UPDATE!! It’s a MIRACLE!

Well. So. Aah.. Yes, I am updating for the first time in much longer than I would care to think about. This story is getting really hard to write, and while it’s coming slower, it is still coming. I have too many sequels planned to give up on it. But before you jump for joy that I’m updating, well...

Just read it.

Life’s Little Chances

TWENTY-TWO: One Last Time

Saturday, March 17 (Saint Patrick’s Day). Noon. Great Divide Ranch, Alberta.

“Cheers.”

With this announcement Nate enthusiastically knocked back two fingers of whiskey. His brothers and aunt, knowing that he would be the first of them to reach the celebratory state of drunkenness that night, looked on and shook their heads.

“Nathaniel, it isn’t even noon,” Vi reproached him, and he glanced at the clock on the wall, watched the second hand drag itself past the twelve so that the clock read twelve on the nose.

“Sure it is,” he replied, offering her a broad grin. “Come on, Vi, it’s Saint Paddy’s Day. Where’ve you put your Irish?”

“My Irish is going in your stomach, boy,” she retorted with a nod at the bottle of whiskey, and he only gave her a winning smile.

“It’s great, too,” he said and meant it.

Dallas, the second eldest of the Miller brothers, rolled his eyes, shoved a hand through his dark blond hair, and reached for his hat as he warned his youngest sibling, “Nate, you can save the drinking for later. We’re working with Skip today, remember? We’ll need all the hands we can get.”

“So in other words, get your lazy ass outside,” put in Jake. The fifth Miller son had his chocolate-brown eyes narrowed, his arms crossed over himself. If Nate was planning on staying inside til he was drunk he’d be inside all day; the boy was a damn tank, and took forever to get drunk.

Of course, once he was drunk, he could be damn entertaining. But that was for later.

Single file, the Miller men clomped out, with Nate heaving a long-suffering sigh before following. Dallas’s words on Skip, the rambunctious colt they would be working with today, had been just a slight understatement. Skip Through Summer, as he was registered, was a two-year-old roan colt who, though dreamily named, could be mean. And when he got mean, people got hurt. Just last week he’d gotten a good kick in and gifted Danny with a cracked rib, and he’d nearly stepped on Jake while they’d been getting him to the corral this morning.

Nate didn’t intend to be the one to get hurt, but he knew it was possible. The risk was one of the more fun reasons to stay and work on the family ranch.

When the eight men walked up to the corral near the bunkhouse, the colt inside lifted his reddish head, nostrils flared to catch their scent. He snorted and pawed at the ground with a mischievous glint in his eyes that seemed to say, Bring it on.

“Who’s going in there?” Danny finally wanted to know.

Nate stepped forwards. “I’ll do it.”

Dally shook his head, and redheaded Craig snorted. “You’re fucking crazy, little brother.”

“Maybe.” Nate looked out at the horse where he stood watching them all, decided if he had to work before he could get drunk, he could at least work hard.

In the end, his brothers knew better than to argue with him.

Skip stood stock still while Nate entered the ring, holding a lead rope in his hand. Ears flicked back and forth, and his tail switched rapidly from side to side, but other than that, the colt paid him no mind. He even went so far as to turn his back on them all, lowering his head to sniff at the sand in the ring.

Nate wasn’t fooled. He advanced slowly, speaking quietly all the while to alert the horse of his presence. A horse’s vision was monocular; with eyes on either side of his head, the animal received a different image from each eye, or could look down his nose to employ binocular vision such as humans used.

Nate had almost reached the colt’s hindquarters when he suddenly snorted again, spun around, and reared into the air. The spin brought the horse’s flank directly into Nate’s path and knocked him to the side and onto the ground, and before he could get up, Skip had come down hard — on Nate’s left arm.

He heard the crunch of his bone breaking under twelve hundred pounds of weight, and a scream ripped through his head. All that escaped him was a grunt of pain, a quick hiss of indrawn breath. But his vision blurred, the grayish sky that forecasted rain or snow blurring above him, and the roofs of the ranch buildings spinning dizzily.

