Nat swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on his jeans. If he didn’t speak now, he never would say his piece. “You can’t do this.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You’re eighteen, J. Traveling alone. Do you have any idea what kind of sick fucks are out there, waiting to prey on a girl from a small town who never met a stranger?”
“You’re paranoid.”
“And you’re naïve.” He cinched his t-shirt over his head, didn’t bother to tug it down into place.
“My dad left home at eighteen and started on a shrimp boat out of New Orleans. Look at all of his adventures.”
Nat wanted to tell her. God-as-all-fuck he wanted to t
ell her the truth about her father to make her stay. But he loved her more than he loved being right. “You’re going to miss your train. I’ll wait downstairs.”
Nat paced circles around Clem’s battered Ford pickup, kicked the tires a few times. Five minutes passed then ten.
He called up the outside steps. “Hey, J, we gotta go.”
When she didn’t respond, he went looking for her. He found her cross-legged on her bedroom floor, hugging her suitcase as if it were the last parachute on a doomed flight. Mascara streaked down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?”
January was a statue but for tremors in her hands.
Nat couldn’t take it anymore. For as far back as he could remember, everything between them had been about her travel, her leaving. He was exhausted, everything always being about her. Her decision to go. Her decision to stay. He had a future, too. If he didn’t push her now into something permanent, forever in this limbo seemed a distinct possibility. He would drive her to the station and start to pull away, and it would be like one of those movies: he’d see her in his side mirror, running after him, and she would have no more doubts that here was where she belonged.
“J, it takes over an hour to get to the station. I thought this was what you wanted.” She blinked up at him. “You’re the bravest person I know. This isn’t you.”
“This is me.” She stood and let the pack slump to the floor. Her stance was horse-wide, all fight. “I’m scared of everything—of how I think, of what I don’t know. I’m scared of you and me. I’m scared of making the wrong decision. I’m scared that I’m turning into my father—never content in one place, never stopping to think what leaving does to those left behind. And the fact that you don’t know how terrifying this is to me makes me wonder why we’re together at all.”
Nat pulled away, to the hallway, seemingly to the furthest blue pin stabbed through the map. Jesus, he couldn’t breathe. What just happened? Eaten alive by stinging parasites in a far-off jungle would have been preferable to the flattened wasteland her words had scorched through his chest.
Mona squeezed into the room and ran to her daughter. January collapsed in her arms.
Nat took the stairs two at a time. Wretched, hiccupping cries muffled through the churning air conditioner and stalked him to the cab of his truck. He turned over the flathead V-8 engine and drove until he ran out of gas two counties over and his lungs found room to expand again. In the distance, January’s train wailed. The sound should have made him happy, that she wasn’t on it. It didn’t.
* * *
Nat rode Poe to Mona’s trailer. Brontë walked beside them on a lead. The sun had yet to slip away from a day packed with more items on his checklist than minutes.
Horses needed radios. And they weren’t much for talking to drown out thoughts. Most times, the lack of noise was welcome. But damned if Nat hadn’t gone straight to bed after haying the trailer and showering and found himself right back with January. In last night’s dream, he was back in her old apartment bedroom, taking turns at being a young lover and a young jackass, trying to root out a way that things might have ended differently. Truth was, things hadn’t been right for some time before those last moments together.
The next day, she had sent a note to Nat at the ranch, via her mother: Meet me at our pasture at dark. She never showed. Recalling that end now churned his stomach enough to ensure that pain never happened again.
January was right. People had to fight to know the real her—the one beneath all the bravado and extroverted sweetness. Nat had to fight, too. Back then, he hadn’t fought hard enough.
But maybe, just maybe, he had some fight left in him.
5
January heard her name outside the trailer, louder than it should be legal to yell such a thing. That it was tethered to a voice that made her feel all tingly inside made the intrusion like hot butter on a biscuit. She burrowed deeper into the couch cushions and melted back into her nap-time fantasy as Miss Ellie Beaux, badass space outlaw extraordinaire. Quite possibly, she loved Nat Meier for his fictional prowess.
The second and third time he yelled her name—well, that was plain rude.
Dream-logged and cotton-mouthed, she got her knees beneath her and peered past the window curtains. Clouds boiled the landscape dim. Nat sat atop his high horse in a tight gray t-shirt that hugged his muscular arms pectoral muscles. His standard-issue jeans were bleached from the sun and frayed at his boots. This time, he wore a baseball cap. The brim looked like it had a run-in with a bull and lost.
Right then and there, January decided Nat Meier could do any damned thing he pleased so long as he came around looking as hot as a summer revival with no fans. Except for the scowl. They’d have to work on that.