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Rip’s never considered himself a smart man. If you needed a hole dug, an animal doctored, or a couple of guys roughed up, there was no one more suited to the task, but he had also never stepped foot in a high school classroom. He read old, simple Westerns sparingly and slowly, and he asked Beth or John every other sentence what the hell they meant when they were using their conversations as pulpits. He’s not shamed by it, knows what he’s useful for and stays there, but he is a little embarrassed that it takes him so long to figure out just how much Beth’s been punishing herself. His wife, after all, is a subject he thinks he knows fairly well, a subject he’s tried to master.
To be fair, he and Beth have never thought of punishment and pain in the same way. Rip’s not averse to handing out punishment, comfortable with hurting someone in a way he tries not to examine, but – to him – once it’s done, it’s done. The beating or berating is delivered, or the body’s dropped off at the train station if the crime is bad enough, and then that’s it. He’s never kept someone alive just to torment them again, not like Beth. Where his fists are hammers, blunt instruments, her mouth and her mind are knives. She’s precise and thorough when she uses them and, now that he’s paying attention, he sees she uses them against herself more often than not.
Find something that makes you happy, he had said to her, but when she doesn’t mention that conversation again, he starts putting the pieces together.
It’s hard to tell if her waking in the middle of the night is new or old; it was rare before that they ever slept next to each other, and the handful of times they had were hour cat naps stolen in the tack room. He knows she’s never slept much, but that’s the nature of her job, and of life on a ranch. Rip contemplates asking her about it but buries the question deep the next time he hears sniffling in the dark. The words Rip wants to say will be heard like an accusation, so he turns his body over instead, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her in close. He doesn’t know what the trigger is – it was finally a night where he’s back at the house early enough to really take his time with her pleasure after dinner like he enjoys. The earlier exertion is already dropping him back off to sleep when he hears, faintly, from where her face is pressed into his chest: I’m sorry.
A new clue slots into place as he mulls her apology over the next morning, sitting on his horse watching cattle roam. He’s gotten it backwards, Rip realizes. The happiness creates the guilt. It’s a revelation he feels out of his depth with – how can he rewire Beth’s thinking when she can run circles around his? He resolves to maintain course; they’ll keep making new memories, he’ll keep holding her steady when she needs it and leaving space when she doesn’t and, hopefully, that’ll be the way he can kill the past for her, the same way it’s been dead and buried for him.
He doesn’t change course until after Texas, when it becomes clear just how far Beth will push herself.
Rip’s been back for three days; in the silence of early mornings, he can still hear the echo of Beth’s wailing from that first night. He’s barely seen her since, but she’s his compass now more than maybe she ever has been, which is saying a lot. He runs through the motions of what needs doing on the ranch and takes her direction on everything else – who he needs to call, what has to be organized, tagged, sold. Kayce seems to be taking cues from his older sister as well; he’s got something else cooking that Rip can see in the weight on his shoulders when he leaves the property, but here on the ranch they’re closer than he’s ever seen them, and one is clearly orbiting the other.
They’re flitting about now down at the barn, within view of Rip, Lloyd, and Carter who are spending the afternoon laying out equipment in the empty corral, repairing what needs it and tagging what they don’t need for auction.
“That looks heated,” Lloyd mutters under his breath, reaching across Carter’s lap to pull a cracked saddle closer. Too far away to hear, he watches amused as Beth drags an old planter halfway across the lot between the barn and the metal fence. Kayce trails after her, trying to help, but Beth’s pointing repeatedly between shuffling steps at an identical planter further away. When she stops and stands upright, hands on her hips and breathing labored, Kayce finally ducks his head and turns to get the second one.
Rip keeps fiddling with the decades old knot on the saddle in front of him, head down. “Nah, she’s just agitated, they ain’t fighting.”
“Rip,” Carter says, and something in the tone of his voice shoots up Rip’s spine. He looks up, eyes zeroed in on his wife.
Beth’s got her hands on her knees, bent over and turned away from where he’s sitting. He can see her lungs expand in heaving breaths through her shirt that's already damp on the small of her back. She keeps listing forward incrementally and then catching herself with the toe of her boot.
Rip’s long strides get him close, but he knows instinctively that he won’t make it in time to her.
“Kayce,” he barks out, so loud he startles the other man who looks over to him.
“What you need, Rip?” Kayce asks, but Rip’s already pointing at Beth.
“Catch her.”
Kayce does a double-take at the state of his sister and jolts into action, calling her name to no response.
Rip ducks under the fence line and looks up to watch the scene unfold in slow motion. Kayce reaches her, getting a hand around her trembling bicep before Beth collapses like a cheap table, her legs buckling and her body doubled over at the waist. Kayce keeps her up by his rough grip on her arm long enough for his own knees to hit the dirt, getting under her and slowing her descent.
