Cider House Fools, page 5
And then I’d take that first deep breath, the one that judders through you as you stretch and become fully aware of your surroundings. My lungs would fill with dry heat as my skin registered the tracks of sweat beading and rolling over my skin. My teeth would inevitably crunch sand, as I pulled sweat sodden fabric away from my body and rolled off the taut canvas cot that felt nothing like the metal springs in my thirty-year-old mattress back at the farm.
I reach down and grasp my rock-hard cock, my hips flexing as I squeeze.
I didn’t dream of Michigan winters or the searing heat of the desert last night.
I dreamed of her. Of her amber eyes and the golden ring round her pupils. Like clockwork, her skin would darken under the summer sun, and her eyes would change. As the days grew long the sunlight penetrated the rich bourbon of her irises and transformed them into the warm hue of the precious metal I longed to slip around her finger.
These are my favorite memories of her. When it was just the two us, out riding, running our horses until we were as winded as our beasts, the anticipation of what was to come more thrilling than either the sun or the wind or the race.
My strokes increase, the pressure building as my balls tighten. I close my eyes, desperate to feel her thighs clamped over mine, to smell her sweet heat mingled with fresh hay and wildflowers. To take her breast in my mouth as she leans over me, blotting out the sun, until my world is reduced to how she tastes against my tongue.
But it isn’t her slickness gliding between my hand and my shaft. The air above me is empty, my lap dry. There is no slender hip to grip, no tiny, throbbing nub to rub, nothing to suck off my fingers. I squeeze harder, with both my eyes and my grip, desperate to hang on, willing my brain and my libido to stay in the moment. There are no sweet moans and desperate gasps for breath singing in my ears. No sharp pants or grunts, no slapping skin, no strands of fine, silky soft hair tickling my thighs, or draped across my chest. There is no warm breath in my ear, whispering I love you. All I can hear is her screaming at me not to go, not to leave her.
“Fuck!” I let go of my dick. Just like I let go of her. I wait for the all-consuming anger to billow up and burn. Flinging off my blankets, I get up and pad across my heated floors to the shower. The one indulgence I allowed myself when I came home and rediscovered that a Michigan winter isn’t a wonderland of sensation. It’s just brutally cold. The polar opposite of the dry, baking heat of the desert.
I crank on the shower and head back to my nightstand to grab my phone. Quarter to five in the morning. I tap open my email. Nothing. Just before I throw it back on the dresser, I tap open my business email and chuckle. Fuckin’ Whittaker. There’s a chore schedule for Gran’s farm, along with a list of potentially more complicated tasks that will need to be completed pending her will. I scoff and throw my phone down. Bennett will be a rich lady if Gran sells the farm. Whittaker wants that acreage so bad he can taste the lack of selenium in the soil.
Too fuckin’ bad Whitty, I’ll buy it just to watch your face fall. I pad back over warm bamboo and sigh as my feet hit bathroom tile the exact same temperature. I can’t control the elements, but I can control the environment inside of home. I realized quickly after coming home that the key to controlling my memories and emotions is controlling my surroundings. There are no photos up, no childhood mementos, no books or games on walls and shelves. No one has stepped foot in my place besides the inspector and the delivery kid from VanDrie’s Furniture.
Showering and dressing barely takes me twenty minutes. I grab my keys, glancing down to make sure I’m pressing the right button to start my truck. By the time I pour the coffee that brewed via timer while I was in the shower, my truck will be warm and toasty. I’ll spend the next fourteen to sixteen hours working before I get up and do it all over again.
Bennett Vanderberg. I detest her more than frigid cold and baking heat. I loathe everything about her physically. How she smelled, how she looked, how she tasted. The slow way her smile spread. The way she always ran her heel up her leg before settling the offending extremity across her other in one of our laps. How she cried over books and movies and talked about seeing the world with all three of us as if it were the most inevitable thing in the world. Most of all, I despise how insidious she is, worming her way into both my daydreams and my nightmares, the same way she burrowed inside of me all of those years ago.
