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I let the hot water flow over my body and wash the remnants of her away as I ran my schedule for the day through my head.
Chapter 6: Chelsea
I had forgotten how crisp country mornings were, and the skin on my legs and arms puckered with every step I took towards my house. It was a hell of a walk, over five miles to be exact, but I’d hitched a ride to the rodeo yesterday, and I didn’t have any other way of getting back. The wind blew and kicked up the fabric of my dress, and I ran my fingers quickly through my hair in a desperate attempt to make myself look presentable. My stomach felt physically nauseous when I woke up and realized I’d overslept because I knew if my parents realized I didn’t come home last night they’d send the police force out looking for me.
But I knew I was doing to Flynn what I did all those years ago, and I didn’t know what to do.
I’d pulled my dress on over my body as silently as I could, and I went into the bathroom and wet down a washcloth before slathering some cheap soap on it. I could smell him as the crust of our juices crinkled on my leg, and I needed to clean myself up before I made the five-mile walk of shame back to my house.
Was I really ashamed?
No.
Never of Flynn.
But it was a small town, and people had a tendency to talk, and I knew rumors would start to fly, and my walk of shame would somehow wind up with me being pregnant and Flynn asking me to have a shotgun wedding just before he went to ride his bull off into the sunset. And while the idea of having children with Flynn wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to have them in Paris. He was a country boy through and through, and they didn’t need ranchers in a city like Paris.
By the time the sun began to break through the tree line, my house finally came into sight. The sprawling plantation rose above the flowers my mother kept meticulously cultivated in our front yard, and the massive trees that stood on either side of the house shaded the driveway as I tiptoed up the cement. The white house with the towering columns loomed over the town, like the beacon of a lighthouse over the treacherous shores of the sea.
My parents raised horses and bred them for the derby’s, and when they weren’t tending to breed some of the strongest race horses together, they were running summer camps for children and teenagers. When I was growing up, people came from other states to enroll their children in the camp my parents ran, but when my dad got sick, the doctor told him he had to slow down some. He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and promptly had a pacemaker put in, but he c
ouldn’t keep up the schedule he was used to. My mother and I tried to pick up the slack as much as we could, and even Flynn jumped in for a time while we were in college to help during the summers. But the three of us couldn’t pull the weight my dad used to, and the camps had to close themselves down around the time I graduated.
My mother kept breeding and raising the horses, and my father helped her with the feed and repaired the stalls when they needed repairing, but his health was slowly deteriorating, and with that deterioration came less and less he could do. Last summer they sold the back half of their ranch to help pay the bills. Twenty-eight acres of land sold back to the city so they could cultivate more living areas for the growing community college. Granted, they still had twenty-eight acres of land between them and that construction going on, but it was the hardest decision my father ever made.
And to this day I think my mother regretted it.
I stood in the shade of the porch longer than I should have, and it wasn’t until the sun began to shine around the column that I realized I’d probably waited too late to walk in. But, I figured my parents would just now be stirring, and if I could get up the steps before they actually came out of their room downstairs, I’d still be home free and could dodge all the questions they might have. Sure, they knew I was going to the rodeo, and I’m a big girl who can stay out all night if I wanted to, but it wouldn't take them long to put two and two together once they realized Flynn “Bullheaded” Rawlings was being featured during the bull riding event.
And I wasn’t ready for the questions they were going to throw my way.
I dug out the spare key from underneath the mat and slowly slipped it into the lock. I opened the front door, and it dumped me into a high-ceiling foyer, and when I turned to place the key back underneath the mat, I locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it into my house without anyone suspecting me, and I smiled when I shut the door behind me and leaned up against it.
“You should’ve used the back door.”
I jumped when I heard my mother’s voice waft from the kitchen, and I cursed underneath my breath before I closed my eyes. I knew I was cutting it close, and it was my fault I got lost in my own stupid memories while I was standing out in the driveway.
“Hey, mom,” I smiled weakly. I slowly padded down the hallway and stuck my head in the kitchen, and I saw my mother sitting there. If there was ever a woman that exuded country sophistication, it was her: back straight, shoulders rolled, hair neatly pinned, and her stud earrings she wore as part of her nightly appearance shone from her ears. Sure, the wrinkles of time and work had etched themselves into her skin, but her voice was light, her legs were always crossed at her ankles, and she always used her manners no matter the situation or person.
“Why don’t you come have some coffee?” she asked.
I watched as her body slowly rose from the chair. She placed her coffee cup down on the table, and I knew when she asked that question I really didn’t have a choice. That was the thing about my mother: she would always phrase commands in the form of a question to make herself appear unthreatening when really, she expected you to obey every word that poured forth from her lips. I never did figure out how to mock the grace and poise she had when I was a child, but my father always told me I wasn’t something to be harnessed.
“No, your father isn’t awake yet,” she said lightly.
I heard her pour the cup of coffee before a spoon began clanking around the ceramic. She padded back towards me, and she placed the cup down in front of me, and even though I sat back into the chair and tossed my wild hair back, she sat with her back straight and curled her delicate fingers around the jovially-colored mug.
“Where were you last night?” my mother asked.
“Went out with some friends after the rodeo,” I said before I brought the mug to my lips.
“When will I convince you I wasn’t born in a barn, Chelsea?”
I sighed into my mug and closed my eyes before the question that spewed forth from her lips graced my tired ear drums.
“Were you with Flynn?”
The mere mention of his name fluttered my heart and lurched my gut, and tears formed behind my closed eyes before I closed them and took a large swig of my coffee.
