11. Ignacia

Chapter eleven

Ignacia

(Still sort of Sam)

W e don’t talk about it. We probably should, but we don’t.

The next morning turns into the next morning, which turns into the next morning, and then three more days pass. I have one more night until Beau is going to be in my bed again, and even though there’s been a prim and proper brick wall erected around us outside of the bed, where we’ve coexisted in the space of let’s maybe pretend all of it didn’t happen and be as polite as possible, I’m not sure the wall is going to hold up in bed.

We’re electric in bed.

Our bodies aren’t on the same page as our brains.

I’ve never felt fire like that. Not even when I thought I was in love, and that’s supposed to be the safest, most wonderful, hottest sex because of all the trust and emotion involved. Maybe my body knew it wasn’t real. Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew there were red flags galore that I should have paid attention to.

It was never electric. It was never so hot that every fire department in the state would have to be called to put out the bed fire.

My body knows it’s still there, smoldering under the surface. It’s always known. I’ve tried everything to justify it in my mind, but maybe there’s no justifying it. It just… is .

So what if you both might have good chemistry? The man is as emotionally intelligent as a can opener, and his personality, or whatever he’s decided his personality should be, makes running through a park filled with mousetraps and sharp knives look comforting.

But that’s not how he really is.

Or is that something I keep telling myself to justify the fact that I keep falling for the same kind of toxic men?

No, not the same kind. Beau is so far from Aiden. The only thing they have in common is the chronological proximity of the first letter of their first names in the alphabet. Aiden lied to everyone. He lied about who he was. Beau is only lying to himself to protect himself after having to live through the worst pain imaginable.

Beau catches me in the barn on Friday morning after I’ve just fed the cats. They’ve already eaten, but they’re both hanging around, rolling in the loose hay all over the ground and in the sunbeams streaming in through the open door. It’s a lovely morning. I’m wearing a regular prairie dress that’s pink with white flowers. It was one of the first ones I ever sewed. I had to take it apart four times before I was happy with it, and it’s not taken in anywhere. It’s not fitted in the least, actually. I feel pretty ashamed for altering that other one. I truly don’t even know why I did it, other than maybe I wanted to be pretty and desirable for a minute again. Or that I wanted someone to look at me and see…I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to feel seen, to feel real, to feel like I haven’t turned into a ghost out here, and there’s something and someone under all the layers. I wanted to feel that under all the deception and the fake ID, I was still just Sam.

Okay, and also? Beau’s really hot, which I can’t help noticing.

I can’t help noticing it right now as he walks to the barn and stops at the entrance. He leans against the wall, which makes his body do insane things in that button-down dress shirt and those fresh jeans. Why did he also have to look so good in jeans too?

He stops, scans my face with those cold blue eyes of his that aren’t quite as frosty because it seems not even he can resist a beautiful country morning, and then eyes the cats flopping around on the barn floor.

“Absolute Unit Cat,” he greets Mama. “And…Little Absolute Unit Cat.” Baby meows at him and does that weird tail-vibrating thing she does when she’s happy or pissed and pretty much anything in between.

I want to laugh, but laughing feels like we’re friendly or at least on the same page or not all freaking tense, and I don’t know if that’s the truth. I know it’s not the truth.

He might be impeccably put together—freshly shaven, hair clean and styled, and clothing pressed like the ironing and drycleaning gods both smiled on the garments and decreed they should never wrinkle—but there’s something completely off about the way he carries himself. Either he’s finally reached the limits of how much of the country he can stand—even if he does get up and go for a million-mile run every morning and eat an endless supply of gross healthy things he has delivered and that appear magically on the porch in the morning, and his regular routine probably isn’t suffering all that much, at least not where his exercise and diet are concerned—or he has something on his mind.

I feel like I’m going to go straight through this bale I’m sitting on. Like it’s no longer sturdy and can’t support my weight even though it can. The feeling of sinking and falling is inside me.

“Do you have news about Aiden yet?” Maybe that’s why he looks so out of sorts. Although, if that was true, and he could leave, I think he’d probably do a backflip from the sheer happiness, tell me the rest of the contracted hot bedding dates are off and that I can keep the change, and then wish me a great life.

He keeps leaning hard against the barn doorframe. It’s a huge beam right there, but he somehow makes it look small. “No. It takes time to nail down such a cretin. It has to be airtight. We’re still working hard on it, don’t worry.”