I hate how her heart was big enough to love all three of us when mine wasn’t big enough to even love myself. Most of all I loathe the way she wrapped her arms around her middle and literally caved in upon herself when I told her I joined up. How she didn’t care who saw when she sobbed and screamed and begged me not to leave, or whose jaw dropped when she shouted to the world that she loved all three of us and she would never choose between us.
That’s how she told me I wasn’t enough. She never had to say the words. She just had to not chose me.
The lights are off, the house as dark as the night when I pull in. I shut the truck off and sigh. There will be no hot coffee or breakfast. No one yelling, “close the door, were you born in a barnyard Smith Ryerson?!” She won’t be there to pat my cheek and murmur, “thank you sweet boy” the way she did when no one else was around. Gran was the only person who saw me. I thought Bennett did too, but she didn’t, not really, not the way Gran did. Gran saw straight through all the bullshit. She never invalidated or minimized my experiences. She had a unique ability to lovingly weed through my crap with one glance. Her pale, icy blue eyes warm and tender as they demanded I be the best man I could be.
I thought I’d have more time to give him to her. Gran was always here, unlike her granddaughter, who ran out on all three of us. Bennett didn’t take the time to understand why I had to leave. Hell, she should have already known. If she loved me as much as she professed, she would have given me the time I so desperately needed. “God damn it,” I mutter, wiping a hand down my face. Bennett Vanderberg is so far gone it’s pointless to waste any energy thinking about her. I pull my cap down and exit the truck. The cows have been lowing since I pulled in. The horses nicker inside the barn as the lights flicker, the electricity sluggish in the cold.
Doesn’t matter. I don’t need the light, I know this barn like the back of my hand. I fire up the tractor, letting it warm up while I grain the horses. When I get to the feed room, the door is open. “Damn it Whittaker. Just because you don’t raise livestock you ought to know better,” I grumble to myself, filled with annoyance that he’s running up Gran’s electric bill. A red bucket that’s seen better days sits on top of the grain can. I fill it and head out the feed room down the row of stalls.
Usually in the morning the horses are restless. They know when the lights come on breakfast is coming. They are unusually quiet. “Figgy you sleepy this morning old girl? Not going to kick the door once Ms. Piggy?”
“She’s already been fed. There was a note above the grain.” A unfamiliar, masculine voice comes out of her stall. She stomps and whickers, her head tilting as a hand scratches deep down her chest. He pats her shoulder and slides her door open to step out. “Franklin Patterson,” He rumbles, sticking his hand out.
Slowly I reach forward and shake it. “Smith Ryerson.” We stare at each. The cap pulled down over his head is pretty much the same as mine, only it’s a different color. His beard is short, full but neatly trimmed. He’s tall, broad, and his grip is strong, and the hand he strips the glove off to shake mine with is callused. The hand of a man who know physical labor.
This must be the boyfriend.
“She isn’t up,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. He isn’t surprised to see me, which means he must know something about her past. He seems like the kind of guy I could throw back a beer with after a long day’s work, so I tamp down the sneer his defensiveness stimulates.
“I’m here to feed livestock,” I answer stiffly.
“Sure,” He agrees, his grin not reaching his eyes. “I’m here for her, just so we’re clear.”
Fuck this guy. What an asshole, playing guard dog on our turf already.
I’m tempted to pull my phone out and text Whittaker that he can feed the animals himself, but as soon as the thought crosses my mind, I can see the disappointment on Gran’s face. I glance down, noting the worn boots, the jeans, and the Carhart that looks broke in. This guy isn’t dressed like a city slicker.
“I know how I feel about unsolicited advice, so I’m asking you to put yourself in my shoes, like I’m doing for you,” he says slowly. I turn and head back towards the tractor, ignoring him. I don’t owe this guy anything, and I’ll be damned if I’ll give him my time. I have a business to run. I have shit to do. I don’t have time for small talk with pushy strangers. An image of his face between her thighs strikes and my stomach rolls. “I know your one of them.” He doesn’t raise his voice as I walk away, but I can still hear him over the diesel tractor. “She is fragile. It will take literally nothing to break her right now, so don’t do it.” I swing up on the tractor, grateful someone left the hay spear on. I look at the stranger, his long shadow cast down the wide hall between the stalls from the flickering bulb behind him. Slowly I raise my hand and extend my middle finger. This prick doesn’t know her. Bennett Vanderberg is not fragile.
