by Megan Crane
She whispered his name, but he ignored it, moving in even closer until he took over the whole saloon. Or maybe the world.
“You make me wish I was a better man,” Cody told her, as if he was making vows. “You make me think I could be, if I wanted. If I tried. And Skylar, you must know you’re the only thing on this earth that could ever make me want to try.”
“Cody,” she tried again.
“And I know you left me because you think you’re still in pieces.” He reached out and slid his hand over her jaw, curling his fingers around the base of her skull and pulling her face to his. “But you are not broken.”
She might not have been broken, but she couldn’t seem to stop the tears that welled up and started down her cheeks at that. Not because she was sad. It was a different emotion entirely. Complex. Layered.
And it had everything to do with the hard man in front of her.
“Everybody’s scarred, darlin’,” he told her, his voice almost hoarse, as if the things he was saying were as difficult for him as they were for her. Difficult and good, she thought. Difficult and necessary. “It’s what makes you strong. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The fact that you can get up again and move on? That’s what makes you beautiful, Skylar. It’s what makes you you.”
“You need to stop talking,” she told him then. She wiped at her cheeks and saw something bleak move over his face, like a cold shadow. And she smiled at him then, no matter if her cheeks were damp. “I was just standing here thinking about how easy it was going to be to stalk you, after this weekend. And figuring exactly how I was going to do it. Sacramento, San Diego, Tucson. So many options to hunt you down on tour.”
He blinked. For a moment his dark green eyes looked blank. Then slowly, very slowly, the corner of his mouth kicked up.
And all those knotted things inside of Skylar seemed to run smooth.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said slowly, as if he was picturing all the things he could do with her in all those places. His hand tightened just a little bit on her neck. “And it’s okay if you don’t know how you feel, baby. I’m a bull rider. I like a challenge. Give me enough time, and I promise, I’ll make you love me. I’ll make you forget.”
There was a time she might have heard that as a threat. Found it offensive, even. But tonight, she reached over and put her hands on him, reveling in the flat planes of his sculpted chest.
Letting the heat of him remind her that she hadn’t been anything like frozen in some time.
“I’m never going to forget him,” she said, soft and sure. And she held Cody’s gaze because she wanted to make certain he understood. “Because remembering Thayer reminds me of the girl who fell in love with him. I’m always going to think about her, and wonder who she would have been if he’d lived.” When he started to say something, she let her fingers curl into fists, and gripped him a little harder. “But she’s not me, Cody. She died when he did and I’m not the same person as I was then. I can never be that person again.”
She took a deep breath, held on to him, and kept going.
“This is who I am.” She tipped her head back and smiled at him, damp cheeks and all. “I’m the girl who fell in love the minute I opened my father’s door and let you in. I’m the girl who slept with a stranger on a picnic table and somehow never felt cheap. You’ve seen me messy, real, and a little bit crazy. You’ve seen me lie and you’ve seen me run and you didn’t let me hide. You drove all the way here because I somehow ‘forgot’ to give you my number.”
“I love you,” he said again, as if it was a challenge. One he intended to win.
“It’s not that you know me in ways he never did, you know a different person. He was the right man for someone who doesn’t exist anymore. You’re the right man for me.” She laughed a little bit at that. Because this should feel crazy. This should feel like silly, giddy madness that might disappear at any moment. And yet, somehow, it didn’t. It felt as solid as the wall behind her that had stood there since the 1880s. It felt as real as Marietta. “Although it’s only been three weeks. I guess that could change.”
“Strap in, darlin’,” Cody said in his low, determined way that made her heart flip over in her chest. “Because it’s not going to change. I’m pretty sure this is it.”
“I love how your version of romance is always a threat,” Skylar said, then she let out a little squeal, because he was moving again.
He pulled her into his arms, and then he dipped her low. As if they were in a very old movie. The kind of movie that would be filmed in black-and-white and take place in a saloon just like this one. He dipped her down, over his arm, like some kind of ballroom dance. He dipped her down until she thought her head might hit the floor behind her, or would have, if she didn’t trust him to hold her up. He dipped her until she felt as if she must have been wearing some kind of ball gown, when she knew better. When she knew that she was wearing a cute little sundress and matching sweater, like the conservative and sweet thing she didn’t think she was anymore.
Or wasn’t around him, anyway.
Cody dipped her until she was certain every single eye in the room was on them, if they hadn’t been already.
“Say it,” he ordered her, that glittering thing in his dark green eyes that made her tremble. Everywhere. “Or I swear I’ll drop you on the floor.”
“I love you,” she told him, unable to contain her smile. “And you’re not going to drop me. Just think how that would play on social media. Can’t ride a bull, can’t dip a girl—”
“It’s that mouth,” he said then, as if in some kind of wonder. “That crooked smile. And someday, Skylar, the only ghost you’ll have in your eyes will be me.”
And when he kissed her, she saw fireworks all over again, though this time she knew that they were inside. And it wasn’t the Fourth of July.
It was just him.
And it took her longer than it should have to understand that it was her family, cheering them on, as if the famous Grey Curse was shattering all around them.
But none of that mattered. Because all she felt, all she wanted, was Cody.
For as long as she could have him.
Chapter Fourteen
Cody spent the remainder of his last American Extreme Bull Riders Tour with his very own buckle bunny, who theatrically programmed her number into his phone that very same night in Marietta. Skylar slept in his trailer and she cheered for him in the stands, and when he officially retired at the championship show in Fort Worth that October, hers was the only voice he could hear in all that cheering.
