“You’re lucky I still let you ride Gidget,” she says, her voice only getting sharper with her threats. “And you can bet your ass I’m not gonna sell him to you now. Because in case you’ve forgotten, Billy, he isn’t really my mom’s horse. He’s mine.”
My eyes pop, shocked at how fast my heart can crash into my stomach.
“Lor!” Taryn says.
“Well?” Lorelai gestures my way. “I’m mad at him.”
“I’m mad at him, too.” Taryn peeks at me. “But he needs help working out. So I’m helping him. And don’t…don’t say things like that about Gidget when you don’t mean them. I know you didn’t, right?”
Lorelai throws a hand up. “Fine.” She collects her water bottle and her towel, marching past us. “But don’t be surprised when he pulls the same shit again in six months.”
I cringe when the door slams behind her, the gym eerily quiet, stuffy and hot from the heater, and totally hers. The plantation house, the ranch, Gidget. One day, it’s all gonna be Lorelai’s. I, however, am primed to inherit a broken-down Ranger, a couple of chickens, some goats with purple glitter polish on their hooves, and not a damn speck of land to my name.
“Billy—”
“Thanks for that,” I snap at Taryn. “Really. Can’t tell you how much I was hoping to be reminded of what a piece of crap I am today and how everyone pretty much hates me now.”
Her shoulders drop. “No one hates—”
“There are two sides to this story,” I remind her. “And while you’re running around town telling everyone your half, I can’t say a word about mine. That isn’t fair to do when I’m not allowed to defend myself.”
“I’m sorry, okay! I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t know she was gonna be here.”
“You couldn’t have called?” I yell at her.
I regret it instantly. Taryn spins away, her hands covering her face before she tosses her hair, and I start heading toward the bathroom to change, growling under my breath.
Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe people are right and some done things need to just stay done. But Taryn and I, we don’t feel done.
I’m calming down by the time I’m finished changing into a T-shirt and workout shorts, trading my old boots for a pair of Nike running shoes. I don’t remember leaving all this stuff at her house, but maybe I did.
My limp is a hell of a lot bigger out of my Ariats, and Taryn comes running as soon as she sees me, looping my arm around her neck and hers around my waist, and God, she smells good. How does she always smell like summer, even when it’s freezing?
“Over here.” She nods toward the wall where she’s got a bunch of stuff laid out like she went back for her first aid kit while I was changing. “I’m gonna wrap your ankle before we start.”
I nod, not risking talking when I might squeal from the pain. But I let her help me over to the wall, then wrap my ankle like she did outside Up-Chuck Buck’s. The fact that she tied her hair up in a messy ponytail first and took off her jacket to reveal a strappy little workout top helps way more with the pain than it should. She’s also never once balked at the scar from my knee surgery, but then again, she was always more interested in which techniques the doctor used and explaining how they’ve improved them since.
“You wanna do arms first?” she asks when she’s done, standing and extending a hand to help me up.
I’m probably good after chopping all that wood, but no way am I telling her that. “Yeah, that’s fine.” We head over to the bench press station, Taryn giving me a hand as I lie down and position myself under the bar. She moves the weight anchor, and I scoff, moving it again.
“Stop trying to show off,” she hassles me. “You’re gonna hurt yourself worse, and it’s not gonna earn you any points in my book.”
I roll my eyes. “Honey, I’m not trying to show off. That’s what I’m benching now.”
She isn’t buying it. “Since when?”
“A while.”
She chews the inside of her lip as her eyes size me up, as though she’s capable of determining how much force my muscles can exert just by looking at them. Except she also doesn’t have the first clue how restrained I am when we’re together. The first time I accidentally bruised her because I wasn’t being careful with the strength in my hands, I thought I was gonna be sick. She just thought it was hot.
I flex just a little, and Taryn huffs. “Well, fine then. I guess.”
Sucker…
She counts me off as I push through a circuit, my arms screaming from the extra weight, but it’s totally worth it from the impressed hitch in the corner of her scowl. Probably wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t chopped all that wood, and maybe I do need to move up in weights a bit. Frank will hate it, but what else is new.
“All right, hero, knock it off,” Taryn says when she decides I’m done.
And just like that, round and round we go from machine to machine, Taryn rigging them up in weird ways so I can use most of them and constantly bitching about the weight I use. So she started skipping numbers in counting my reps to try to make up for it.
“No, that was eighteen,” she snaps from below me, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder and replanting her hands backward on her waist.
I hang from the pull-up bar, my ankles crossed and my sweaty fingers slipping. We’ve done arms, legs, back, core, legs, and now we’re doing arms again because she’s evil, and I’m starting to wonder if she’s trying to kill me. It’s taking everything in me to pull myself up again, halfway through our fourth circuit and gritting out, “Eighteen.”
“Nineteen, jackass.”
I lower myself with total control, trying to remain focused. I’ve gotta stay that way if my comeback is gonna last longer than a blip. But it’s too much fun to rile her up. “Eighteen.”
“Twenty!”
I kick at her a bit, then start pulling myself up again. “Ninete-shit!”
My overworked arms buckle, and my hands slip, all way-too-much of me crashing to the ground and directly on top of my goddamn ankle, an atomic blast of pain erupting into my foot and up my leg like I just shattered it.
“Billy!”
I roar with the full breadth of my throat under the agony, curling into myself on the ground and coughing through trying not to throw up. Taryn’s hands settle on my body, pressing and searching in a dozen different places, like that’s gonna do anything when I’m never gonna fucking walk again.