Instead of returning the gesture, he leans against the stall and laughs, staring at me as he pulls the glove back on his hand. Slow and deep, his gritty rumble that denotes a certain level of patience. He has the kind of laugh that makes the hair on the back of a lesser man’s neck rise. The kind of confidence soldiers and men with nothing to lose have.
This isn’t the type of man I expected. I was hoping there wouldn’t be one at all, but what were the odds of that? Grown Bennett is even more beautiful than she was as a girl.
That’s something I shouldn’t know. As far as she knows, we haven’t seen each other in ten years. We haven’t had a single conversation. Hell, if you ask her, we haven’t been in the same state. I hop off the tractor and hit the button to lift the large overhead door. When I get back to the tractor, the stranger is gone. The stranger who isn’t really a stranger. I punch the tractor into gear, wishing the spear would stab the thousand-pound roll of hay as violently as I want to stab Bennett’s new piece of ass. I growl, shaking my head, unable to dislodge the images of him crawling into her bed, his thick arm possessively pulling her close. I can’t unsee the half a smile or stop the satisfied hum she makes from burrowing into my skull as she snuggles her peach of an ass into his crotch under the sheets.
The tractor chugs up to the fence. The round bale feeder is positioned perfectly for me to just dump the bale in. The cows wait, a fair distance back, a few of them huddled together farther on down the fence, knowing a second bale is coming.
My skin pricks and burns, my shoulders jerking and flexing under my jacket, attempting to relieve the itch between my shoulder blades. Not from the biting cold of the morning, but because I don’t fit into this place anymore. I’ve worked hard to find my place here. Another, smarter man might have settled somewhere else, but not me. I came back to the place that never fully accepted me as one of its own and conquered it. I won. I might have had to use a bulldozer, but I worked damn hard to build myself a permanent place here, to become indispensable to the community that never gave two shits about the scrawny boy Daniel Ryerson’s new wife brought with her. My eyes narrow to slits, tearing up to protect themselves in the frigid cold as I turn the tractor back for a second bale and a gust of wind hits my face.
It's only for a few days. I remind myself that as soon as Gran’s business is concluded Bennett will be out of here so fast all we’ll see are the clouds of snow her feet kick up. I can live like this for a couple of days. I can do it for Gran.
Whittaker lets me in with a grunt. He sits back down to the table and before I can say something rude he points to the coffee pot. There’s another mug sitting on the counter, and a few of those little plastic, individual serving size thimbles of creamer. Asshole. Courtesy, from Whit, is a gesture far more ill-mannered than anything I was about to say.
I make the coffee in silence, figuring he’s earned a reprive, until I sit down at the table. He kicks a chair out as I turn around. “Say what you have to say and get out. I have work to do.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him what exactly does an heirloom vegetable farmer have to do in the winter, but the urge to hurt him dies as quickly as it rises. He’s got bags under his eyes and face full of stubble so thick it almost qualifies as a beard.
Whittaker Schultz hates facial hair.
“Stop staring at me. It’s creepy.” He lifts his mug, tipping it up to take a long swallow. “Unless you’ve decided to finally pick a team?”
I hook my foot under the rung of his chair and lift. He tips back, just far enough to slosh coffee over his upper lip. He jerks forward. I let the chair drop with his weight as he curses and sputters. “I don’t have a team. Period,” I say with a lifted eyebrow. I don’t assign weird euphemisms to sexuality. I hate that shit. I take a sip of my coffee, then wipe around my mouth. I make a spectacle of inspecting my fingers. Both dry, unlike Whittaker’s. He shoots me a filthy look, wiping at the beads of coffee dripping down his chin. I’ve managed to lather him up in less than two minutes. Satisfaction curls through me.
“What do you want? You’re fucking worse than Balthasar,” he mutters, springing out of his chair to grab a dish towel. He yanks one out of a drawer and scrubs at his face. “What are you doing on my doorstep at six in the morning?”
