Reece (Stud Ranch)

Reece sucked in a breath and shut his eyes hard, like he was either reliving it or trying to get himself under control.

“I told her she should leave him, but she just said I was a sweet kid. She was fifteen years older than me, and said I didn’t understand how the world worked. But we started up a… a friendship, I guess. I was the only person she could talk to who was safe.”

I swallowed again, hugging my arms around myself. “And it turned into more?”

Reece hesitated, then nodded. “She liked to have a companion when she rode her horse, so sometimes I’d go with her. We got closer and closer…”

Reece’s brow bunched as he looked to the floor. “I loved her and yes, I thought I could save her. She never said she loved me back, but she said her time with me made the rest of her life possible. That she’d thought about slitting her wrists plenty of times until I showed up.”

Uneasily, I rubbed my left wrist. I’d kept them perpetually covered here with long sleeved flannels. When it got warmer, I used a thick-banded waterproof watch on my left wrist and a scrunchie on my right, no matter that I had short hair and no use of one. I’d found both in Ruth’s bathroom drawers.

I took a step towards Reece, feeling my nose sting with emotion both for him and for the woman. Peg. To have dared to grab at what joy she could in the midst of her own suffering… I couldn’t imagine.

But I could totally see how Reece, kind, gentle Reece showing up, an even more earnest and boyish version than the man in front of me, just having survived the streets of San Francisco… I could see how he would have seemed like a miracle. Enough to make a woman reckless.

And I could also see how he could have fallen into the situation, wanting to help her, then developing a close bond with the woman. The intimacy of a secret shared. How that could turn into long afternoons that felt like an escape and also salvation, to both of them after all they’d been through. And how natural feelings would follow, and desperate bodies would meet—

“So what happened?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

“Her husband caught us.”

I gasped and took another small step forward.

“It was fucking awful.” Reece turned away from me. “Jeremiah’s right. I should have tried to get her help earlier. Not—” He shook his head vehemently. “Not… do what I did.

“You were barely just more than a kid yourself. You said you were just what, nineteen? God knows how stupid I was at nineteen. I didn’t do anything right.” As soon as I said it, I realized just how true it was. And yet it was so much easier to cut Reece the slack I could never seem to give to myself.

But Reece was still just shaking his head. “No, I should have done anything else. Tried to protect her better. Wayne came in and he just started whaling on her. I fought him and told her to run, but I only slowed him down. Like you said, I was nineteen, skinny as a bean pole, barely fed enough after years on the street. He was a full-grown man and more than a match for the both of us.”

My heart was in my throat even just hearing about it. “Oh my God, so what happened?”

Reece bowed his head. “My brother. I’ll never be able to repay him for all he’s done for me, and that day was just another example. He came in and gave Wayne the beating I couldn’t. We’d both been in scrapes before, growing up like we did, but it was nothing to Jeremiah that day. Once Wayne was down, the three of us stole his truck and drove to the bus station.”

“Holy shit,” I said. And here I’d thought Jeremiah was such a straight-laced guy… I could barely imagine him doing the things Reece was describing. And yet, I supposed, for family, one might do anything.

I winced, thinking of my own mother and how she wouldn’t listen to me the two times I tried to tell her about what was really going on with Jeff. The second time, when I asked for her help, she called Jeff to tell him she was worried about me, that my mental health was getting worse—he had everyone so snowed. But still, how could she believe him over her own daughter? I got the shit beat out of me and learned that what family might be to other people, it wasn’t for me.

But Reece and Jeremiah, they had the real thing.

“Did she make it?” I asked, feeling anxious for a woman I didn’t even know. “Did her husband find her again and take her back?”