After the Rain (3 page)

When the elevator doors opened she grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hallway. “Hurry,” she said. “I want to be in bed by nine.”

“I’m getting you into bed right now.”

Unlocking the door to her apartment, she turned and looked at me. Her nose was scrunched up in revulsion. “I don’t want to do it in my bed, Nate.”

We had never had sex lying down. I think, in Olivia’s mind, that was too intimate. It was a miracle I could even get excited enough to be with her. She was gorgeous, but sex with Olivia was like a regimented exercise that was exactly the same every time. She told me where to put my hands and how to move and I would basically follow her direc
tions, close my eyes, and pretend for a few moments that we weren’t just using each other night after night. It wasn’t that I wanted to find love, though. I didn’t have time for a relationship, so my arrangement with Olivia was perfect. It was just hard to overlook her cold nature sometimes.

“Over here.” She moved toward the small dining table in her kitchen. With her back to me, she pulled her tights and panties down to her ankles, lifted her skirt, and looked over her shoulder. “Come on.” She smiled playfully.

I fucked Olivia like that all the time, against a table with most of my clothes on. When I bent her over farther, I ran my hand up her back, inside of her shirt, and moved my other hand to her front. We were about ten minutes in before she came loudly, screaming, “Oh fuck!”

I finished twelve seconds later and five minutes after that I was back in the elevator heading home.

Olivia was leaving the following week to go to Stanford. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again, but sadly the thought didn’t bother me. It truly felt like the beginning of my life, and all I could think about was becoming the best heart surgeon in the country.

CHAPTER 3

What Breaks Us

Avelina

SPRING 2005

J
ake was my first kiss—my first everything. After my mom eventually went back to Spain, he took care of me and made me feel safe. We got married in Las Vegas at one of those quickie chapels, but it didn’t matter to us because we loved each other. We sold my three other horses, my truck, and my trailer, but Jake let me keep Dancer. He knew I would never part with her.

I always thought I would go to nursing school or become a veterinarian, but instead, the moment I met Jake, I dropped out of high school and never bothered getting my GED. The winter we got married, we were hired as wranglers on a ranch a hundred miles northeast of Great Falls, Montana. Ranching was something I knew well but it wouldn’t have mattered what I was doing, as long as I was with Jake.

The owners of the ranch were an older couple, Redman and Bea Walker. They didn’t have any children, just hired
help, so we lived there in one of four cabins off the main ranch house. Bea cooked our meals while Redman, who got more ornery by the minute, rode around the ranch on a great big bay horse, barking orders at the rest of us. There was also Dale, who was in his forties—he was a large animal vet—and Trish, his wife, who was once a national rodeo queen. Dale helped out on the ranch but his veterinary practice also extended to other ranches nearby. Trish was a wrangler, like Jake and me, which meant she worked the horses and cattle and handled the general caretaking duties around the ranch. There were no children at the Walker Ranch; Jake and I were the youngest, and sometimes Trish, Bea, and the other ranch hands would call us “the kids.” I’d overheard Trish telling Bea that her condition made her barren. I never pried any further to find out what condition Trish had, but I knew Bea had struggled to have children herself, which made her very sympathetic to Trish’s situation. Redman and Bea had one child that I knew of who died at birth, so those who lived on the ranch became their family instead. There was history and wisdom inside of Bea and Redman and a lot of old, painful memories that they’d share as lessons whenever the opportunity arose.

Ranching is a dangerous life and not for the faint of heart. Sometimes the pain behind Bea and Trish’s eyes, which I knew was from not being able to have their own children, made the ranch feel like some sort of graveyard of broken dreams, only made beautiful by the breathtaking landscape, the huge, endless dreamlike skies, the millions of stars we saw on clear nights, and of course, Bea and Trish’s strong female drive to carry on and be mothers to us all.

For Jake and me, our hearts and dreams hadn’t been broken yet. We were excited about life and we talked about
it all the time. And we wanted kids. Every time Jake would make love to me, he would say,
Make a baby with me, Lena
. That’s what he called me for short.
This time it will work
, he would say, though it didn’t for almost a year.

In the meantime, we took refuge in each other. He wasn’t much more experienced in the relationship department than I was, but he was tender and sweet with me and we learned together. We explored each other’s bodies and our own, and we figured out how to feel good while we were tucked under the thick wool blankets in our tiny cabin at the Walker Ranch.

