Three: Lies Unraveled.
After the main course was served, Lee pushed his chair back away from the table and grasped Spencer's hand before standing up and pulling her with him. "Excuse us." He nodded at their fathers and his siblings. Lewis had been sat at another table and he was furious, especially after the showdown he had with Frank, John, Royal, and the boys where he got called out on all of the things that they thought they knew.
He had been under the impression that Spencer was a drama queen that acted out to get attention and what happened between them happened for a reason.
But of course, other people didn't see it that way, especially her father, uncle, and cousins. Before her second cousin Amy's birth, Spencer had been the only girl in the Abbott family so she was spoiled and used to getting things her way and Lewis was going out of his way to make sure that didn't happen with him.
Shaking his head he watched as the older Dutton boy led his fiancée out of the dining room. He wanted to follow but the murderous look that was being directed at him by her cousins and how one of the Ranch hands, Billy stabbed the end of his steak knife into the tablecloth near his fingers stopped him.
He would go after her when this was all over.
"Where are we going Lee?" she asked once all eyes were off of them and they were standing in the hallway.
"Just come on." He ordered as he led her out of the house and towards where the tree house, that Spencer had been begged to build when Beth started spending more time over at her house after her mother's death and her father eager to appease any burned feelings by his divorcing her mother who later died. Frank had it built. It was not only a getaway for Beth but for Lee, Jamie, Kayce, and to a point Rip.
"I am not climbing that ladder in this dress or shoes.'
"You have before." He smirked, remembering how they spent New Year the first year that she and Kayce seriously started dating and there had been a fight between Frank and John that they didn't want to see, and so the girls climbed the ladder barefooted, the material of the skirts hiked up way past their knees.
"I was also 16 and hadn't been drinking like I have tonight."
"I will be right behind you, you know I will never let you fall."
Glancing back once at the party and then at the man that was standing in front of her, she toed off her heels and gathered them in her hand before grabbing a hold of the ladder to start climbing, grumbling as she did so.
Lee smirked and glanced once back at the party himself then turned his attention back to Spencer who was about halfway up the ladder by then.
"Lee?" He shook his head and motioned for her to keep climbing, he didn't want her to know that he was looking to see if Lewis followed them. But he knew that Rip and her cousins had it in hand and they would take care of it.
The treehouse hadn't changed much since the last time that Spencer had been in it right before she left for Yale. The blankets and pillows that still lined the floor were still in blue and white, and the pictures from her days at the Rodeo still lined the walls along with her last crown still hanging on the corner of the picture frame.
"Wow, it hasn't changed in 8 years," Lee commented as he shrugged off his jacket and dropped it onto the hook.
"No, it hasn't, I think Leighla kept it like this just in case I came back." She returned going over to the crown and plucking it up and twirling it between her fingers.
"Why didn't you come back before now?"
"Because Lee, it hurt too much being here." Her blue eyes followed him as he pulled his shirt out of his pants and went over to where they had stashed the bottles of red wine.
"If I didn't see my mama in the corners of the barn."
She was the one who found her mother in the barn after she killed herself, and was haunted by it for years. Having nightmares that were only soothed by drinking half a bottle of wine. It drove Lewis crazy, he thought that she should get over it, it had been 15 years since it happened and she tried to explain everything to him but he didn't listen, and just didn't care. It had always been Lee and Kayce who comforted her throughout it all.
"I was reliving my relationship with Kayce. And the hurt of him picking Monica out of nowhere." The crown went around again, the rhinestone sparkling in the dull fairy lights, "I was reliving the hurt that I had from you walking away from me after we had sex like it was nothing. It was reliving those." She trailed off, her eyes finally dropping to the crown that was keeping her hands busy.
"Reliving what?' He asked crossing the room handing her a full wine glass and taking the crown away from her, he wanted her to focus on their conversation and not on what was in her hands.
"The feelings I had for you, the overwhelming feelings of I needed to be with you every single day or I would go crazy type of thing." She had heard Ryder's husband Jax refer to their love like that one time and it just made a lot of sense, especially for how she felt about Lee. In an instant he was in front of her again, his hand stealing to her waist and pulling her into him.
"Spenc, I wanted to stay with you." He started as she took several sips of her wine trying to slow down her rapidly beating heart. "I wanted to make you mine that day." He paused to press a kiss to her forehead, "But I had to think how it would have looked."
"How it would look? Since when did you care how anything would have looked?"
"Since being in love and wanting to marry my little brother's girlfriend would have been seen as a slap in the face to him. And we are all under the microscope with our last names and our reputation in town." His fingers were playing with the zipper that was on the small of her back.
"After mom's death and your mother's suicide, we didn't need any more bad press."
"Look at you." She teased, her free hand trailing over the crisp white shirt smoothing out the invisible wrinkles. Trying to be all forwarded thinking."
"Jamie is rubbing off on me." He returned, "He wants good press for the Ranch and for his career." Spencer rolled her eyes, that was one reason why she muted Jamie for so long, he did nothing but talk about his career and how he handled everything for Yellowstone.
"He hasn't changed in 8 years. Maybe a bit more annoying."
The older Dutton boy nodded his head with a laugh and slowly started lowering the zipper of the dress. By the end of the night, he was going to make sure she was his. And for her part, Spencer didn't stop him, this is what she wanted.
She wanted Lee and wanted a relationship with him for years.
And maybe Ryder and Beth were right, she should do what makes her happy. For years Lee made her so happy. Once upon a time she would get giddy just thinking about him. Hell even seeing him standing in the foyer next to his father and brother gave her butterflies.
Butterflies she hadn't felt in ages.
"We can stop." He started as the empty wine glass she had her hand dropped to the ground and he pulled her in closer to him.
"Don't you dare stop.' She muttered.
Lee trailed his fingers over the scars that lined her lower back and hips, scars that he had never seen before. "Lewis." She mumbled as she turned her head to look at him, "He won't ever leave marks where others can see them. He didn't want people to see what he did behind closed doors." Her fingers grabbed a hold of his and moved it to the still fading red line that was under her bust, "This one happened after I went to see Uncle Royal, and the boys and I did a barrel race. I went down hard and bruised my hip to knee."
"You have had worst.' He commented as he ran his fingers over the scar and the undersell of her breast, 'Broke your collarbone and your leg.'
"I remember." She returned with a shiver, "You went with me in the back of the ambulance with my collar bone."
She vaguely remembered a fight breaking out between him and Kayce and how the older Dutton appeared in her line of sight a few moments after the fight started.
She never thought to ask about it. It was never one of those things she ever thought to ask about. So she asked the one thing she could, "What're we going to do? I leave in 3 days to go back to New York."
Lee sighed heavily and rolled to where he was resting between her legs, his hand framing her face. "We will figure it out, Spence, I promise, I am not letting you go this time. Not without a fight."
Kayce Dutton flashed on the screen of Beth's phone causing her to sigh, they had just left the Abbott Ranch, and the last thing she wanted to do with her father, Jamie, and Rip in the car was talk to him, but she knew that she had too.
"Hey, now isn't really a good time."
'Is it true? Spencer is back home?" Kayce bulldozed.
"It is. Her father is getting married, she is Leighla's maid of honor.' The only Dutton girl admitted that the only thing that she was going to admit to was Lee and Spencer leaving together and not being seen again.
There had been enough fights between the two brothers over Spencer. "You made your choice when you picked Monica over her. Leave her alone."