Might as well not beat around the bush. “There was a strange man in Gran’s barn this morning. He was in Figgy’s stall.”
He stops rubbing his face, dropping the towel on the countertop. “So she’s back. And she brought…a man,” he adds slowly, as if explaining it out loud will cement the fact in his mind.
“Yep,” I answer. I watch my old friend’s face pale under cool blue light in his kitchen. I tried to talk to him one time about Bennett after I got home from sneaking off to see her. In hindsight, bringing her up less than a week after his wife left him probably wasn’t the best time. Nor was lying about why I had the sudden need to speak about her. I should have thought my story through before I went barreling over to his house, but I was hurting, not thinking.
That’s why I need to be careful during this conversation. I’m pretty sure I know who this guy is. But I don’t need Whittaker, and by extension, my brother knowing how. Whittaker’s practically a human lie detector. The guy has an uncanny ability to sense a falsehood. It’s too bad his internal alarm doesn’t go off when he’s lying to himself.
That’s why his wife walked out on him. I don’t blame her. I don’t think he really does either. And I know he tried to make it work, to love her the way she needed, the way she deserved. It was painful, watching him working so hard to be exactly what she wanted. I cringed every time I watched him bend to kiss her, knowing the moment he closed his eyes it was Bennett he saw in his mind.
“What do you want me to say, Smith?” he sinks back into his chair, his left index finger worrying his lower lip. There is no bite, no irritation in his tone, just utter exhaustion.
My back twitches. “I don’t know. I just thought…you should know.” I stand, the sound of the chair legs on the wood floor discordant. “Take a nap. You look like shit.”
His arm snaps out, his hand wrapping around my forearm before I can stride past him. He stares out the window, not even looking at me as he succinctly verbalizes the sentiment I couldn’t. “All of these years holding on to grudges and petty resentments, unable to let sleeping dogs lie even when Gran begged us to, and now she’s dead and it’s too late and suddenly I don’t have the energy to be pissed about things.” I gape at him. My first instinct is to ask him if he is referring to Bennett, but I know this is about more. “I’m a hypocrite of unparalleled levels. I shouldn’t have hit you. Not when you were right.”
Slowly I back up and sit back down. The emotions hit me fast, one after the other. I look around, taking in the dingy dull kitchen that hasn’t changed since our childhood. It’s funny how things as benign as wallpaper or the way your ass feels on a chair can transport a person back in time in the space of a thought. I blink rapidly, clearing my throat hard before I croak, “She was the only person who loved all of me, even the parts that hurt her.”
He doesn’t try to touch me like Balthasar or Bennett would have. Whittaker was my best friend for the entirety of our childhood. He witnessed the way I was raised, and understands, almost as well as Gran did, how conditioned my responses are. “Did you know she didn’t come to my wedding?”
My chin jerks up in surprise. “No, I did not.”
“She knew. She told me if I cared at all about Camille I would let her go. She told me I was selfish. I believe her exact words were, ‘I won’t be a party to another round of promises from you that turn into lies. The definition of stupid is repeating the same actions and expecting different results. Doubling down on that action when someone’s heart is on the line is a level of cruelty I never expected from one of my boys.’” He exhales, his face twisted with self-loathing.
“Ouch,” I offer.
“Yeah.”
“You…want to talk about it?” I shift on my seat, taking a long pull of coffee from my thermos before twisting the cap back on tight. Whittaker watches me, chuckling.
“I think I do, eventually. Maybe another time with different beverages.” He stares longingly at his coffee, as if wishing hard enough for it to be whiskey might actually make a bottle appear.
I know the feeling. I stand, feeling lighter than I have in a long time. “I’d like that too.” I clap his shoulder and let myself out.
The first pink and orange streaks of the day paint the sky. This morning is the first time in days the sky hasn’t been one endless, snow filled cloud. It’s gorgeous, full of promise, forcing a tendril of hope into me. The sunrise has Gran written all over it. “You have some sneaky plans up your sleeve, don’t ya old girl?”