By the time Kayce pulls her torso into his lap, Rip has made it over to the pair and Beth is awake, batting at Kayce’s concerned face where it leans over hers.
“Let me up,” she grouses, “I’m fine.”
“Not a fuckin’ chance,” Rip interjects, kneeling next to where Kayce has her trapped.
“What the fuck just happened, Beth?” Kayce asks, keeping a hold of her shoulders as she leans against him, letting Rip put his hand on her face and look her over. Rip’s mouth is set, a small thin line, but his eyes are wide and unblinking, like he’s trying to take all of her in at once.
“I just skipped breakfast and worked too hard, that’s all,” she soothes, grabbing Rip’s hand against her cheek. “Now, let me up.”
Rip sighs. “When’s the last time you ate, Beth?” He meets Kayce’s eyes over Beth’s head and nods once. Kayce lets go of her shoulders and Rip – slowly, tenderly – pulls her up onto her own two feet. Once he’s confident she can stand on her own, he backs up a little, but keeps his hand on her waist, just in case.
She shrugs, embarrassed. “Yesterday, some time. Dinner, I guess.”
“She skipped dinner,” Carter calls out from the fence where he and Lloyd have migrated up, “and her car was gone most of yesterday, so she wasn’t here for lunch.”
“Monica says you’ve been skipping breakfast too,” Kayce adds. “You livin’ off coffee and cigarettes right now, Beth?”
Beth threw her hands up and took a step back, breaking Rip’s gentle hold on her. “Everybody in my life fucking spying on me? Give me a break.”
“Alright,” Rip nods, already feeling the adrenaline from before turn jittery, amusement and annoyance warring in his chest. “Everybody, back to work. You and I are gonna take a walk, Beth.”
Lloyd backs off, pulling Carter with him, but Kayce stays within their small circle, curious to see how the tension will break.
Beth folds her arms in front of her, unimpressed. “Oh, we are, are we?”
Rip shakes his head, wagging his finger at her. “Guess I’m going for a walk,” he answers, “and taking you with me.” He closes the gap between them and sweeps her up in a bridal carry, starting towards the house.
Kayce watches them walk off for a while before joining Lloyd and Carter at their task, taking Rip’s place. “I’m pretty sure she would’ve hit me in the balls if I tried that,” he jokes to Lloyd.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her hit you in the balls for less,” Lloyd jokes back.
Rip deposits Beth in the kitchen on one of the barstools, pushing the seat in to trap her against the counter.
“Are you proud of yourself?” she asks sharply, but the twitch of her mouth gives her away.
He smirks back at her, a sparkle in his eye. “Shit, honey, a little,” he says. “Let me get you some orange juice.”
“I don’t need any fuckin’ orange juice, Rip.”
He yanks the refrigerator door open. “No, you need a hell of a lot more than orange juice, but I’m gonna take what I can get here.”
She huffs but stays quiet, waiting for him to pull the juice out of the fridge and fill a glass. He slides it across the counter to her, not letting go of the glass until Beth puts her own fingers around it and lifts it to her lips. She grimaces at the taste after each sip. When she sets her drink down, they stare at each other for a few moments, her eyebrows drawn closed, his raised.
“Do I need to watch you eat every day, Beth? Because I will,” he offers. He tries to tease his voice enough so that it doesn’t come out disappointed. She rolls her eyes anyway, so he tries again, driving home his sincerity. “It’s not a burden, or whatever else your mind is telling you. Nothing I do for you could ever be a burden on me. Hey,” he says when she breaks eye contact to look down at her lap. He waits until she looks back at him to continue. “You have to take care of yourself. You can’t just stop eating.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” she defends.
“For a whole day?”
“Too pissed off to eat these days.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Rip argues. “I think you’ve found an easy way to hurt yourself and get away with it. I think you’re fightin’ yourself again, and this is how it’s coming out.”
Beth jerks her head back as if he’s slapped her. The sight of the horror on her face almost doubles him over, the guilt hitting so quickly, but he steels himself with the image of her outside earlier, wilted. He can’t watch that happen again, not without at least trying to redirect her.
Rip watches Beth shake off the hurt she feels at his words, and he knows that whatever comes out of her mouth next is going to hurt him right back.
“If you think this is what it looks like when I’m trying to hurt myself, I’m sorry to say you don’t know me at all, buddy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Beth?”
“I put a gun under my chin, when I first got back here to help my father with the ranch,” she replies, casually, like she hasn’t blotted out Rip’s sun in one sentence. “Pulled the trigger too, left a hole in the roof of Jamie’s car instead of the top of my skull, but it was a close thing.” She shrugs one shoulder, still pretending to be unaffected even as her eyes well up. Suddenly, the orange juice interests her, and she runs an index finger around the rim of the glass.
