by Naomi Niles
“So, it’s only okay to marry someone that you can’t imagine living without?”
“Yes! That’s the whole point of it. If you can live without them, then you should.”“I love Callie. We have a good, comfortable life. Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“Because my heart will be breaking for you five years from now, or sooner, when you’re breaking up over some silly fight or infidelity.”
“Gee, Sis, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I have every confidence in you – but not in this marriage. You’re marrying Callie because she’s safe. You’re protecting your heart because in the end when it doesn’t work out, you won’t be completely devastated. But what happens if you have a kid or two when one of you decides this marriage never really should have happened in the first place? Then who gets hurt?”
“You missed your calling, Sis. You should have been a psychologist or a psychic since you seem to be able to tell my future.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Let me put it to you another way: whatever happened to my daredevil little brother? What happened to the Kyle that was willing to take risks? Where is the guy who never did anything because it was comfortable? He did it because it was fun and exciting. Where did this ‘play it safe so nobody gets hurt,’ guy come from?”
“If I recall, when I was out taking risks, you were constantly lecturing me about growing up. Maybe that’s what I did…I grew up. I realized that maybe that all-consuming in love feeling burns out after a while anyways and maybe then you’re stuck with someone that you don’t even like. At least I like Callie…” Shit! That didn’t come out the way I meant it.
Sarah raised an eyebrow and said, “Growing up doesn’t mean settling, Kyle. You were a player and I hated that, but after you got sick, it’s like you were desperate suddenly to settle down and you took the first relationship you could get…a safe one.”
“Do you not like Callie? I thought you liked her.”
She looked annoyed with me, like she usually is, as she said, “I love Callie. She’s become a good friend to me…that’s part of all of this. She deserves a man who worships her, Kyle. She deserves a man who loves and cherishes her unlike he’s ever loved anything or anyone in his life. You’re not only doing yourself a disservice by settling, you’re doing her one as well – a big one.”
I had blown Sarah off that day, but for the rest of the week leading up to today, I couldn’t get her words out of my head. She was right that being sick had changed my priorities. It’s easy when you’re young and healthy to go through life thinking you have time for everything. Having a tumor growing inside of my head – twice – convinced me that sometimes you might not really know how much time you have left. I love the thrill of a crazy, wild passionate relationship, volatile at times even, but I also want a real family with a wife and mother and husband and father and kids. I’m nearly thirty years old and I have had brain surgery twice. What if I have to do it again and the next time, I don’t make it. I don’t want to die knowing I didn’t leave anything of myself behind, or that no one would mourn me. I want what my mother denied my sister, father, and I. Callie seemed like he perfect choice…until Sarah convinced me to think about how unfair that was.
I looked at her down on that stage and my heart felt like it was going to break. Sarah was right. Callie deserved so much more. I decided that I’d tell her tomorrow. Tonight, I would let her bask in her accomplishments that she’d worked so hard for…she deserved that, too.
*******
“I drank way too much champagne last night,” Callie rolled into me the morning after her graduation. I felt her warm body bump into me, and I pulled open my heavy eyelids to look down at her.
“Me, too… What’s your name again?” She giggled and poked me in the side.
“I can take the bar exam now! Yay!”
“Yay for you! I’m so proud of you. I’m not sure I got a chance to tell you that last night.”
“I’m sure you did and we were both too drunk on champagne to remember. Thank you for the flowers and dinner and everything. I love you.”
“You’re welcome. I love you, too.”
“I’m going to make us some breakfast,” she threw back the covers and I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down against me.
“Wait, don’t leave yet.”
“Oh, baby I love you, but we did that – a lot – last night…”
“There’s no limit…”
She giggled again. “But I’m hungry. How about after breakfast?”
I agreed to that. I didn’t want sex anyways… I mean, I always want sex, but that wasn’t what I was after at the moment. I’d considered just talking to her first thing before I had a chance to chicken out. I thought it might be easier lying in bed in each other’s arms – or at least, harder for her to reach something to hit me over the head with. I lay there and tried to think of how I should approach the subject. It’s a hell of a lot easier to break up with someone that you’re angry with than it is someone who has done nothing wrong.
I guess I must have fallen back to sleep because half an hour or so later when I woke up to Callie’s lips on mine…I’d been dreaming about Amber again. Amber was the reason that I didn’t flat out tell Sarah that she was crazy. I’ve done everything I could think of to get her out of my head, short of a lobotomy. She still sneaks in more often than she should and my body still feels like it’s on fire at the mere picture of her pretty face in my head.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.” I watched Callie leave the room again in nothing but an old t-shirt and sexy little pair of panties. She’s really hot. My morning wood strained after her as she went. When she was gone, I started to climb out of bed and once again, Amber’s face popped into my head. I closed my eyes for just a second to savor it…and I saw her body…and I could almost feel all that sexy hair in my face. My cock was really throbbing now.
“Kyle! Breakfast is getting cold.”
