Two halves of her existence were about to collide, and Callie swore she could hear the impending explosion. The last thing she ever thought Derrick would do was to come all the way to Tulsa. She was certain his mother had sent him, but why she'd sent him remained to be seen.
He was the only person who could testify on her behalf about when her and Ford had started dating, so just then she needed him. She was going to have to put up with his toxic levels of self-absorption. The desire to put on a pair of wading boots before they entered the airport continued to taunt her.
"I don't think you ever told me what Derrick does for a living." Ford interrupted her thoughts.
"He doesn't really do anything. He tells people he's a pro video game player, but that's not really true. Mostly he just lives off of his parents' money and does what they tell him to do. His father is Steven Devers, the movie producer. Part of the reason I left was that I was so sick of his parents and of him spewing on about dreams that were never going to come true. He never wanted to put any real work behind the dream. That's not how people make things happen."
"I guess I owe the idiot my thanks. Maybe he'll let me buy him one of those tiny bottles of wine or some airport shit."
Shaking her head at that, she leaned across the console of Ford's truck and brushed a kiss on his cheek. "Why do you want to buy him a drink?" She already knew but wanted to hear him say it.
"Because I got you," he supplied readily. "Would you mind telling me about the cheating? You told me he'd done it but never really elaborated."
Callie cringed. Ford had been open about Meritt's cheating. She knew what that had to have cost him, so she went on with the story. "I caught him more than once jacking off to some chat room woman on his computer. He'd rather do that than be with me."
Ford shook his head. "That had nothing to do with you."
"How do you figure that?"
"He knew all along that you deserved better. Helluva lot easier to get your rocks off to something on a screen than pull your head out of your ass and put forth effort to be someone even close to the kind of man that you deserve. Like you said, effort ain't something he's got in spades, and work is worth more than want every fucking time."
"Well, then it did have something to do with me at least a little. Besides, you still partially blame yourself for what Meritt did. It seems like you could take your own advice."
"I blame myself for falling into Meritt's trap. I'm letting go of the affairs. The brilliant and beautiful woman sitting right beside me proved to me that none of that was my fault. She needs to learn the same thing about her ex. Let's get this over with." Ford pulled into the parking lot and made it to her door in record time.
Callie's heart tripped over the next few beats. Tension roiled in her belly, and she still hadn't shaken the nausea that had come on earlier in the week from her father's stunt. It felt like a decade since she'd had to exist in Derrick's world, and she had no interest in having to return to the misery if only for a few minutes. But this was for her and Ford. She'd endure as long as she had to.
The Tulsa airport was relatively empty that evening. It was so different from LAX Callie was certain Derrick would be appalled at the quaint midwestern passthrough. She saw him before he noticed their approach. He was standing there looking both lost and annoyed. Of course, he almost always bore that expression. As he turned towards them, the almost comical difference between the man holding her hand and the one holding a bouquet of flowers struck her. What had she ever seen in Derrick? Ford was all rough edges and work-worn hands. Solid, substantial security was housed in the very marrow of his bones. His thick muscles were ranch earned and used for more than being impressive, although he was certainly that as well. Mostly he looked like hers. Her cowboy, her love, her life maybe.
Derrick's weekly manicures and lean body made it clear that he paid a trainer a lot of money for nothing more worthy than the vanity that drove him.
"Who are you?" Derrick demanded of Ford, but he also took three rather large steps back making him appear to be a child who was about to be scolded. Callie reminded herself that Derrick really was a child, a rich spoiled brat much like Meritt only with money. In typical fashion, he ignored Callie altogether.
She cleared her throat. "This is Ford Holder, my boyfriend. Why did you fly out here?"
"Mom told me I had to," he admitted.
Ford's eye roll seemed to clue him in as to how asinine that sounded. "For what purpose?" Ford demanded.
This time Derrick turned his attention on Callie. "Mom said you needed a favor or something, and I'm supposed to bring you home."
Ford's mouth opened, but Callie shook her head. "LA isn't my home. I'm not coming back. If you ever listened to me, you'd know that."
"So, what? You're going to move in with him and do your picture thing or whatever? And eat, clearly." He gestured to her hips. "They obviously don't have yogalates fusion classes out here in the asscrack of America."
Before Callie could even gasp over his insults, Ford had him by the collar of his Hugo Boss shirt. "If I were you, I'd turn around and walk, douche-whistle, before I fill your fat mouth full of shit straight out of the asscrack of America."
She watched Derrick's face tinge of purple before she touched Ford's massive forearms. "Let him go."
When Ford released the shirt, Derrick gasped for breath and stared at him. "I could have you arrested."
"Oh, I wish you'd try," Ford spat.
Callie rubbed her temples. "Derrick, I'm sorry you flew all the way out here. I am not coming back to LA, and I'm not accepting those flowers either. We're over. I don't know how to make that more clear for you. I've tried everything I can think of." She took Ford's hand. "Let's just go." She'd never seen Derrick angry about anything. She didn't like that side of him any more than she liked his typical laidback complacency.
But as they were walking away, Derrick called, "Callie, wait!"
She knew she probably shouldn't have, but she turned back. "What?"