I can’t help the frustrated sigh that comes out of me. “Then what?”

“Then what, what?”

Argh, why does he look so confused? No, I see it. The spark in his normally reserved, cold eyes. He wants to say something. I’m sure of it.

His jaw clenches and releases and clenches again like he’s hammering a piece of gum to a pulp, but he’s not chewing anything. I’ve seen him pop mints into his mouth on occasion, but never gum. Also, for the love of chicken rumps, is it a sin to be jealous of mints when they’re the ones getting sucked on, and I’m… yeah, definitely wrong if you’re taking it that far.

“I think we…” he begins.

An entire generation passes while I sit and wait for him to finish that sentence. When it’s clear we’re going to be as fossilized as dinosaurs if I don’t help him out, I step in and say, “You think we need to talk?”

A storm of relief shadows his face, and he replies, “Yes.”

“About the contract?”

“Not entirely.”

“Ahh. About the last time we did the hot bedding, how we went against the contract, and what was said and done.” I’m not sure which part he’s tense about, so I think a blanket statement is best.

“Yes.” His hands open and close. Then, he catches himself doing it after one time and pushes them into his pockets. He looks like a dark god standing there, holding the whole barn on his shoulders. Also? That pose and all his brooding beauty would break someone’s camera if they were here to capture this moment.

Well, I’m here, and I’ll frame that shot in my brain forever.

“I’m afraid I—”

“Whoa,” I gasp. I have to put up a hand to stop him. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

More jaw clenching on his part. His poor teeth. I know he’s rich and can afford whatever dentistry he needs, but my goodness. I’m going to shut up now. Right now.

“What happened—what I said, I’m…”

Another eternity. More fossils. More dust. The cats get up. Baby moves closer to Mama, and Mama starts licking imaginary leftover breakfast off her face and then moves up to her ears. It’s heartwarming. More sun streams through, and it brushes the tips of Beau’s expensive shoes. Shoes that probably cost a fortune. Shoe that shouldn’t even be here on a farm getting dirty.

Even if he doesn’t blend in here, even if he’s a pain in the ass, I’m going to miss him when he leaves. He doesn’t belong in the country, he doesn’t belong in my life, and he doesn’t have any business taking up an inch of feelings I’m in no place to feel. But still, I can’t imagine never seeing this man again, even if that should bring me a ton of joy because it means I’ll be free to live my old life.

“You’re what?” I don’t want to prompt him, but I’m also getting hungry out here.

The cats are bored with our conversation by now, so they stroll through the barn and then race off as soon as they hit the grass, off on a day of adventures.

“I’m…” He looks twisted up. Like the words are painful.

It can’t possibly be I’m sorry. That’s not what he’s going to say. He doesn’t have to apologize. What happened just happened, and it shouldn’t have. We both get that. I crossed the line, and he crossed it back. We needed each other for a few minutes, and we met that need. Then, we both snapped back to reality and stopped letting our bodies and hormones dictate our lives. It’s fine. It’s seriously fine.

He straightens, and the slightly vulnerable stormy look gets wiped completely off his face in favor of his usual tough guy, hard-ass attitude. In just a second, he goes from almost human to entirely unattainable. I didn’t realize what I was waiting for or what I expected to hear, or maybe how much I longed for just any conversation that was real between us after days of purposely trying to ignore each other and nearly two weeks of forced coexistence, but I’m a fool for ever expecting or wanting that or thinking it could happen.

“I need you to know I’ve been damaged to the point where I can no longer afford to have feelings. I cut them off, and I don’t want them back. Ever. I’d say I’m not capable, but my past proves me wrong. What I want now might not be what’s healthy or what anyone else desires, but it’s truly how I want to live my life.”

“Okayyyyyyyy,” I respond, dragging the word out as I stand up slowly with careful movements. Not for his sake, but for mine. If I move too fast, my heart might fall out of my chest. As it is, my stomach is already spinning sickly. I’m such a dummy. Such. A. Freaking. Idiot. “Yeah.” I have to nod. It looks all wrong, like a creepy doll with an expressionless face, except the flapping eyes that open and close keep going wonky.

There’s nothing else to say about this. I’m no longer starving. What I really want is to go up to my room, shut the door, and have a good cry. I haven’t given myself the luxury of that since I fled my old life and ended up here. I thought if I cried, really cried, I’d never stop. And I needed to be strong, or I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this.

