Page 44 of Bucked By Love

“No. I’m not.”

We kiss again, and this time, she wraps her arms around my neck and lingers in the space between us. “Tonight was perfect,” she whispers.

Claire’s affection, I’ve learned, is a quiet thing. Like if she says it too loudly, someone might catch on that she actually has a heart.

“It was perfect for me, too.”

She gives me one final, tiny kiss. “Later, cowboy.”

Claire gets out of the truck. I watch her slip in through the gate and vanish down the path back home. Only once she’s inside do I kick up the truck again and head home.

Dawn’s already breaking when I cross the railroad tracks and roll up to my grandparents’ house. They’ve got a big property that’s been in the family for generations, and looks it. They don’t have the money to upkeep anything, so I earn my keep, mostly, by keeping the house from falling in on itself and more often than not, providing tech support.

I’ve stayed with them since my parents passed away—first in the bed upstairs, but I’ve since made a little home for myself in the guest house. It’s not much, mostly a space for them to store stuff and promptly forget they ever owned it. But it beats me crawling in at the small hours of the morning and getting that you’ve been up to no good glare from Grandmimi.

I clean out my truck bed of the evidence from tonight, wrap it all up in a quilt, and haul it inside. I know I need to hit the sack and try to get a few hours in before work, but my entire body is buzzing.

I get it, now—how Eve bit into the apple and it changed everything. Being with Claire tonight has fixed the color in my world. Everything looks different. My truck isn’t my truck anymore—now, it’s the place Claire and I fumbled around with each other for the first time. My room isn’t my room; when I look around at it, I’m looking for places to fit Claire.

I wash up and check myself in the mirror. I run my fingers around the side of my neck. Pink ribbons run down my throat. Red, suckled spots that are going to turn all sorts of blue and purple. I look like I’ve been attacked by a hell cat. These marks are going to look bad tomorrow.

I start rummaging through the drawers. And then I find it. A small, red bandana. I unfold it, twist up the ends, and tie it around my neck.

There we go. It covers up the marks. I can wear it until they heal—but the truth is, I don’t want them to heal. I want to be claimed by her. Forever.

That’s when I decide:

I’ll do anything for Claire.

Anything.

I’ll hide her rough love on my body. I’ll keep her heart a secret. I’ll work for her crappy father, I’ll keep my hands off her in public, and I’ll do it all. Happily.

Because Claire’s mine, and I’m hers, and there’s nothing on God’s green earth that can tear us apart.

34

CLAIRE

Claire’s diary, Aug 10, 2016.

A memory came back to me:

I’m a kid. It’s the end of summer, everything in Kentucky turning into fall. I’m playing outside in the woods behind the ranch.

I come across a tree. It’s covered in black, fluffy caterpillars. None of them are moving. They’re all frozen in place. I take a stick and poke one of the caterpillars with it to see if it’ll move. Instead, the insect disintegrates completely, pieces of it falling apart and hitting the dried leaves below.

I drop my stick and run away screaming. I run all the way back home. Daddy is on the porch. I throw myself at his legs and sob. He takes me in his lap in attempt to stop my tears and demands that I tell him what’s wrong.

When I tell him about the caterpillars, he informs me: “Caterpillars that don’t turn into a butterfly die.” He swipes away my tears and turns my chin to look me straight in the eyes. “Don’t be a caterpillar.”

I remembered this memory today. It bugged me, so I looked it up.

It’s urban legend. Apparently, caterpillars don’t have to be butterflies. They can be moths. Or they can continue their lives at caterpillars. Depending on the species, they have different cycles. It’s more likely I caught them in a state or diapause (hibernation) or that there was something wrong with the tree and they’d all gotten diseased.

But Daddy’s message was clear. Grow. Change. Be beautiful. Or die.

Be the Belleflower Queen or die.

That’s how I took it, anyway.

I’ve lived with that. I’ve spent my entire life molding myself into the kind of change that’s expected and required of me.

But I’m done forming in his brittle, cold cocoon.

So here’s my mission statement. My own, personal ode to Claire Preacher.

I’m going to be a fucking butterfly. And I’m going to grow my wings my way.

---