He made it to them in a few strides. "Mom said something about a lawsuit or something. What's that all about?"
"Ford's ex-wife is making a spousal support claim against him by insinuating that we were dating prior to his divorce. I thought maybe you'd be willing to help me prove that it isn't true. I didn't even come out here until two months ago. But you don't seem like you'd be interested in helping us, so," she shrugged, "never mind."
"You're divorced?" Shock furrowed Derrick's brow.
"Is that all you got out of that whole story?" Ford clearly wasn't in the mood for more small talk.
Derrick rolled his eyes, but then he pulled his phone from his pocket. "When is she saying you two started dating?"
"Over the summer," Callie refused to hope. She'd been disappointed too many times.
"I don't know why I'm doing this, but I have the pics the press took of us at all of those events Mom and Dad made us go to over the summer. It would've been hard for you to be cheating on me since we were out most every night at one thing or another. The photos were on all of the gossip blogs so they'd have a timestamp tied to the IP addresses."
Never in his life had Ford wanted to hug someone right before he kicked their ass. "May I?" He gestured for the phone.
"Don't break it. There are only fifty in existence. It's a prototype my father got from Apple."
Ford ignored the warning and scrolled through the pictures instead. Relief washed over him with such force it made him woozy. An odd reaction to seeing the woman he wanted to make his wife out with another man, but it wasn't just that he was going to get to shut Meritt's mouth once and for all. It was so much more than that. 'I never try to take pictures of what it looks like. I try to capture how it feels.' Callie's words replayed in his head. The photographers must've used the same methodology because in every image his baby—stuffed into designer gowns and jewelry that would never be her—looked absolutely miserable.
Swallowing down that pride his brother had referenced, Ford handed the phone back. "I can't thank you enough for helping us. Can you send those to her so we can show the lawyer?"
"Yeah. No problem. Turn your AirDrop on, Callie."
She retrieved her own phone and waited on the pictures to download. "Why are you doing this?"
"I don't know." Derrick sighed. "I guess because...you look happy." The next words rang with irritation. "I guess I don't want you to hate me."
"I don't hate you," Callie assured him. "Thank you for this." But when she gave him a gentle hug, an odd strangled growl erupted from Ford's throat without his permission.
She released Derrick and shook her head at Ford. "Not Meritt," she reminded him quietly.
Callie tugged at the scarf she was wearing as Ford drove them back to the ranch.
"Baby, what's wrong? You're going to fray that thing if you yank on it any harder." He eased her hand away from the scarf.
"I'm just retaining water. My period's a little late because of all of this stress and everything. I can't believe he pointed out my weight. That was low."
Carefully measuring his words, he squeezed her hand. "He's an idiot like I said. I've got no interest in being with a shovel handle in a dress. I like your curves no matter what size they are. He was just trying to get to you. You're fucking beautiful, and he knows it." She'd shoved a box of tampons and pads under the sink in his bathroom. Ford had assumed that he'd been wrong about the pregnancy, and that she'd started. But maybe not.
It had been three nights since they'd made love, so he wouldn’t know. That was yet another thing he'd let Meritt take from him. No more. Tonight, he'd fuck her until she understood how addictive her gorgeous body was and how much he appreciated those intoxicating curves.
"The pictures only solve half of our problems though," she lamented. "My father can still try to get guardianship of my grandparents and take their farm."
"Yeah, but it frees me up a little bit to make a move. Once Dale can prove to the superior court that Meritt doesn't deserve alimony because she was the one that was cheating and not the other way around, I can purchase the land, pay your daddy off, and make sure that land stays with your grandparents."
"I can't believe you'd really do all of that for me."
"Hey," he stroked his thumb back and forth over her palm trying to soothe her. "I know I get off on being your hero, and I'll try to get better about it. But more than the fact that I love you, I know how important that land is to your family. I know that it's the only place you ever really felt at home. I won't let you lose that."
"How did you know that?"
"You really want me to answer that?"
"What do I say every time you ask me that?"
"Fine, but you're not going to like it."
"Say it anyway."
"I don't blame your mama for leaving, but when she decided to go she yanked you off of any kind of foundation you ever hoped to have. That's hard to rebuild."
"We did move around a lot, I guess." Defeat tugged at her words.
"It was more than that. Ever since I filed for divorce, people have been asking me why I didn't do it sooner. Hell, for a long time I asked myself the same thing. What was I so afraid of that I'd choose misery over the unknown? I finally figured it out. Once you get accustomed to something, even if it's bad, it's what you know. You get to thinking that's how life is supposed to be because you can't see it being any other way. You figure a shaky foundation is better than no foundation at all, so you just keep trying to stay on your feet and make it through the next day. Your grandparents’ farm was the only place that you could always count on. It was the place that showed you that all of the other places you lived weren’t really what you wanted."
Callie was quiet for long enough that Ford worried he'd way overstepped his bounds. But she finally released a long pent-up breath. "I guess I never really thought of it that way. But hearing you say it, that is kind of how my whole childhood felt. I was almost always alone even when my mom was there. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah, baby doll, it does. I just want you to know that you never have to be alone ever again."