I plucked the veil from her hair, holding it over us. "You have short-term memory problems." I tossed it away, and she relaxed, letting her head rest against my chest.
"Let's not ruin the moment by reminding ourselves that you signed a paper irrevocably tying your life to mine, Spence."
Thishadto be the strangest wedding day in history. Two people who didn't want to be married but were having sex for the fun of it. What did that make us… spouses with benefits? I played with loose strands of her light pink hair, tugging out bobby pins and loosening the shoulder-length waves. "Hey, I can be as aloof as the next husband." That was a lie. This was my most forbidden fantasy come true—there was nothing aloof about my feelings right now.
"Mm," she hummed in sleepy agreement. "Can aloof not-wives sleep on their aloof not-husbands?"
"Let me check my marriage of convenience handbook," I muttered, searching around me like I was looking for something.
She laughed softly, and like she wasn't even fully aware of what she was doing, she began tracing an idle pattern over my bare stomach. It felt like heaven. Then, she yawned hugely, rubbing her cheek against my chest. "Just taking a little nap."
I stroked her hair, closing my eyes and settling against the pillows. "Nap all you want. I'll be here."
The danger with cuddling after sex was that I had the tendency to think it was meaningful. I didn't really care if that made me too sensitive or unmanned me in some way. I enjoyed intimacy beyond sex—I always had. The trouble was, I had never found exactly the right person to feel comfortable with. Either we didn't sync up with the depth of our feelings, or we had opposing personalities, or any number of uncomfortable outcomes. Cuddling with the wrong person began to feel like a scratchy tag at the back of my neck after a while.
But with Arabella, I found myself sinking into a deep slumber without a second thought. I knew Arabella as well as I knew my own memories of childhood. My dreams knew her, too, replaying visions of her soft skin and pink lips, and for once, I didn't hate that she starred in my fantasies. It was real, now.
But then I woke to pitch-black darkness, and the room had been plunged into midnight shadows. I sat up with a start, inhaling long and slow. I realized I was missing an Arabella-shaped weight on my chest. When I looked around the room, I found it completely empty. My phone lit up with a text.
Bee:
Thanks for helping. Keep me updated on ranch. Catching a red-eye.
In the darkness, I sighed heavily, and it carried more weight than usual. Some dreams, no matter how close to our fingertips, were too effervescent to hold onto. At least, for now.
I clicked off my screen and stared out at the milky, moon-drenched valley.
Fly away all you want, Bee, but you can't stay in the air forever. I'll be here when you're ready to land.
Chapter twelve
Arabella
11 months later
Icouldn't keep my feet under me.
I slipped and barely caught myself against the side of the barn, slamming my shoulder into the wood siding and scrambling for balance. Pain erupted through my shoulder and down my arm, and I gritted my teeth against it. I had a thick scarf wrapped around my face, and I bit down on it, groaning. "Fuck."
"Dr. Rook!" Jay hurried over, most of his features buried in winter gear as well. He still had on his baseball cap, but he wore a knitted ear cover on top that kind of reminded me of a headband. In the deep, winter night, I could barely see him until he came under the spotlight on the side of the barn. "You okay?"
I righted myself, shaking my head to clear it. A cough built in my chest, and I tried to stifle it, but the damn thing came out anyway, shaking my chest and rattling my whole body like a jar full of bones. "I'm fine," I croaked, holding out an arm.
Jay slowed three feet away, and then he looked over his shoulder at the water truck behind him. Its headlights bathed the white landscape in blinding light. "They're almost done. You should go rest."
"I'm good." I cleared my throat, rubbing my chest and fighting a chill. I'd had this stupid cough for what felt like weeks, and no matter what I tried, it wasn't going anywhere. The pressure behind my eyes had gotten so intense, I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my skull. "Did you talk to them about the next delivery?"
"Yes. They'll be here next week." He finished slogging through the snow to join me where I was leaning against the stall barn. "I gave them the check you wrote."
I nodded, making my way along the slippery path where Jay joined me. We had a walkway shoveled along the side of the large, twenty-stall barn, but it had been warm enough to melt some snow yesterday, and then it had iced over as the temperature plummeted again.
Across the road, near the round pen, a large water tank was pumping 4000 gallons of water into the water tank buried under the frost level. Another $400 quite literally down the drain to get my animals water, and things were starting to look dire. Even without making payments on the ranch to my mother, somehow, things had gone from bad to worse.
I held onto the side of the red barn until I reached the wide front entrance, and then I let myself into the warm, bright enclosure. Thankfully, we were keeping the animals comfortable, even if it was a struggle. Our heat worked, we had just enough stalls for the rescue animals, kind donors hadprovided plenty of food for the winter, and we hadn't had any major illnesses that required expensive care. Plus, their vet bill was on the house.
Our main issue at the moment was getting water to the animals. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why our water lines kept breaking, why the natural water source kept drying up, and how the hell to fix it. I'd built water catchment systems over the summer that had gotten us through the summer months, but with everything frozen in December, I was shit out of luck. We'd been paying a bulk water supply to give us water once a week, but that was sucking up all the funds I'd managed to save after my payments to Sylvia had ceased.
With another deep, aching cough, I made my way into the large space, and dimly, I noted that my nose wasn't automatically filling with the scent of fresh hay and sour manure like it usually did. Clearly because of my… allergies. I hadn't been able to breathe through my nose for a good ten days, I was pretty sure. At least it kept the stifling odors at bay.