“Coming.” I threw back the sheet and reached for my sweat pants on the floor. As I was pulling them on, I thought about how many times since Callie and I had been together that I woke up just like this after a dream about Amber. I felt like a scumbag. I had to tell her. I went into the bathroom and talked my cock down before washing up and going out into the kitchen. Callie was at the table eating her omelet and thumbing through one of her bridal magazines. I took that as another sign. I sat down and took a sip of my coffee before I said,
“We need to talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AMBER
Dylan started out as a judge for the Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association, but he became quickly bored. He moved into announcing, and he was actually pretty good at that. In spite of his ability to be a huge asshole, he was really good with people. I just worry sometimes about what he’ll want to do when he tires of announcing, as well.
This was the eighth rodeo Dylan was announcing at. We’d been on the road for just about a year and so far, we were doing okay as a couple. I wouldn’t want to live like this on the road out of an RV forever and I still have my dreams of a “regular” life and family someday, but Dylan was in his element. For now. To see him happy, I could do this.
I was worried at first that being back in this lifestyle would make him want to drink or start using drugs again, but as far as I know, those two glasses of champagne in the restaurant almost a year ago were his last. I’ve heard him turn down a beer when he didn’t even know I was listening and for all of that, I was proud of him and I made a point to tell him so often. I was sitting in the stands waiting for the rodeo to start today when I heard the sound of his deep voice come on over the loudspeaker.
“Ladies and gentleman, thank you for coming out to Mesquite today for the 94th annual rodeo! We have a great show for you today. We’re starting off with some bull-riding and I have to tell you as a former rider, I’m both excited and nervous for our first cowboy. Mike Henry hails from
Butte, Montana, and he’s been riding bulls since he was nine years old. He’s in the running for the NFR in December and I have to tell y’all I think he’s a shoe-in…but that’s not what I’m excited and nervous for him about. Today, ladies and gents, Mike Henry has drawn Catastrophe.”
He paused and let the gasps and moans in the audience die down before he went on, “That’s right folks, the 2,300 pound Brahma bull has left a bloody trail across the grounds of the PRCA. Mike hasn’t ever had the luck, call it good or bad, of drawing Catastrophe before. This bull has never been ridden in almost a hundred rides, but his bad reputation comes not from that, but the fact that he’s a sore winner. Our rodeo clowns are the best – and with this bull, they have to be. Anyone that dares to get on Catastrophe’s back becomes his next target – and he rarely misses.”
Back when Dylan was riding the circuit, he used to talk about riding Catastrophe. He was cocky enough to believe that he could be the first cowboy to ride him. I hoped the stories I’d heard about him were legends like the “Big, Blue Ox.” I thought about the stories I’d heard as a kid about Lane Frost. He was another cocky cowboy who died at the same age Dylan is now trying to do the same thing with a different bull. I was glad Dylan had never drawn Catastrophe and even though I didn’t know this Mike Henry, I was nervous for him today, too.
“And here he comes, ladies and gentleman. Look at those muscles!” They didn’t usually start the bull from the arena, but Catastrophe was such a legend that he’d probably drawn half of this crowd today. He strutted around in a circle like he knew he was a bad-ass, stopping in front of the announcer’s deck to give Dylan and the two judges on either side of him a stern look. I could see Dylan with his hand over the microphone first saying something to the bull and then laughing with the judges. I was thankful once again he didn’t ride anymore. Catastrophe was calm as long as they let him strut his stuff on his own, but as soon as they headed him for the chute, the explosive beast came unhinged. It took them several tries, a lot of manpower and a lot of rope to get him where they wanted him.
The crowd went dead silent as we watched Mike Henry slip down onto Catastrophe’s back. The bull was becoming violent as they strapped in Mike’s hand. I had to wonder what compelled a man to want to get on the back of a beast that would just as soon kill him as look at him. I pressed my hands into my stomach and tried to quell the butterflies there. I had no idea why this bull is provoking so much anxiety in me.
Dylan started talking again, “You know, I retired about a year ago. I watched old Catastrophe for six years waiting for it to be my turn. Now when I look at him, all I feel is a pang of regret in my heart that he and I didn’t get to tangle up.” Oh, Dylan…
“A lot of guys have drawn him and then just walked away, when I’d have given my right arm for that ride.” I shook my head and looked over in the direction of the chute. It was still chaos. Catastrophe was not being cooperative and I wondered if Mike Henry was going to even make it out of the chute. Catastrophe seemed determined to not let that happen. A tug on the rope dropped open the chute and man and beast came tumbling out. I held my breath and watched with my hand close to my eyes so I could cover them at the last minute if I had to.
Two big clowns stood in the center of the arena and several of the cowboys sat on the fence ready to dive in and help out if needed. There was still a big hush in the stands and when I looked over at Dylan I saw that his eyes were wide with excitement and he was leaning in hard to get a good view of the action. It was over in a matter of seconds.
Catastrophe spun to the right and for a second, Henry was with him. He was hanging off too far, but just about to pull himself upright when that damned big bull started spinning. He literally brought his two-thousand-pound body off the ground about two or maybe even three feet each time he spun. Three seconds into the ride, Mike Henry went flying into the gates.