I don’t walk like I’m mad. Because I’m not. I don’t storm away like I’m petulant or disappointed, either. I just walk normally. I think we’ve both said all we had to say.

Beau doesn’t walk right on my heels, but I can feel his larger-than-life presence back there, shadowing me back to the house. He’s here to keep me safe. We have a contract for that. He’s here to sleep on one side of my bed for one day a week because we have a contract for that, too. There’s nothing more. We don’t have it, and we never will.

Once I get the door closed, I reach my limit of how long I can wait before the tears start coming, so I race up to my room, shut the door, and lean my back heavily against it. Maybe it’s the separation or the safety of this room, but the tears dry up and refuse to come. I’m not in a sunny, smiling mood either, but at least I don’t feel like flinging myself on the bed and bawling about the things I can’t change. Maybe I’ve found the last ounce of strength I have left. This is almost over. It truly is. Soon, I’ll be able to see my family again. I’ll be able to be me.

That makes my eyes burn, but it’s not the angry, bitter, and ugly kind of tears I wanted to cry on the way back from the barn. They’ve gone somewhere deep inside me, and instead, I keep seeing my mom and dad’s faces. As well as Katie’s. It makes me soft inside, so all the nastiness and stomach-churning I felt in the barn gives way to the softness.

Until I hear a thump on the other side of the door.

What the hell?

“Ignacia?” Beau’s voice comes deep and commanding and still somehow off. There’s something in it I haven’t heard before. Worry? He probably thinks I’m summoning demons on his ass in here.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I meant what I said a few nights ago and out there. I understand, Beau. I’m an adult. It’s all good.”

Another thud, like he set one hand on the doorframe, and now he’s set the other. I imagine him leaning against it. I imagine the way his shoulders would jut out, his shoulder bones pressing against the back, his biceps bulging, and the outline of his hard chest, abs, and pecs apparent under the soft, expensive fabric.

I peel my back off the door and turn slowly. I find one hand reaching out before I can stop it. Then the other. I arrange myself in a mirrored pose, clutching the wood, my hands to his hands. He doesn’t make a sound out there. And I’m probably being silly.

“I need you to understand, though.” I must be crazy because it sounds a little like he’s begging, and that’s something this man would never do.

“I do. It’s fine,” I reply.

A wrenched breath gets expelled into the hall, and the old farmhouse magnifies it back at me through the wooden door. “Not that. I mean about me. Truly, it’s not that I can’t give you that or that…the contract…I mean, it is, but it’s…I just have nothing left in me but hardness and ice. My heart was shattered when I was pretty much still a kid, at least where my innocence was concerned. I was an adult in body, but my spirit? It took a beating. I’m just—just done with that. I have nothing left to give, even if I wanted to. I know that’s no way to live, but I’ve made a life for myself, and it’s good enough. I’m happy enough. I keep busy, and I bring value to the world through my work.”

“I’ve made a ton of money but because I have zero desire to get married and have children and pass it on. The world doesn’t need more fucked up people, and I will just mess up as a parent. I know we’re not talking about marriage or children, but even tenderness? I can’t. I’m not one of those you deserve more people, but you do deserve more. You deserve to be free, and you deserve to do what you will with that freedom, which I hope is to find someone worthy of you. Someone completely unlike Aiden and also completely unlike me. I’m not a project worth fixing. I can’t be glued back together. Love is an impossibility, but even anything resembling what that looks like isn’t—”

I have to stop him. It hurts too much to listen to him gasping for breath out there as he pours out the exact thing he thinks he’s not capable of. It’s so awkward, and he’s drowning and hurting.

I rip open the door, and he has enough time and training that he doesn’t fall through, but I think he was standing exactly the way I pictured. My heart pounds. I won’t reach out to him now. I won’t touch him now. But just a few seconds ago, I felt like we were connected. Wood is a vital element. It’s powerful. It’s a living organism even years after it’s turned into something like a door and a frame and a house. Maybe my body heat somehow soaked into it and reached him on the other side. Maybe it was just the slightest comfort.

There were zero masks now. He caught himself before he could fall through the air the open door created, but he couldn’t hide the agony from me. My hand came up like I was going to caress his face. Like my touch alone could make up for years of what the world did to this man and how he has built up thick and icy and cold walls to shut it out. I imagine him curled up in there, in the middle of his ice castle, shivering and plaintive and just trying to make it through another hopeless day, another long night.