He presses his palms into the kitchen counter to keep himself from shaking her. The ambient noise of the day dies; it sounds like the moments after a shotgun blast, where the world is both muffled and sharp. Rip swallows back bile a couple of times before he feels comfortable opening his mouth.
“I forgive you,” he says, surprising them both.
“What?” She looks up at him, wet eyes and gaping mouth.
“That’s what you’re needing, ain’t it?” he asks, impatient now. “Forgiveness. And I’ve got it for you, honey, in spades. Now you just need to forgive yourself.”
He hears her throat click when she swallows. “I can’t,” she says.
“Not at all?”
“Not – not for everything.”
“Just this, then,” he barters. “Just whatever’s making you turn your nose up at every plate. Tell me what you did, honey.”
“I failed,” she tells him. “I can’t save this place, not in the way he wanted me to.”
Rip finds the notion ridiculous, but he knows she’s always been driven this way, everything in absolutes. She was just like her father in that regard, which meant any perceived disappointment she thinks he would feel in her only compounds her own. He can’t tell her it’s ridiculous, though, can’t say to her Fuck this place and everyone in it, if that’s what you need. He can’t tell her he’d burn it down himself if only he knew it would allow her to get through a meal.
“Okay, Beth,” Rip says instead. “You can’t save it. I forgive you. Forgive yourself.” She begins to cry in earnest, so he rounds the counter and brackets her in his arms as she curls into herself. “Forgive yourself,” he whispers into the crown of her head. He holds her a while like that, while she cries, hoping something is sinking in.
Her sniffling and whimpers trail off eventually and he backs off a step. “I love you,” Rip says, “drink your juice.” Beth laughs wetly and takes another sip.
As Rip leaves the lodge to finally continue his loaded schedule, he catches Monica and Tate getting out of the car.
“Are you guys finished up?” Monica calls out to him.
“No, we’re not done for the day,” Rip says, walking over, “but Beth is. Do me a favor and make sure she eats something. And if she won’t, call me.”
“Oh, okay,” Monica says, her eyes squinting like she’s trying to read his mind. Rip marches back down the property before she can ask any follow-up to his request.
That’s as much of a breakthrough as he has with Beth, until Jamie Dutton dies.
Rip’s not at the hospital until the day after the ambulance drops her off there. He’s not worried about her, not with Carter keeping watch, but he does release a breath he didn’t know he was holding when he finally lays eyes on her. The relief doesn’t last long though, not when he sees the IV drip, the pulse monitor, the careful way she’s keeping still on the bed with an arm braced against her ribcage.
“Carter,” he says, not taking his eyes away from his wife, “take a walk.”
“You got it,” Carter mumbles as he ducks out the door.
“Uh oh,” Beth smirks at Rip, “I’m in trouble.”
Rip sighs, dropping his hat by her feet on the bed before occupying the chair Carter’s just vacated. He rubs his eyes and indulges in another sigh, trying to organize jumbled thoughts.
“That was not a plan,” he settles on.
“It was as good of a plan as we were going to get with the whole fucking state watching,” she argues.
“No,” he snaps, his agitation taking over, “it wasn’t. Any plan that ends with you in a hospital bed, or fuckin’ worse, isn’t one worth entertaining. But you wouldn’t know that, because you don’t even care that you’re beat to hell, do you, Beth? This feels like, what, some sort of absolution for you?”
“Absolution,” she jokes, but her voice is thick with tears. “That’s a big word for a cowboy, Rip.”
“Yeah, well, I remember my Sunday school and I married a smart woman. You pick up a few things along the way.”
“Okay, baby,” she nods. “You’re so smart, what am I absolving myself of?”
“You tell me,” Rip demands. “Tell me like you did the other day. Tell me what this is about so we can let it the fuck go.”
“What happened to it being a fuckin’ favor, not telling each other all the awful shit we do.”
“Well, honey, we don’t work the same way, I guess. You see, I know when I come home, no matter what I’ve done that day, you’re all mine. You’re going to love me anyway, aren’t you?”
She pauses, like she’s not sure where he’s going and is afraid of a trap. “I will,” she finally agrees. “I do.”
“But you don’t know that. You think one of these days, there’s going to be something so awful you’ve done that I haven’t thought of, and it’ll make me run from you, even though I ain’t never run from you in my entire life. Even now, you’re worried about it, like I’m not fucking pissed off about you getting hurt, and nothing else.”
“You see the best in me, Rip, but I –”
“No buts, Beth. I do see the best in you, I will always love you, no matter what you do or what you did. And I’m not going to let you go on thinking otherwise so, tell me.” He stands over her and tips her chin up gently so that he can meet her eyes. “Tell me everything you think is unforgivable, and instead of handing out your punishment yourself, you let me be the judge.”
He's chipping away at her defenses; he sees it in her eyes as she begins to speak. “You know most of it, Rip. You were there for a lot of it.”