Hers was the only voice he wanted to hear.
And then he was done with bulls and all his endless injuries and ready for the ride of his life.
He started with a wedding, marrying Skylar in Montana with her family all around and his in awe, where it had all began.
“I love you,” he told her that night, when she was finally his wife, out beneath the stars.
“I know,” she replied, and then laughed when he nipped her chin. “I love you too, Cody. So much it hurts.”
It was the only way he ever wanted to hurt her.
They built a house that sprawled there on that California bluff where they’d sat in camp chairs in front of his Airstream, with a wide porch that they could sit on when the weather was right. They watched hundreds of sunsets right there, huddled together in the same chair, the way they had back then. They built a little ranch that turned into something bigger on some of that land, raising cattle and sheep and breeding a few prize bulls with that American Extreme star quality written all over them. Cody didn’t miss riding—he liked walking without pain too much and life without concussions—but he sure liked imagining Galen bulls tossing new bull riders straight off into the dirt.
He liked that a lot.
He put his sisters through college and let them come and live in the ranch’s guesthouse when they needed it, because being around all those Greys over the years made him rethink his definition of family and
closeness and what that meant to everybody involved. So much so that when his mother finally left Todd, a few years after Kathleen graduated from Vanderbilt, he gave her his old Airstream and let her live in it on his property. In a private little grove near the sea, to let the Pacific help her heal.
In time Skylar gave him a son, a squalling little alien creature they both loved so much it should have terrified him. Sometimes Cody thought it did. And they named him after the men they’d lost, Charlie Galen and Thayer Sexton, because neither one of them believed in walking shrines, but their whole, sweet life was about second chances.
And little Charlie Thayer Galen was hope made real, and a yeller.
But he was as stubborn as his mama and as determined as his father, so Cody wasn’t entirely surprised when little Charlie, at all of six years old, demanded that he get to ride bulls like his daddy.
“Tell me this is a phase,” Skylar murmured as Charlie demonstrated what he’d learned from watching videos of Cody.
All over the living room furniture. Making his three-year-old brother Grey shriek with delight and chase around after him.
But Cody saw the jut of his son’s chin. And that faraway look in his green eyes. He recognized it, even in a six-year-old.
He grinned at his wife. Not exactly sheepishly, because he wasn’t the one who’d showed the kids his videos.
And Skylar shook her head, sitting there like she wasn’t his whole world, with their five-month-old daughter Cady snug in her arms and all that love all over her face.
That tried and tested love, as sweet as the day she’d swung open the door to her father’s house in Billings and changed them both forever. The kind of love that redeemed a dick like Cody and saved them both from their darker impulses of whiskey and grief and loneliness. Three kids and still so much laughter—that kind of love. The things she whispered to him in the dark when she moved over him in their bedroom with its sturdy lock on the door. The things he promised her when she was clenched tight around him, still calling him oh God.
All this love that was theirs, miraculous and impossible, hard and soft, as loud as it was quiet and spun out over all these years. The fights that ended in wild make-up sex and the other ones that ended with both of them feeling so fragile, only resolve and forgiveness and a little bit of bullheadedness got them through.
The roar of it. The endless dance, jolts and bumps and a header into the dirt, only to climb back up to their feet to do it all over again.
And again and again and again.
Cody looked at her beautiful face, more beautiful now that he knew her better than he knew himself sometimes and no more ghosts between them, and he wouldn’t change a thing.
“I guess I brought this on myself,” Skylar said, as if she knew what he was thinking, out here on their bluff so many miles away from everything, with only the sea and the stars she loved as witness. “I knew who I married.”
Cody caught each of his sons in one arm, lifting them off the floor to make them howl with glee, and he looked at his women. The wife he loved more than any other person alive, and the little girl he was already certain he’d happily kill for, if necessary.
This longest, best ride. His life.
“It will be fine, darlin’,” he promised her. And then he smiled, because he knew he’d make sure that it was, or die trying. “Trust me.”
The End
The American Extreme Bull Riders Tour
If you enjoyed Cody, you’ll love the rest of the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour!
Book 1: Tanner by Sarah Mayberry
Buy now!
Book 2: Chase by Barbara Dunlop
Buy now!
Book 3: Casey by Kelly Hunter
Buy now!
Book 4: Cody by Megan Crane
View the entire series here!
Book 5: Troy by Amy Andrews
Coming Soon
Book 6: Kane by Sinclair Jayne
Coming Soon
Book 7: Austin by Jeannie Watt
Coming Soon
Book 8: Gage by Katherine Garbera
Coming Soon
Want to know more about The Greys?
The Greys of Montana
Christina Grey’s story
Book 1: Come Home for Christmas, Cowboy
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Jesse Grey’s story
Book 2: In Bed with the Bachelor
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Scottie Grey’s story
Book 3: Project Virgin
Buy now!
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About the Author
USA Today bestselling, RITA-nominated, and critically-acclaimed author Megan Crane has written more than fifty books since her debut in 2004. She has been published by a variety of publishers, including each of New York’s Big Five. She’s won fans with her women’s fiction, chick lit, and work-for-hire young adult novels as well as with the Harlequin Presents she writes as Caitlin Crews. These days her focus is on contemporary romance from small town to international glamor, cowboys to bikers, and beyond. She sometimes teaches creative writing classes both online at mediabistro.com and at UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally utilizes the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in York, England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with a husband who draws comics and animation storyboards and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.
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