Home is where the heart is [Rip Wheeler]

2

Briar was hurrying to pack her stuff. She didn't want Rip in the apartment any longer than absolutely necessary. She only had about a duffel bag worth of street clothes anyways but she was conflicted on whether or not to pack her stage clothes. In the end she decided she would, but it took her way longer than she expected to sort through them.

She packed seven of her best money making outfits as well as some heels to go with them. She sorted and counted her money from that week. Leaving rest of the rent on the lease as well as a bit extra. Their lease was up in two months anyway but she just wanted Reese to be taken care of if anything were to happen.

Rip had been standing in her bedroom doorway for about ten minutes. He hadn't said anything just watched and waited patiently.

"I'm almost done, Rip."

"I didn't mean to rush ya darlin'."
She put eight crown royal bags full of cash into her largest purse and zipped it shut. She then stood up and looked down at what she was wearing.

"Beth will have me by the hair if I show up in this." She muttered mostly to herself but Rip's small chuckle made her smile. "Can you take my duffel to the car while I change into something my Daddy won't want to murder you for seeing me in?"

"No, but Ryan will." Rip picked up the duffel bag and carried it out to the living room. "Take this out to the truck we'll be down in a minute or two."

"Yes sir." Ryan told him before walking the duffel to the truck.

Rip walked back into her bedroom, realizing now that it wasn't just hers. She was picking up boxers and jeans from the floor beside the bed and throwing them into a laundry basket. Briar had made the bed and a list on paper sat on the bedside table. She had walked into the bathroom off the bedroom. Briar had washed the make up from her naturally beautiful face. Then she pulled an elastic from the draw beside her hip and quickly braided her long hair and tied off the end. She pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and a black tank top.

After she tucked a tank top into her jeans, she slid a belt threw, a silver bull skull buckle now sat dead center of her waist. She hauled her black boots from the closet along with a green and black flannel. A flannel Rip recognized as one of his. He had worn it the week before she left.

It was the beginning of October just after she turned eighteen. Colder out than Briar had planned for, so Rip had given her his over coat which had that flannel tucked inside. He'd never realized it before but she handed it back to him the next day without the flannel in it.

Briar was ready to go five minutes later.
"Okay." She sighed.

"Ready?" Rip asked her as she looked around at the space she had left in the closet and the dresser. She knew in heart of hearts that Reese was as temporary as a transplant. Her heart belonged on a ranch and to a Cowboy that broke her heart long before he even knew he had it.

They walked out the the truck. Briar went climb into the back seat but stopped when she saw the blue eyed wrangler had left the front seat open for her.
"Thank you Ryan."

"You're welcome Miss Dutton."

"You might as well call me Briar. We'll be seein' a lot of each other when we get back to the ranch. Is Lloyd still working the ranch?" Briar's stomach muttered it's complaints about her lack of good food when she thought about Lloyd's soup beans and cornbread.
"Yeah, Briar, Lloyd's still at the ranch. Old man just won't quit."

"I'm glad ol'boy ain't quit yet means I can have Soup Beans and cornbread when it gets cold out or when ever I decide to ask."

"I think you are one of the only people I've met that could eat beans as a meal."

"It's definitely not the weirdest thing I've eaten."

"What is?" Ryan asked innocently from the back. Briar started to laugh as a dirty joke echoed threw her mind. Instead of answering the way she had initially intended she settled on a story. A specific memory that was brought into the forefront of her mind.
"Kacey dared me to eat a cricket once. Don't think I was much older than three or four. Don't think he'd thought I'd do it either but I did and to this day he call's me Hopper and Lee call's me Bee which I don't really feel like explaining right now. I was like Lee's shadow growing up. Anywhere he went I went to."

Briar smiled as she thought of another memory one from when she was fourteen.

"This other time me, Lee, Kacey and a couple of our friends had camped out by the river and we had decided to play truth or dare. Well everyone's dares and truths were easy passes until it was my turn. Chase, one of the guys who did rodeo with Lee. He dared me to take Jonah's gum. Me being the shithead I was stood up from my spot by the fire and walked over to Jo. Now Jo was a senior at the time, so seventeen maybe eighteen. I wasn't even sixteen yet, so my brothers had been watching me closely and especially around boys. Anyways, I sat on Jonah's lap and fought him for his gum. I won but Lee and Kacey beat the hell outta Chase and Jo that night. In the process though I started to choke on the gum. I ended up chugging the entire bottle of beam to wash it down. Got the gum out of my throat and a bitch of a wake up the next day."

"Damn."

"Yeah, no harm done though. Jo works on the ranch now and him and Lee have settled their shit."

"How did you know Jo works on the ranch?"

"He reached out almost a year ago asking if it was okay for him to work on the ranch. He essentially wanted to make sure he wasn't over stepping anything. I told him he was fine whatever shit storm we had brewing between us in high school was long gone now. I mean hell I'll be twenty one in three months, I don't got time to be dealing with drama from people I was in high school with."
Briar yawned as she watched the sun start to raise over the horizon.

"Get some sleep. We'll be there before you know it."
Briar offered Rip the most genuine smile she could muster. A lazy tired smile he hadn't seen in a long while. 'Shit.' He thought himself as he refocused on the road.

~

Briar reached into the back seat and pulled out a baseball hat she'd spotted.
"Well I'll be damned." She laughed to herself as she shook out the hat and undid her braid.

"What?" Ryan asked from his spot in the back.

"I can't believe you kept this." Briar looked at Rip with both surprise and a mischief.
"Why is that so hard to believe?"

"Well I tore my room apart looking for it the last time I was on the ranch. Although in all fairness I did steel a couple of your flannels."

She put the ball hat over her eyes and breathed deeply. "Shit takes me back." She mumbled as she looked out the window.

"Back where?" Ryan asked her. "Back to simpler times?" Ryan guessed.

"Back to Marlboro Red 100's, grizzly wintergreen chew and cheap beer. Back to sixteen when I could run barrels under sixteen seconds. Back to when everything looked a lot less daunting and getting exactly what I wanted was exactly what I got except for one or two things."

"What things did you want but didn't get? Because where I'm sitting you got everything thing you ever asked for."

"I got everything I asked for growing up. The things I wanted but didn't get were the things I was to damn stubborn to fight for."

They were almost there at this point no sense in sleeping now. Although Briar really did need it. She laid her head on the window thinking about how things might've been different if she had fought for Rip. Try as she might to fight off sleep, Briar drifted of to sleep thinking of him. Thinking of Rip Wheeler.