Page 2 of Redbird

I put my hands on my hips. “I don’t know, baby. What are you making?”

He looks horrified and Gerard’s eyes glint. A ghost of a smile passes over his mouth.

“I can’t cook, mom,” Cash says.

Gerard lifts him down from Shadow and gathers the reins. “Maybe you should go help your mother, son,” he says. “You’re not too young to learn.”

Cash wilts, stuffing his hands in his pockets. I pull him near, hugging him against my hip and ruffling his dark curls.

“We’re having breakfast,” I say. “It’s Sunday so your dad gets to pick.”

“And he always picks breakfast,” Cash says, his mood improving.

Like father, like son. They’d live off biscuits and gravy if I let them. Cash takes his hat off and hits it against his thigh, the way Gerard does, to clear the dust. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Where you headed?” Gerard asks.

“Gotta help with Shadow,” he says, like it’s obvious.

I nod and Gerard hands Cash the reins. I watch them cross the yard and enter the barn, Shadow’s hooves clopping on the floor. They disappear and I hear my son’s voice faintly, still asking incessant questions.

My heart warms as my husband answers. Gerard has so much patience for him, just as much as he has for me.

It’s everyone else in the world who pisses him off.

I pad barefoot through the front hall and into the living room. It looks exactly the same as the day he offered me a contract to be his submissive. Except, now our son’s toys are strewn across the floor. There’s a stack of tin cars by the hearth and pile of sticks he brought in from the yard in the fireplace.

All evidence of the life we’ve built together in the last seven years.

Heart warm, I head to the kitchen and start taking things from the fridge. After Cash was born, Gerard decided to designate Sunday as the one time a week where no one but our family are allowed in the ranch house. All the hired help and wranglers take a day off in their homes, in the employee housing to the west of the house.

The very last day of the week is my favorite.

For a few different reasons.

On Sunday morning, Gerard and Cash go out to do their rounds. My son insists he be involved in everything Gerard does, but my husband only has time for it on Sundays. That’s when he sets our boy on the saddle in front of him and they ride out to the border. Sometimes they’re back by noon. Other days they stay out, just riding the land.

“This’ll be his when we retire,” Gerard says sometimes. “He needs to know it like the back of his hand.”

Sometimes, I take Angel and go with them. Other days, I like the quiet of the house when it’s just me.

Tonight, the kitchen is too quiet so I turn on Maddie’s radio. Peaceful music fills the sunny space as I roll out biscuit dough and start cutting. Maddie has all the resources in the world at her fingertips, but she still uses a chipped coffee mug to cut her biscuits. I understand—there’s something about the worn porcelain that’s comforting. Like hundreds of hands have done this before me and a hundred more will do it when I’m gone.

My mind drifts.

We spent the last few years resting and raising our son. We both needed to learn to be a married couple and let time heal the wounds of the past. I needed to process my first marriage and everything that had happened since I met Gerard. Our beginning was scorching hot, but with it came death, deceit, and the realization that we were both broken.

In the last six years, we’ve picked up all the pieces together. We’ve healed through our daily rituals.

Some of them are simple and sweet. Like the meals I make for him or the kisses he presses to my forehead before he leaves in the morning.

Others are so much darker, in a way that makes my toes curl just thinking about them. Pain to teach me it’s safe to be vulnerable with him. Pleasure to heal me from the years of having my needs trampled on.

These rituals fuel our intimacy. At night, when the doors are closed. When the ranch sleeps.

There, I find him, intimately. In the harsh darkness when it’s just our bodies, the bull skull watching over us, and the heat of leather against skin.

My body tingles, wide awake.

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