The second he hit the gate, before he’d even slunk down to the ground, Catastrophe had his head down and was moving in. The rodeo clowns were doing their best to distract him, but it was like all that bull could see was the cowboy that had dared to try and ride him. Mike Henry made it over the arena fence just as Catastrophe’s horn grazed the back of one of his calves. He was lucky. I glanced over at Dylan again, wondering why he wasn’t saying anything overhead. That’s when I saw that his eyes still held that child-like kind of wonder in them as he looked at that damned bull – and that’s when I started to figure out what it was about this creature that made me so nervous.
*******
That night, Dylan and I lay in our RV after we made love and I was just about to drift off to sleep when he said, “I want to ride again.”
I sat straight up. “What? You want to do what?”
“I want to ride. I hate sitting there and watching. I want the chance to draw Catastrophe and…”
“And what? And get a fractured skull? You like the idea of having a horn shoved into your back or your chest? You want to be paralyzed? Or dead?”
He waited for me to finish my tirade and then he said, “I’m not an amateur, baby.”
“Really? How many cowboys have been permanently maimed or killed who weren’t amateurs?”
He sat up and leaned into the headboard. “Why did you never get upset before when I was riding?”
“I did, Dylan. I used to ask you to quit all the time. You were usually drunk and we’d get in a fight over it, then you would go ahead and leave. You have a wife now and we have a future planned. When are you going to grow up?”
I could tell by the look on his face that that had pushed his buttons. “Grow up? You think this is a job for little boys? My dad rode until he was forty-two years old. He made a damned fortune doing it, too. We aren’t out here playing, Amber. This is a serious business.”
“It’s a business for men who don’t want a home and a responsibility. It’s for men who want to go out in the yard and play like little boys and get that adrenaline rush it gives them.”
“Oh, I see, you want a man who puts on a monkey suit and goes to an office every day. You want a man like that little freak Kyle…”
“Dylan, don’t go there. This has absolutely nothing to do with Kyle.”
“Why? That’s what you want, right? I can buy a bunch of three piece suits and go have my hair done and drive a fancy little sports car…oh, and don’t forget my gym membership. That way my muscles will be cut in all the right places – not like these that come from being a real man.”
I started to get out of bed, but he grabbed my arm. “Let go of me! I hate the way you think you can just put your hands on me whenever you feel like it.”
“When I finish,” he said with his voice low and kind of threatening. “I’m not a sissy boy like your little friend who has to walk with a cane. I’m a real man and if you can’t handle that, then maybe you should go home and look him up.”
I honestly hadn’t thought about Kyle in a long time, not while I was awake, anyways. I still saw him in my dreams and there was nothing “sissy” about him. It pissed me off like crazy when Dylan threw him in my face and insulted him. Kyle had been through a year of hell before Dylan ever met him and he was still nothing like what Dylan tried to make of him. But I had to bite my tongue because I knew that he was just trying to goad me into it so he could use that against me, too.
Now that Dylan brought him up, though, I was thinking about him again and wondering if I made the wrong decision. My heart still hurt when I think about him. Every time Dylan says something stupid like this, I almost regret sticking by him. I wrenched my arm out of Dylan’s grasp and went over to the closet. I grabbed out my bag and started pulling my clothes down and stuffing them inside. “What are you doing?” he said.
“I’m going home, like you told me to.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“What are you going to do, Dylan? Are you going to be a big man and hold me hostage?” He threw back the covers and for a second when he came towards me, I felt that ting
le of fear run down my spine. I was always the first one to tell my family that he would never hurt me, but to be honest with myself, when he got this angry, I just wasn’t sure.
“Put the stuff away, Amber. Damn it, we were just talking!”
“We were and then you had to get ugly.”
“You sure are protective of that sissy boy. Are you sure you’re not still in love with him?”
I was still in love with him, but I’d stuffed all that because I made a commitment to Dylan. I didn’t let Kyle come between us and I was never the one who brought him up, so how dare Dylan throw him into our argument where he didn’t belong? “Our argument has nothing to do with Kyle. You want to use him as a distraction to take the heat off of you. I’m not that naïve. I know that this is about you not wanting to grow up. I don’t want a husband with a broken neck…and I don’t want to be a widow. You married me and promised me a life with you and kids. You can’t give that to me if you’re riding the circuit, even if you don’t get hurt.”
“Shit, come here.” He reached for me, but I didn’t move into his arms. He thinks he can say or do whatever he wants to and then just hug it all away. Some things can’t be hugged away. He finally put his arms down and said, “Don’t cry. I’ll keep announcing and judging…maybe, and only if it’s okay with you, I’ll just ride in an expedition or two. I just want to feel alive again, baby.”
“Being with me doesn’t make you feel alive?”
He sighed. “You know what I mean. Come here.” Unfortunately, I did know what he meant. Dylan has an addictive personality. The adrenaline is as much of an addiction as the alcohol and the drugs. He was craving it and I doubted that he’d be able to resist the call forever.
It turned out just that following week I was proven right…about everything.
