Kristen Ashley - Play It Safe

Then I said gently, “I’m sorry, Gray.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll be okay.”

It was his turn to nod. “One thing I got is insurance. So, yeah, eventually, we’ll be okay.”

It was good to know he had insurance but that wasn’t what I was talking about.

“That isn’t what I meant, honey.”

“I know that, darlin’, and my response still stands. We’ll be okay in all ways. Just that right about now, when we need to crash so we can get at least a little sleep so we can face whatever the day’s gonna bring, you need to know that it’s all gonna be okay.”

He was right.

I tipped my face so I could kiss his chest. Then I repositioned and looked at him again.

“Do you get sleepless nights often?”

“Nope, work hard all day, sleep hard all night.”

“So, you waking up is unusual?”

“Can’t say it’s never happened, can say it’s so rare don’t remember when it happened last.”

“So what woke you?”

That got me a different kind of grin but he still wasn’t committed to it.

“Thought it was my subconscious reminding me you’d gone to sleep without your panties on.”

I grinned back then pressed gently, “But that wasn’t it?”

“If you’re askin’ if I heard somethin’, then no. I heard somethin’, I’d look. I wouldn’t start somethin’ with you. If you’re askin’ if I got a sense of somethin’, a vibe, who knows? What I do know is, awake or asleep, I’d hear that blast. I sleep hard but I don’t sleep so deep I’d sleep through that and I know since I didn’t the last time.”

“Mm…” I muttered, my eyes sliding away.

“Ivey,” he called and my eyes slid back. “We got a mess outside and a fight that was already pretty fuckin’ ugly that just got a whole lot uglier. We need to sleep so we can be prepared to face the day.”

He was right.

“Okay, honey,” I agreed and started to move to settle back into him but stopped when his arm gave me a squeeze and I focused back on him.

“I’m not used to sleepless nights but that don’t mean after what happened tonight, seein’ you run around a burnin’ barn, I won’t start to have them.”

I knew where this was going from my macho man rancher cowboy so I opened my mouth to cut him off.

He saw it and his arm gave me another squeeze.

“Let me finish, baby, yeah?”

I closed my mouth and nodded.

“You saved five horses,” he whispered.

I did. I did do that.

Gray wasn’t done.

“You runnin’ into that barn like that, workin’ to save those horses, this ranch, I didn’t like it and pray to God nothin’ like that’ll happen again. But I gotta say, wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher’s woman and just like you, when you do somethin’, you’re the best there is.”

That meant so much, was so beautiful, my nose instantly started stinging and his face got fuzzy as tears filled my eyes.

He pulled me up his chest, ignored my burgeoning tears and ordered, “Now, say you love me, Ivey, kiss me then settle and go to sleep.”

I swallowed then whispered shakily, “I love you, Gray.”

“Now, kiss me,” he whispered back.

I touched my mouth to his and he pulled me back down his chest.

“Now, go to sleep.”

I put my cheek to his chest nodding and deep breathing.

I didn’t go right to sleep, it took me awhile just as it took Gray but I eventually got to sleep and I did it before him.

The morning after the fire, early, we got visits from Shim and Roan. Roan on his way to work, Shim with the flatbed of his pickup filled with horse feed and hay. This was kind since ours went up in smoke, something they both obviously knew (thus the visits) since news travels fast in a small town even through the night. It was also a testimony to the kind of man my cowboy rancher was that he accepted it considering Shim was still a ranch hand on Jeb Sharp’s land. It was too early for the feed store to be open so it was likely this was given to us by Sharp, not Shim.

For reasons unknown to me, regardless of the fact I was exhausted and dragging, I started the day by tricking myself out. I didn’t put on one of my fabulous dresses but did the hair, makeup, designer jeans, complicated but casual (and expensive) top routine. I didn’t strap on high heels, however, instead I slipped on some fabulous flip-flops. But I went for the gusto with everything else. It could be I needed my armor for the day after a tragedy. It could be that was just me.

In the end with who came calling, I was glad I did.

