I laugh. Breathless. Wrecked. Completely, thoroughly, possessively fucked in my hallway in the middle of a Saturday afternoon because my ex-husband had the audacity to show up on my porch.
Fifteen
Beau
I find my father in the tack room. He’s oiling a bridle. Hands steady. Quiet. The room smells of leather, oil and hay dust. Same smell it’s had since I was six years old, sitting on an overturned bucket watching him work. Some things don’t change. Some things you don’t want to.
“Got a minute?” I ask.
He doesn’t look up. “Always got a minute for you.”
I lean against the doorframe, cross my arms, trying to figure out how to say what I came here to say. I’m good with animals. Good with data. Good with silence. Not great with words. Never have been.
Dad keeps oiling. Patient. He’s never rushed a conversation in his life. Probably where I get it from.
“I’m gonna ask Ina to marry me.”
His hands stop. He looks up. Her sharp eyes, warm under, find mine.
“Well,” he says. “Took you long enough to say it.”
I almost smile. “You knew?”
“Son, I knew the second I saw you at that fair.” He sets the bridle down. Wipes his hands on a rag. Leans back in his chair. “I’ve watched you your whole life. You don’t react to much. Never have. Even as a kid …cool, quiet, somewhere else in your head. Your mama used to worry about it.”
“I know.”
“Then Ina Samba walks up to our booth and you damn near forgot your own name.” He shakes his head. Smiling now. The deep lines around his eyes creasing. “I looked at your brother and said, ‘That’s it. That’s the one.’.”
I grin wide. Can’t fucking help it.
Dad stands and walks to me. He’s still tall…not as tall as me now, but close. His shoulders, still broad. His hands, rough and strong. He puts one on my shoulder and squeezes.
“I like her. Her family’s good people. Solid.” He pauses, his hand tightening. “And I’ve never seen you this happy. Not any of the years you were walking around like a man with a hole in his chest.”
My jaw works. Something tightens behind my ribs.
“She filled it,” he adds. “Didn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods. Pulls me in for a hug. Brief and hard. The kind of hug men like my dad and me exchange…all shoulder and grip and things that don’t need to be said out loud. He smells of leather and the land he’s worked for forty years.
When he pulls back, his eyes are bright. He clears his throat.
“You got a ring?”
“Yeah.”
“Good one?”
“Yellow diamond.”
His eyebrows lift. “Boy, that’s not cheap.”
I chuckle. “No, sir.”
He grins teasingly, still clapping my shoulder. “Your mama’s gonna lose her damn mind.”