Jake’s parents lived a couple of hours north, near the Canadian border. We didn’t hear from them much except for an occasional phone call from Jake’s mom. Jake didn’t want me to meet them because he said his dad was a mean drunk and his mom had taken the abuse so long that she was just a shell of a woman.

In the summer of 2004 we did the rodeo circuit again, traveling back to California and down to Texas. Neither one of us ever got national attention but it was what we loved doing. In the fall we would drive the cattle back to the ranch and in the spring we would take them out to pasture.

The winters were long and cold in Montana but we had each other and our horses. Jake had bought me a little herding dog. He was an Australian shepherd mix and he hated everyone. He only had one purpose in life and that was to herd the cattle. We named him Pistol.

The following spring Jake and I made a plan to take the cattle out to pasture and then camp for a week or so in the valley before heading back. Once Redman agreed to it, we decided to think of it as a little honeymoon, even though we had been married for more than a year. We would take
our time coming back, fish in the streams, and enjoy nature.

“I want to bring Dancer,” I said to Jake as he sat on the steps going up to our cabin.

“No, she’s no good for this type of thing. You know that. She’s got no stamina.”

I sat down next to him. Tucking a strand of my dark hair behind my ear, he squinted his eyes and smiled, revealing his boyish dimples. “We’ll take Bonnie and Elite. They’re good girls. Okay, sweetie?”

He sat there in his tight Wranglers and cowboy hat set low on his head. His legs were spread wide and his chest puffed out, broad and firm. He had such a strong and convincing presence. I could never say no to him. “Okay.”

“Come here, Lena.” He pulled me onto his lap and brushed my hair off my shoulders to fall down my back. The roughness of his jaw tickled my neck as he laid small kisses near my ear. “You’re mine,” he whispered. “No one else can ever have you.”

I kissed him on the mouth, expressing my agreement. I was the luckiest girl in the whole world. I turned in his embrace and pushed my back against his chest. His hands clasped together over my center, holding me tight against his body. I wondered briefly what his hands would feel like clasped over my pregnant belly. “What are you thinking about, angel?”

“I wonder what our kids will look like.”

“I can only imagine precious little girls as beautiful as their mother.”

Turning to look up at him, I smiled. “You mean you don’t want boys?”

“Oh I do. It’s just hard for me to imagine them.”

“What will you teach them?”

He looked up thoughtfully. “Besides the work and the horses, the cattle, I guess. Maybe I’ll teach them how to find the perfect girl and how to be a man.”

I looked up to the sky and rested the back of my head on his shoulder. “Tell me, Jake McCrea, how does one find the perfect girl?”

“You have to look real hard for that sparkle in her eye.”

I began to giggle and then he tickled me and I fell into fits of laughter. “You’re a silly man,” I shouted. “Stop that right now.”

We were quiet for several moments. He turned me in his lap and kissed me softly, holding my bottom lip between his teeth for a second before letting go and murmuring near my ear, “You’re a sexy woman. Come to bed with me, Lena.”

We packed our things in our saddlebags and rode out at dawn. It was a two-day ride to the pasture and one back without the herd. The skies were clear but it was brisk. I wore a thick down coat and heavy jeans over thermals but I was still cold. Jake wore a T-shirt, Carhartt jacket, jeans, and a baseball cap.

On the first night, we set up camp at dusk near a stream. Jake built a fire so I could warm up some tea. I unwrapped sandwiches Bea had made for us while I watched my silly husband strip down to nothing. He was completely naked, standing outside the tent. “What are you doing?” I asked in amusement.

“Going for a swim.”

“Jake, you’ll freeze.”

“No I won’t. Watch me.” He put his cowboy boots back on and ran down the short embankment toward the stream.
I grabbed a blanket and chased after him. Before I could reach him, he tore off his boots and quickly walked into the deepest part of the river, shouting back at me the whole way.

“Oh, baby, this feels great!” he yelled. “You have to get in here! Come on, get naked.”

“No way! You’re crazy!” He only lasted about two minutes and then he came jogging out of the water, cupping his hands over himself. “You don’t want to see this, Mrs. McCrea.” He was shaking but still smiling. His abs and chest and biceps flexed as he squeezed his arms in toward his body.

“You are one sexy cowboy, even freezing.” I threw the blanket around him and he laughed, shivering under the wool.

“You gonna warm me up, sweetheart?” he asked, his eyes glimmering with hope.

“I’d love to warm you up, handsome.”