“Not everything, obviously, Beth, because I know we’ve been over this before. The past, the way we treated each other then, it don’t matter to me. If it gets me right here, with you, with that ring on your finger, I’d do it all over, and I’d be happy to do it.”
“It’s not that simple,” she whispers, tears falling down her face.
“It is to me, baby,” he counters, “just not for you. That’s why I want to hear it. Not because I think it’ll change anything, but because I know you need to say it. So, tell me what I don’t know.”
“And what’s going to happen, then, if I’m right?” she grits out from between her teeth. “What happens when I tell you the worst thing I ever did to you and you lose your love for me? You gonna leave me here in this bed? You gonna take Carter and drive off somewhere I can’t find you?”
Rip tries not to let the offense show on his face. This isn’t about him, he reasons. It’s about how poorly she thinks of herself. If this was about his reaction, his feelings for her, his love, it would have been solved fifteen years ago.
“The boy would stay here,” he says slowly, each word a slice to his heart that he’s even entertaining this notion. “I could call Kayce or Monica to come pick the two of you up when you’re discharged, your choice. I’d have to go back to the ranch to pick up some clothes, and I’d probably take one of the trucks, maybe Lloyd if he’d go with me.”
“Where would you go?”
He can’t help but bark out a short laugh. “Hell, I don’t know. I’m just making this up right now, darlin’.”
She nods deep in thought, like she’s calculating his options for abandoning her in her own mind. Rip tries not to shift his weight from foot to foot, tries not to indicate his discomfort with this conversation at all.
“Travis,” Beth settles on. “You’d go to Texas and Travis would help you find a place to run.”
“Okay,” he agrees easily. “If I somehow lose my fuckin’ mind and decide what you’ve done is too terrible to live with, I’ll drive down to Texas and find a ranch there. You have my word.” Rip kisses her forehead like a promise. “Now you know what’ll happen and where to find me. Let’s see which one of us is right.”
He can see that challenging her was the right choice by the set of her shoulders, so he stays quiet for a few moments while she gathers strength.
“I terminated the only pregnancy I would have been able to carry,” Beth says. She subtly grips one hand around the guardrail of her hospital bed, white knuckling it like she expects him to explode. Her body is already beginning to tremble.
Rip blinks, his eyes unfocusing as he tries to decipher something deeper in the single sentence she’s offering him. “Am I allowed to ask questions?” he follows up with.
Beth blinks back at him, wary. “Sure.”
“Was this when we were together?”
Disarmed by her own exasperation, she rolls her eyes at him. “Yes, Rip. Why would I give a shit if it was anyone else?”
“So, when was this? When you were at college?”
“No,” she shakes her head vigorously, anxious that he hasn’t figured it out yet. “No, when I was fifteen. When we broke it off the first time. That’s why-” she chokes, suddenly overcome, “that’s why I told you we should stop seeing each other. I lied to you about the results of the pregnancy test and I got an abortion.”
“Shit, Beth, we were kids,” he responds. “You were a kid. If you’re upset about lying to me, I forgive you. If you thought I’d be upset about your choice, I don’t even know what to say. You made the right one.” He peels her fingers back gently from around the rail and holds her hand in both of his.
She shakes her head at him again, slower, more dejected. “You don’t understand. I stole everything from us. They sterilized me, Rip. When I got the abortion, they gave me a hysterectomy.”
“I’m sorry that some dipshit doctor allowed a fifteen-year-old girl to make that decision, baby, but you didn’t steal –”
Beth cuts him off. “I didn’t make the decision.”
Rip’s hands twitch around her own. “The doctors didn’t tell you?”
“No one told me,” she answers, her voice shaking with rage, with grief. “I found out three years later.”
“Baby,” he says, voice croaking. Her eyes widen as she watches his well with tears. “Shit, sorry,” he whispers, taking one of his hands back to wipe his eyes. She winds her fingers around the hand she still has a hold of.
Rip looks up to the ceiling, trying to will the tears to stop, but he can’t. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, baby,” he forces out. “I would have torn that place apart, I would have killed every one of those fucking –” He cuts himself off. It doesn’t do her any good now to say that, to tell her how it could have been different. It isn’t different.
“I didn’t tell you about it, Rip. That’s not your fault.”
“What happened to you wasn’t your fault either, Beth.”
“The lying afterwards was,” she says, looking down at his palm as she traces the lines of it with her fingers. “Letting everything carry on like nothing happened, never telling you why I pulled away over and over again.”
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “I forgive you for that.”
She looks up at him again and they meet eyes. Overlaid on her face, Rip sees the specter of the girl she once was, hair wild, her bony shoulders up around her ears, impossibly broken but self-assured in her brokenness. He thought she was larger than life then, but now that he’s grown up, she looks so small.
“You do?” Beth asks tremulously, and the specter disappears, at rest.
“I do, baby. Now it’s your turn.”