His stomach lurched sickeningly, and while his brothers fought to calm the horse, Nate closed his eyes, teeth gritted against the pain.

“Nate.” Danny crouched near his youngest sibling with Dally beside him, both their mouths set in grim lines. “Nate, how bad is it?”

Nate blinked his eyes open slowly, looked up at Danny and Dally, listened to the sounds of his other five brothers fighting with the horse.

Of all the shitty, rotten luck, he thought crankily. I would have this happen on St. Patrick’s Day, of all the damn days.

He licked dry lips, forced himself not to think about the pain in his arm. He shrugged one shoulder; the movement sent yet more pain radiating through the other side of his body, and his brothers’ faces momentarily slipped out of focus.

At length Nate could see them clearly again, and when he could, he rasped out an answer.

“Where’s the damn whiskey?”

He never heard his brothers’ quiet oaths when he passed out.

- . - . - . -

Toronto

“Nate what?”

“Broke his arm,” Vi repeated. “He’s in surgery now. Damn horse busted the bone into splinters, so he needs pins and screws in his arm. He’s gonna have a cast for at least eight weeks.”

“Ouch.” Sasha winced, knowing just how much Nate would hate being confined to the use of one arm for such a long period of time. She sat on the armchair, legs tucked up under herself and Cashew curled up beside her, purring loudly. “But he’ll be all right, won’t he?”

“Oh, of course he will be,” Vi assured her daughter. “And he’s doing well for Saint Paddy’s Day — he won’t be drunk, but he’ll certainly be doped up and seeing the little people.”

Sasha laughed at her mother’s wryly amused tone. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“It’s true,” Vi insisted, a smile in her voice, before turning to the more serious. “Sasha... honey, are you really set on coming out here to live?”

Sasha sighed, looked around her cozy home. Yes, she’d miss it, she admitted. She had worked long and hard to be able to buy this house, and because it was the first she’d actually bought, it held a certain meaning for her.

But she wouldn’t be able to stay in it alone after Alex left.

“Yes, Mom, I am. I’ll be leaving soon. I’m not quite sure of the exact date, but I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

“All right.” Vi blew out a breath. “I just want you to be happy, Sasha. You know that.”

“I want to be happy too, Mom,” she answered, and had tears in her eyes as she murmured it. “Really, I do.”

She just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

- . - . - . -

Boston

“He’ll be okay, won’t he?” Sarah asked quietly as she staredafter Alex while he went to board the plane.

Noah slipped an arm around her, squeezed lightly because both of them needed the comfort. “Sure he will. You know Alex. He sticks around when things get rough.”

And yet concern showed on his face as well as he watched Alex leave Boston for Toronto for the last time.

- . - . - . -

Calgary, the next day

“What do you mean, I can’t get drunk? It’s fucking Saint Patrick’s Day, isn’t it?”

“Not anymore,” Danny said from beside Nate’s hospital bed. “You’ve been out a while, kid.”

“The hell I have. The hell I missed Saint Paddy’s Day.” But he looked at the clock, at the calendar, and made a face. “Damn it.”

“Besides that,” Danny went on in his slow, patient voice, “there’s a bit too much dope in your system already. Morphine and booze don’t mix, Nate.”

“Sure they do. They just don’t mix well.”

Danny sighed, ran a hand through his dark blond hair, then resettled his hat on his head. “Get some sleep, you pigheaded sonofabitch,” he answered without heat.

“What’s being done about Skip?” Nate wanted to know, words slurring together just the tiniest bit.

“We’re going to have to geld him.”

He nodded, having expected it. “All right. When do I get out of here?”

“Couple more days at least, the doc said. And don’t even try to charm your way out sooner,” he added when his youngest brother opened his mouth.

Nate pouted, would have crossed his arms if it had been possible. “Well, fuck you then,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes.

Danny only chuckled, offered one of his slow, sure smiles to the nurse coming in the room, a woman he’d briefly dated in high school. “Careful with this one, Jenny. Something tells me he’s not the best of patients.”