“You know that the good guys are always the ones who win in the end?”

“That’s just in books and movies,” he responds. He’s working on getting his face back in order. His eyes. His soul.

I stare back at him, willing him not to retreat back into the stony, impenetrable castle. “Ahh, the language of the masses. Such a terrible thing.”

All that earns me is a grunt. “It’s the truth, though. In real life, the bad guys prosper. There is so much hate and hardness and anger and pain in the world. You know that firsthand.”

I don’t have to say that Aiden made me weary but not defeated. Because we’re not the same person. We didn’t have the same life experiences, and I would never compare myself to another person. We’re all made differently, and it doesn’t mean he’s wrong or that I’m right.

“I think it actually takes far more work to be pissed off and bitter at whatever happened in the past than to remain hopeful,” I say.

He laughs tonelessly. “You’re right. But still, I can’t, and I won’t. I’m not bitter, and I’m not angry. I’ve let that go. I just believe in self-preservation. And I suppose I still hate my birth parents a little, but I can’t wipe that out, no matter how much therapy and money I have.”

He’s done the time and talked to professionals. He’s tried to fix himself. He has, to the point where he can function. This man isn’t like other people. He’s not entirely over the past, but I think he’s made a sort of peace with it. It’s the future, and all the things that haven’t happened yet, that’s the problem. I would say it’s fear, but I know it’s not that simple.

And yet…maybe it is.

“I think fear does nothing but lie to us. I’ve listened to plenty of that over the past ten months, but I just can’t let it be the only thing that’s keeping me together, or I’ll shatter. I can’t let it consume all my energy. I want to absorb goodness from the world and put goodness back in the energy cycle. If you reap what you sow, I’d rather be eating tasty vegetables and growing beautiful flowers than eating dung and festering in stinkweed.” I have to stop him before he can say anything, so I quickly add, “Yes, I know, I know. My obsession with dung and butts is showing again.”

He very nearly messes up and cracks a smile. “Is stinkweed real?”

“It is. I think it’s a member of the cabbage family. I have plenty growing around here, though the smell isn’t all that bad. I can’t say it’s ever been a problem for me. Then again, I’m not cooking and eating it, so maybe it only really reeks during that phase.”

“I see,” he says.

Jesus, there it is. Just the lift of one corner of his mouth is so damn sensual that it nearly knocks me backward.

“It’s not just the contract,” he repeats, losing the lip twitch and all the boyish charm that came with it. “It’s ingrained in me. This is my life. This is how I want my life to be. I’ve worked hard to get it to this point.”

“Where nothing can hurt you.”

“Yes.”

That word is a knife so sad and sharply honed that it tears at my insides. I’ve had my whole life stolen from me, yet I’ve never been in such emotional anguish that I had to completely shut down and remain that way for fear that I would be broken otherwise.

I wish only one thing for him, and I need to tell him in a way he understands. There is zero room for error right now. I’m no poet or wordsmith, so there’s about a hundred percent chance I’ll mess this up and throw in a butt analogy.

I want to touch him because what I think he needs most at this moment is human connection, but I don’t, even though my fingertips ache for contact with his skin.

“Beau?” I start, and he stares me down, waiting for me to go on. “I think some hurts are worth it. I think they have to be or the world would just be all horror and sadness. There is goodness, too, for all the bad. I think if you want to be truly happy, you need to be able to be open to the pain and realize that sometimes, no matter how much it hurts, it’s worth it.”

The storm has passed, and he’s already far, far away. I’ve said the wrong thing. I’ve butchered it even without butts or stinkweed or dung. This wasn’t about letting me down; it was about trying to lighten his load, and I failed at that. My insides twist with my own emotional shit storm.

Whatever. At least I kept it in my head. He won’t know I thought it. I hope.

“That’s just the problem,” he mutters, sounding far away, even though he’s standing right in front of me and just through the doorway.

Maybe there’s a portal between us I can’t see, and we’re actually in different worlds, different times, different places. Perhaps that’s where we’ll always be, no matter how close to each other we get. It’s impossibly silly that I’m even thinking about distance and wishing it away with two contracts and just a few weeks between us.

He continues, “I don’t expect to find happiness. I know it’s an unreachable goal, and I’m in the business of being a pragmatist.”