The night before, after the fireman and cops left, they cordoned off the barn with police tape. One could say waking up and looking out your window to see part of your property lined with yellow police tape was not a sight you wanted to see in the morning

Or ever.

After I fed my man and served coffee to him and his friends, I dug out the insurance papers. Then I called Gray’s insurance company and left them a message stating that after the police and arson investigators released the scene, we needed an urgent visit because we had seven dead horse carcasses fifty yards away from our house and we needed to put those bodies in the ground so we could put those souls at peace.

The arson investigator showed shortly after Shim and Roan left and Gray asked, while he was dealing with things on the ranch, if I would go to the nursing home to break the news to Grandma Miriam. Seeing as our phone was ringing off the hook already and it was just eight o’clock, he was worried news would travel and she’d learn from someone else.

So I hightailed it into town and, in a futile effort to soften the blow, I bought her another book, some magazines and a shed load of candy bars. I figured a nursing home was kind of like prison, you had to have the proper currency to make your way and garner favors and for oldies it wasn’t cigarettes. So I bought enough candy bars to make Grandma Miriam the queen of the swanky retirement estate. I also got some for Gray since there was a reason there were so many candy bar wrappers in his truck. Gray did not reach for a Power Bar or a banana when he got peckish and considering his day was physical activity from dawn practically to dusk, he got the munchies often. Though I did make sure most of his had peanuts so he had protein.

I was dreading my task and once the news was delivered I felt little relief. Grandma Miriam was stunned, scared for Gray and me and heartbroken that the barn built by her husband’s father, a barn she saw out the back window while she was doing the dishes every day for over fifty years, no longer existed not to mention how she reacted when I told her we lost seven horses. And I was right, she was happy for her book, magazines and candy bars but they did not do one thing to soften the blow.

Before I left, her hand clutched mine with a surprising strength borne of fear, her fading blue eyes locked to me and she whispered fervently, “You and Gray stay safe, child. Promise me, please, you two will stay safe.”

I promised her yet again that Lenny was on it, Jeb Sharp was on it and that her grandson would never let anything happen to him or me. It was this last that got her hand to relax in mine. Then again, it would. She knew Gray so she knew this was the truth.

I drove home to see an SUV and pickup parked by the house and to find out from Gray that his morning had been busy. Half of Mustang had been by and I knew this was a fact when I hit the kitchen and found the farm table practically covered in dishes, pans and plates filled with casseroles, pies, cakes and brownies. Gray said his big shed where he kept tools, equipment and peach tree things was now filled near to overflowing with horse feed, hay and used bridles and saddles that folks had popped by to bring.

For the next hour, I would experience this same thing as folks brought food, pop, beer and equipment but I was surprised to see these folks were not lookee-loos. They came, they gave us their sentiments, they dropped off their generosity and they left. They knew Gray and I had things to do and other things to occupy our minds. They knew they’d be underfoot. They knew it was taxing to have unexpected company. So they shared their kindness then they got the hell out of there.

I’d never experienced anything like it.

It was like experiencing beauty.

It was early afternoon and Gray and I had just had huge plates filled with Ang, the waitress (still!) at the diner’s Mexican chicken, cheese and tortilla casserole. We were still at the table when his head came up and turned. Mine did too and we looked out the big window over the cabinet at the side of the kitchen.

There we saw coming down the lane another SUV followed by a pickup and as they careened closer at what appeared to be high speed I saw they were followed by a sedan.

“No,” Gray whispered then I tensed when he clipped, “fuck no.”

Then his chair scraped back and he was out of it like a shot, stalking to the backdoor.

I had no idea who owned those vehicles but I did know whoever it was really wasn’t welcome so I shot to my feet and ran after Gray.

When I got down the back steps I saw he was striding, long legs eating the distance, across the side yard that was dotted with big, shady trees toward the now parked trucks and car. And it was then I saw who was in them.

The SUV held Gray’s uncles Olly and Charlie, the two I’d met, in the pickup was a man I’d never seen but his looks were unmistakably Cody and in the car was Macy.