Wisely she swallowed her own chuckle at the look Nate wore while she prepared the next needle. “He hasn’t exactly been exemplary, have you, Nate?”

“Nope,” he agreed cheerfully, reaching over with his good hand to take hers and kissed it lavishly. “But if I’d known you’d be in here I’d have apologized, even if my behaviour didn’t improve.”

She giggled, colour rising in her cheeks. “Stop it, you, or I’ll give you more morphine than you need and really put you under.”

He flashed her a winsome grin. “You wouldn’t do that. You love my company.”

Danny could only shake his head as he left the room. He had work to do, and without Nate, they were a hand short.

- . - . - . -

Toronto

She woke early.

Sasha slipped quietly from beneath sheets warm with the heat that emanated from Alex’s body, dressed in the half-light of dawn. And went downstairs.

Out of habit and a need for health she forced down a muffin that tasted of sawdust, swallowed her prenatal pill down with orange juice. Then, slowly and carefully, picked up a pen and pad of paper and began to write: Dear Alex...

It was hard to write that letter; the hardest thing she’d ever written. By the time she finished, her normally neat handwriting was an untidy scrawl, and as she signed the letter, her hand shook and a tear fell.

Love you forever, your Tiny Dancer.

For a moment she succumbed to weakness and laid her head on the table. Then she lifted her head again and picked up the phone, calling for a taxi.

She moved slowly around her little house, touching a hand to the sofa, to the shelves, to her stereo. Moved up the stairs, feet soundless and her hand light on the banister while the other rested low on her belly.

She peered out the window in the little bathroom, saw a wet, chilly March rain drizzling down over the city. It suited her mood perfectly.

She went into the closet of her bedroom, where she knew Alex had never bothered to look, and tugged out the two suitcases she’d packed the day before and carried them downstairs. Then she slowly made one more survey of the house, cautious not to leave anything behind.

Besides your heart, you mean? came the less-than-polite voice of her conscience.

Don’t.

The word was as much plea as order. If she thought of that, she would break down, and she wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore.

She couldn’t let herself break down.

Panting only faintly, she made the climb up the stairs, one last time. Walked into her bedroom, one last time. And stood staring down at the man sprawled over her bed, one last time.

Alex’s hand was still flung across the bed, as if he embraced her still. His face was serene, peaceful in sleep.

She crouched carefully beside him, felt the warmth of his breath on her face, and had to close her eyes. When she had steadied herself she opened them, imagining the brilliant, changeable mercury of his eyes. Of the way they shone when he laughed, narrowed when he was upset. Of the way they darkened when he was inside her, in the dark, when there was nothing but each other.

With a trembling hand she reached out, brushed a strand of hair back from his face, and smiled weakly when it fell forward again. She leaned forward slowly, pressed her lips to his forehead, watched the smile flicker over the handsome features of the man she had come to love.

One last time.

She rose, turned away before she became undone, and walked quietly down the stairs and out the door, one last time, to wait for her cab.

When it arrived, she dragged her suitcases into it, climbed into the back, asked to be taken to the airport.

And once the car was in motion, she twisted herself around, craned her neck to see the little house she was leaving behind. Thought of the man in it, of his reaction when he found her gone. Would he be relieved? she wondered. Upset? Hurt, maybe?

It didn’t matter anymore.

She stared at it as the car slid away up the street, vision blurred by the rain misting over the city.

By the time the car turned a corner, eliminated the house from view, it was tears and not the rain blurring Sasha’s vision.

End of Chapter Twenty-Two: One Last Time

Aah... please don’t hate me? Review (if only to damn Sasha as an idiot, show sympathy for Alex, and express hate for me)?

It’s all I ask. I don’t ask you to be pleased with me. This wasn’t easy to write, let me tell you that. I hate myself right now.

Just have faith, guys. It will get better. Eventually.

Laugh lots, don’t kill me, and tip your waiter,

— Murphy