruce and I manage to talk for over an hour, telling Cooper stories or at least the child-safe versions of them.
Homecoming dance. School carnival. Parties. Movie dates. Stargazing. Sandwich picnics. Walking the fields at Tannen farm. Dancing in the church parking lot after fast-food dinners in town because we were broke. Football games.
As soon as I let one memory out, they all rush back at once, overwhelming me. But it’s in a good way. The happier times remind me of who I was, maybe of who I can be again. Not fully, but maybe just a little drop of that innocent girl could grow again inside me? Like a seed or sapling? Or hell, more like a weed that refuses to let the ugly concrete keep it down and searches out any crack to grow through until it finds its own sunlight. That’s me . . . Dandelion Allyson.
Bruce seems to be feeling it too. His gruff grunts and monosyllabic answers toward me have turned into drawn-out stories, amped up for dramatic effect, much to Cooper
’s delight.
Best of all, we don’t feel like enemies. Not like friends exactly, either, but the progress feels important.
Too soon, he says he has to go.
“Oh, man, just one more story?” Cooper begs, and Bruce looks at his watch.
“Sorry, kid. Gotta get the rest of my deliveries out and get home for dinner.” But he says no with kindness and a smile Cooper soaks up happily.
I intervene, hoping for a redirection of Cooper’s attention. “Are you telling me that your bedroom and bathroom are clean? Are they worthy of a visit from the queen?” I eye him speculatively.
Cooper’s grin is so wide it shows off the gap on the back side where a baby tooth has come out but the permanent one hasn’t made it all the way down yet. “Why, yes, Milady. ’Tis spotless, I proclaim.”
“Even the ring of soap residue under your bubble bath?” He always misses that, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally.
“Mom! Don’t tell Coach B I use bubble bath!” he whines in a hushed whisper.
Bruce chuckles. “Ain’t nothing wrong with bubble bath, buddy. Hell, I’ve been known to take a bubble bath myself on occasion. It’s relaxing and fun to blow the bubbles around.”
I know for damn sure that this man has not taken a bubble bath since he was a kid. For one, the only tub he can use is a swimming pool. And two, it doesn’t seem like it’d be his thing. I imagine he’s a shower in five minutes kinda guy.
But he scoops up some imaginary bubbles and blows them toward Cooper, easing the embarrassment I didn’t mean to cause.
“Clean, mister,” I order, and Cooper scoots out after pounding Bruce’s fist once. “Thanks. Didn’t realize bubble bath was a cardinal slight to his manhood.”
Bruce’s lip tilts upward, but it’s nothing like the smile he flashed Cooper. Without that buffer, we’re falling back into uncertain territory.
“Thanks for lunch, Al. I had fun, hadn’t thought about those days in a long time.” His voice washes over me, perking up goosebumps over every inch of my skin. I know he can see them, considering the little amount of clothing I’m wearing, but he doesn’t mention it.
Rough Love Page 10
