Captured(59)

We saddle up the horses and ride back ho—ride back to the farm. The horses seem to know where they’re going, which is good because I sure as hell don’t, and I’m not the greatest rider. I can stay on a horse, but not with any great skill. We make it back to the barn in what feels like half an hour, unsaddle the horses, and let them loose in the east pasture. I put the saddles and tack away. By this time it’s dark, and my heart and mind are whirling in mad circles. I don’t know what’s going to happen now, or what to expect. Or what I want. I’m scared of what I’m feeling. I’m scared of what I’m sure Reagan is feeling. I’m not sure I’m ready for what just happened, for the intense bond that was just created between us.

Until today, it was a dance: an attraction and a mutual emotional need drawing us closer and closer, creating chemical reactions in the form of sexual fervor. It was all of that, yet clearly it was more, a subtext I, at least, didn’t anticipate being woven under the surface of our interaction. And now that we’ve consummated it, our relationship has somehow grown, deepened, expanded, and it scares me. I don’t know if I’m ready for it, if I’m capable of it. If I’m man enough for what Reagan needs and deserves.

Do I assume we’re going inside the house?

I’m standing in the open door of the barn, staring out at the fading reddish-purple-orange of the setting sun behind the house. Reagan is behind me. I feel her move closer. Feel her press up against me, chin on my back, arms circling my middle, hands flattening against my chest.

“Derek? What happens now?” Guess she’s just as confused as I am.

And here I thought sex would simplify, or at least clarify, things between us. Turns out it only deepened the shades and shadows of all the gray areas, making the tangled web joining us more complex.

I owe her my strength. Decisiveness. Or, failing that, I owe her a modicum of honesty. “I don’t know. What just happened between us, Reagan, it was…a lot.” I place my hands over hers, because for some reason touching her in any way makes it easier to let the honesty tumble out. “I don’t know what to make of it. What to do with it.”

“Are you scared?”

This feels like going into combat, when you feel fear and know you have to face it, admit it, and gut through it, man up and deal with shit despite it. “Yes.”

She ducks under my arm, slides up the length of my body, and looks up at me. “I am, too. I wasn’t expecting that.” She runs her palms up and down my chest. Her eyes are so soft, so understanding. “Explore it with me? Please?”

Reagan steps away from me, backward. Toward the house. Holds her hand out to me. I don’t think I have any real clue what I’m agreeing to, but I take her hand anyway, and we walk side by side to the house.

Each moment is a vignette, a tableau: my boots crunching on the gravel; a glance sideways at Reagan, her honey hair swinging and tossed in the breeze, the subtle bounce of her tits as she walks; a thick shred of white cloud shaded dark by coming night, hanging low over the house; our feet clomping on the wooden porch steps; the screen door creaking open, a pause, a slam.

I follow her up the stairs. Watch her fine ass sway from side to side with each step. I glance at the generations of framed photographs lining the wall of the stairway, photos ranging from sepia tone and black and white to washed-out ’70s to the ’90s, Tom as a kid, his official Corps photo. One of Reagan and Tom and Tom’s dad. Look away from that one. Twinge of guilt. I stop, and I’m staring at the photo of Tom, Reagan, and Carl. Must’ve been just before Tom shipped out for the first time, after he and Reagan eloped. They’re both so young, just kids. Reagan realizes I’ve stopped following her, and she turns back.

“I see that photo every time I come up these stairs,” she says. “And it hurts every time. But I can’t bring myself to take it down.”

“Good-looking son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he was.”

What am I doing here? What did I do? That’s Tom’s wife coming down the stairs, concern in her eyes. His widow.

Shit.

I’m not breathing, shaking all over, sweating. Panic attack. Haven’t had one of these in a while.

“Derek?” She’s on the step above me, touching my cheek with a tender hand. “Breathe, baby. Look at me. Look into my eyes.”

I find her eyes, so blue, so blue. Palest blue and wide as the Texas sky. But I still can’t breathe. Find myself sinking to the step, mouth open and trying to find oxygen, blinking too fast, seeing double, fists clenched and shaking.

I see Reagan, see her mouth moving. Hear nothing. Ceiling, wall. The photo, the f*cking photo, f*cking Tom and a young, slim, bright-eyed Reagan with flaxen hair a lighter blonde than it is now and an arm around Tom and her hand on his chest, big burly beefy Carl with his arm across both.

Then I can feel Reagan’s hand on my back, scratching and smoothing and circling, start to hear sounds, words, distorting and cohering into her voice.

“…Rek….Derek? Talk to me. Please, please come back. Breathe. I’m here. You’re okay.”

I shift, roll. I see her eyes again, scared and worried. “I need to sit up.” I’m lying down, falling, sliding down the stairs, an edge of one of the steps in my back. “Help me sit up.”

Reagan moves down past me, takes my hands, and helps me to a sitting position. She sits on the stair below me, sideways. A tear slides down her cheek. “Are you—are you okay now?”