Back in our tent, Jake never got dressed. He climbed into our sleeping bag and just grinned at me as I undressed. There was one small lantern on the floor of the tent but it gave off enough light for me to see the desire in his eyes.

“Hurry, Lena, I need you to warm me up.”

I got undressed and slipped into the sleeping bag, facing toward him. “Should we turn out the lantern?”

“No one will see us; we’re in the middle of nowhere. Let’s leave it on so I can look at you.” He grinned and then sunk down and kissed his way from the hollow of my neck to my breasts. “Your body is perfect,” he said as he continued to kiss every inch of me. We made love twice that night and then we stayed twisted up in each other for a long time after. Sometime later in the night, he stirred at the sound of the wind rushing through the nearby trees.

The temperature had dropped dramatically once the sun
went down, and I thought it would be wise to get dressed again. I reluctantly left the warmth of the sleeping bag.

“It’s just the wind,” I said through chattering teeth as my body trembled uncontrollably.

“You’re freezing, Lena. Just get back in here.”

“But . . .”

“Trust me, I’m warm enough to heat you up throughout the night.”

He was right, as usual. I stripped back down to nothing and pressed myself against his warm, naked body. He threw his muscular leg over me and I ran my hand down it, finding the wiry hair on his thighs and the smooth part where his Wranglers had chafed the skin. His big body enveloped me and made me feel loved and protected.

They say that home is where the heart is. Mine was always right there, tucked between Jake’s big arms.

At sunrise we were back to business, packing up our camp and saddling the horses. There was an eerie calm through the valley, as if it were part of a landscape painting, vivid and bright but frozen in time. The hills looked one-dimensional. No wind rustling the trees, no sounds from nature, and no vocalizations from the herd, which gave me a foreboding feeling.

I looked to Jake, who was cinching the saddle on Elite, our beautiful black-and-tan bay horse. His face was drawn down in a worried expression.

“Calm before the storm?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said quickly. “The horses would be twitchy.” He kneed Elite in the belly so she would inhale, allowing him to cinch tighter. When he yanked up, she spooked, jumped sideways, and began skittering backward. Jake grabbed the reins, pulling them up and in against her
neck. “Sit, sit,” he hissed through gritted teeth. It was his command to stop the horse from moving backward. He was trying to get control but Elite was skittish. She sensed something.

He jumped into the saddle without hesitation and turned her in a circle as she chomped down and tugged at the bit in her mouth. “Get Bonnie ready,” he said to me. “I’m gonna run this one out a bit.”

“There’s a storm coming, right Jake?” I asked in a shaky voice.

He turned the horse once more and stared down at me, gauging my expression. His lips turned up into a self-assured smile. “Don’t worry, baby, everything will be okay.” With that, he let the reins out and gave Elite a little squeeze with his heels. From her back legs, she leapt forward, and they were off.

Horses are beautiful, majestic, and useful, but they’re not intelligent creatures. They have no way of judging a situation—they just react. Jake wanted to tire Elite out so she wouldn’t be so jumpy and endanger us. I would be the one riding her. He was trying to control her so she wouldn’t react to the doom that we all felt looming around us.

Once he was back with Elite, he seemed anxious. He wanted to get going and move the cattle out. He slid off of the saddle and handed me the reins. “She’s good. Let’s go,” he said and then he kissed me on the nose.

We gradually moved through the valley as the weather began to pick up. Jake sat back, relaxed in his saddle as he jogged Bonnie back and forth behind the herd, periodically whistling or clicking commands at her. At times I could hear him growling, “Get, get-up you.” A cow and her calf lagged behind, slowing our progress down. Pistol worked one side,
prowling low and keeping the cattle in line while I trotted Elite on the other side. I stole glances at Jake every time I felt the wind pick up. He wore his baseball cap low, shadowing his eyes, but I could see his mouth. Every time I looked back he would flash me his dimpled grin, a piece of straw peeking from the corner of his lips as he chewed on it.

As the sun dropped down in the sky and fell behind the distant mountains, big storm clouds moved in, fast and hauntingly dark. The sky went almost black at three o’clock in the afternoon. I was shivering from the gusty bursts of wind blasting through me. Jake’s expression began to change. His jaw tightened and flexed and he sat upright in the saddle. We found a section of tall grass where the cattle could bunch together.

“We’ll stop here and camp over by the trees,” he shouted to me over the loud, rushing wind. The herd began to react and Elite began jumping nervously. Jake raced Bonnie toward me. “Get down from her!” he yelled.