Page 30 of Rust and Bloom

And this is a revelation in, and of, itself. Because while my mother was alive, she was never what made things feel OK. She wasn't who I turned to for comfort.

She was more likely to be the person I was seeking shelter from.

But that didn't mean her place in my life was awful. It wasn't.

Eleanor was synonymous with structure.

What she brought to my table was something more like clockwork. Seconds tickin' off on a schedule she alone set. And the whole thing worked because she told it to. Chaos tamed into peace. Not beautiful, or calm, or quiet. It was the kind of peace that came in with relentless indifference to whether or not you were ready for it.

It was the kind of peace that pronounced itself with fists up, ready for a fight. Bedlam be damned. Eleanor didn't ask nicely for anyone to play along. She wasn't, in fact, askin' anything at all of the world.

She was simply lettin' the fates know she was in charge here.

And while Eleanor wasn't dictating the lives of a populace like Stalin or Mao, she was still a czar in an Ashby ranch kind of way. All the talent, all the money, all the power—hell, even the water—flowed through her.

And it worked.

That's the thing about tyrants. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, they hold everythin' up. And when she died, everyone found out just how much rode double behind the cult of personality called Eleanor Ashby.

Because it all fell apart.

Not in a big way. Not the kind of way that's got a label like foreclosure, or bankruptcy, or auction.

Little ways like empty hours in the day, and missing seasonal trips to Harmon & Sons, and a lonely dinner table where the lazy brother is now a scheduled nightly drama to be watched like Grey's Anatomy.

This, I think, is what I've been circling for the past several weeks. After seven years, I'm finally understandin' what I lost. I'm finally able to admit that I lost it.

But at the same time, I don't feel that loss anymore.

Lookin' at Marigold, and Colt, and Destiny—all I feel is… hope.

CHAPTER 9

There's somethin' really sexy about a tired woman.

The way their eyes go all half-mast, heavy-lidded and slow, like the light behind 'em is dimmin' down to somethin' warm and low.

And their bodies go all pliant and soft, every muscle that spent the whole damn day holdin' itself together just lettin' go, surrenderin' to gravity, and heat, and skin.

And their objections go all quiet. Not gone—just laid down. Like they're still in there somewhere but they got tired of fightin' the thing they wanted anyway.

That's Savannah tonight in the shower. All that polished Ashby armor gone, stripped down to just skin, and steam, and the sound she makes when she's too tired to hold herself up anymore.

Her words come out as hums, and hmms, and mmmms. Primitive, and guttural, and overflowin' with agreement. Like some part of her deeper than language has taken over and that part hasn't got a single fuckin' opinion left in it.

I don't fuck her in the shower. Not tonight. Tonight I just touch her, slow and deliberate, the way you read a book when you got time—word by word, pressin' into each one until you feel the weight of it.

I'm lookin' for the little buttons. The places that make her forget she's Savannah Ashby, that make her forget the four-point-two million people who think they know her, that make her forget every single fuckin' thing except the feelin' of my hands.

I wash her hair. Take my time with it. Fingers workin' through all that blonde until it's dark and heavy with water, and she tips her head back into my palms like she's offerin' me something.

And maybe she is. Maybe this is the only altar either of us has ever believed in—hot water, and skin, and her breathin' goin' ragged under the rainfall head.

I wash her breasts. Slow. And she makes those sounds. Those hums, those soft desperate little sounds that she only ever hands out to me.

She comes on my fingers twice. Slow and easy, both times. Not desperately, either. It's just a simple surrender that happens because it was destined to. Her knees go all soft as her head tips back against the tile. Her drowsy eyes flutter, then close.

And I stand there watchin' her. Steam risin'. Water drummin' down. My dick so hard it's standin' straight up against my stomach, sore, and swollen, and pulsing with every heartbeat, and I don't do a goddamn thing about it yet.