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My mind scrambled through ideas but still hadn’t come up with a solid plan.
It didn’t help that we spent the whole drive talking. Not that I minded. I’d learned over the years to bask in every moment with Rae—to live for that second. I promised myself I’d create a plan when I got home, after losing myself in every smile and laugh I could get from her.
“I can’t believe you woke up under your truck, and it was parked in a field. How did it get there?” she asked, laughing.
I pulled up alongside her building and gave her my best innocent smile. “No clue. But apparently, I knew I was drunk enough I couldn’t be in the car.”
“But why under it?”
“I’m going to go with to keep myself safe. If anyone came along, they’d look for me in the bed or in the cab.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, still laughing.
“Listen, you had to get creative when finding entertainment in a small town. Most of the time, that included alcohol and questionable mornings after.”
She shook her head as she unbuckled her seat belt. “You know, I can imagine you quite perfectly in that life. Especially since it makes more sense how you were always so good at those drinking games in college.”
I huff on my nails before buffing them on my shirt. “Beer Pong champ for life.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked me over. “At the same time, it was so different than I expected.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess I have a pretty narrow thought process sometimes. I met you at college and saw you in New York, so that’s where you belonged.”
“It’s understandable. It’s easy to imagine people in this setting when you’ve lived here your whole life.”
“Well, not my whole life.”
Her admission was like tossing a marble in the wheels of my mind, halting the smooth movement with something I wasn’t familiar with. “You lived somewhere else?”
“Yeah,” she answered, waving her hand as if shooing the words away like an annoying fly. “We lived outside of the city a ways, in a rundown suburb.”
“When?”
“Long before my mom married Kenneth.”
Ping. Ping. Ping.
More and more marbles fell between the grooves. “What? Kenneth isn’t your dad?”
“Hah! I wish,” she scoffed. “But also, yes, he is my dad. He adopted me after they got married.”
“How the fuck did I not know this?” Was this how she felt when she first came to the farm? I imagined my face right now, and I couldn’t recall ever having her stare at me with bulging eyes and a dropped jaw.
Up until then, Rae had enjoyed my shock, but something shifted, and she looked away, focusing on her clasped hands in her lap. The dropped head and hunched shoulders were such a contrasting image from the bold woman I’d always known that I knew this was a piece of her that most likely filled in any gaps I had never been able to figure out.
Holding my breath, I waited for her to answer, shoving down the questions I wanted to ask in rapid-fire. Something urged me to dig deeper—to figure out the puzzle because maybe then I’d have the answers I needed to get the future I wanted. It sounded crazy, but I had to go with my gut.
“It’s not something I really talk about,” she finally answered.
Curbing my urgency, I asked softly, “How old were you when they got married?”
“Twelve. That’s also when he adopted me. But we moved to the city when I was seven, after my mom finally left my dad. Thank God,” she said, rolling her eyes upward like she was speaking to him. “I hated him and wished she would have left sooner.”
It was like the confession tumbled free without her even realizing it.
The raw honesty hit me like a wrecking ball, knocking the wind from my lungs. “Rae…” I barely got out.
As if realizing the situation, she stiffened, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, forcing any tension from her body with her exhale. She shut the gate, and the bold woman I’d always known tried to reappear.
“Listen, it’s not a big deal,” she said, trying to wave it off. “Cool?”
It wasn’t cool. I couldn’t stop imagining her as a child living a life that made you hate a man so much. The two didn’t blend. A lasso wrapped around my chest, compressing my lungs as it tried to yank me back in time to save the little girl she was.
When I stayed silent, she finally snapped her gaze to mine. “Please,” she uttered.
I loved when she begged.
Please more. Please fuck me. Please don’t stop. Please eat me. Please kiss me.
But not this. This was a plea I could’ve gone a lifetime without. A plea for me to not make her face a past she wanted to forget.
I could give that to her. Maybe instead of pushing for more to discover the missing puzzle piece, I could remind her that I could be what she needed when she needed it. I could show her that being with me didn’t end in a corner she couldn’t get out of. I could show her that life with me wasn’t what she imagined when she pictured marriage.