Hell, screw walking. I’m never gonna ride again—not my bike, not Gidget, because this isn’t like when my knee blew and they said I was done. This is so much fucking worse.
“Oh God,” she mutters, lying on top of me and hugging me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I distracted you. Shit…”
I pant out a breath even though my whole future is gone, still trying to suck it up and not waste such a prime opportunity to roll over and kiss her when she’s on top of me apologizing, but God, it hurts so fucking bad.
This is it. My comeback’s finished, and someone’s gonna have to call Frank and tell him the bad news.
Taryn sits up and starts stroking her fingers through my hair, running her palms down my back and my sides, and I stay there for I don’t know how long. Letting her comfort me, soaking up the way she smells and feels and how she always makes me feel better, especially when I’m at my lowest.
After a while, she starts humming. Old songs from old movies that we used to watch when the hours in our bodies didn’t match the ones on the clocks, our minds awake but our side of the world asleep, and just the two of us together on her old couch as we battled our familiar friend: jet lag.
She keeps humming, changing tunes, and as I try to imagine what kind of slow, simple future I’m going to have now, images swirl in my mind of western girls dancing with backwoods boys, of kids in costumes dancing on vaudeville stages. She changes to a new song
again, and after a few minutes, I start to remember which song goes with what movie. But that isn’t all I realize.
The simple awareness that I’m fine, that the pain’s almost done bleeding out of me and I’m breathing okay long before I’ve even started thinking about moving away from her…
It hits me with the weight of an anvil dropping on my head, like in the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. But nothing’s funny about it now. I’ve taken so much more from her than I’ve ever given. I didn’t put her first like I should’ve. I dragged her back into a nightmare after she did everything in her power to put it behind her. And I’ve lied to her too many times about stuff no one should ever lie about. Way too many goddamn times.
It’s all so suddenly obvious why she’s leaving me, and I hate that I took that from her, too. So I sit up. Pull my feet in front of me. Keep my back to her and don’t say a word.
“You okay?” she asks.
If I say yes, it’s a lie. If I say no, she’ll want to fix it. The first thing she ever said to me was “Can I help you?” and I’ve let her spend too much time doing just that. Too much effort when she’s destined for so many greater things. But I can’t say nothing.
I clear my throat, wiping at my nose. “You hear about Duke Bricker?”
“Yeah,” she mumbles behind me. “I went to the funeral. You were gone. Valencia.” She was supposed to be in Valencia with me, but considering she broke up with me days before, that didn’t happen. “You know, Billy, I had forgotten how nice it is out there, how much space he had. It kind of reminded me of…” She trails off, but I already know what she was gonna say.
That it reminded her of the ranch we always talked about owning together: with more acres than you could see and a small house that didn’t take away from the natural beauty of the land. Just enough space for us, the sky, and our horses, too.
I nod, clasping my hands in front of me. “Me and Mason, we spent a lot of time out there when we were in school. Duke had this, uh, this Arabian. Big, black, beautiful horse, and we used to sneak out there all the time, trying to ride it.”
Taryn huffs, but it’s not as judgmental as I expected. It’s almost amused. “Sounds like something y’all would do.”
I nod again, lost in the memory and nearly able to smell the wet grass after the afternoon rains. The mud that would cake my boots and dirty my lariat. “I’d rope him so we could get the tack on, let Mason go first. He’d fly on that horse, I tell you, that thing was so fast… But”—I start to quietly laugh, though something in me is shattering apart—“and I didn’t find this out till years later, but apparently, Duke could see us screwing around with that horse from where he’d be smoking his pipe on his back porch. Which makes, just, perfect sense, ya know. Because it never failed that about five seconds after I’d cut Mason loose, our father would pull up, yelling and cussing up a storm…” I drop my head when my voice gives out, patting my hands over my hair like it can hold in all my feelings, all my regrets from spilling out, but it can’t. “Never did get to ride that Arabian.”
She rests her hand on my shoulder, light and gentle, and so much more forgiving than I deserve. “Hey, what’s going on with you?”
I shake my head, my voice grainy and barely even making it all the way out. “Oh, you know, same old story.” I lift my head and swallow, staring at the wall in front of me. “Some dumb cowboy with a broke-down truck lost his girl. Pitiful part is he can’t even drink his way to getting over her, because he don’t drink.”
Her hand doesn’t move. Not until I shake it off and stand up, starting to make my way to the bathroom to change. As if I’m even capable of such a thing.
“Billy—”
“It’s fine.” I half turn to look at her but keep my eyes low, trying not to see her. It hurts too much. “You can go. Thanks for the help.”
Taryn sputters, shifting her weight. “I drove you. How are you gonna get home?”
Home. That word.
“I’m, uh, I’m gonna take Gidget for a ride. Before Lorelai changes her mind and puts a lock on his stall.” I chuckle it off, though it’s the furthest thing from funny in the whole damn world. “I’ll catch a ride from a farmhand. Or call Mason.”
Taryn bites her lip, still shifting in place. “Well, Bopper probably needs to be ridden, too. We can take them both out, and then I can—”
“Taryn, stop. You’ve done enough. I’m not your problem anymore.”
A whole bunch of air rushes from her lips, and I’m sorry about making her feel bad, but she was right when she said it. No matter how much she wishes she weren’t.
“It’s not a problem to work out with you.” Her voice is starting to melt a little, but then she pushes out more force and almost gets back to acting like she’s fine. “I have to work out anyway, so it’s not a big deal to do it together.”
I stare at her, helpless to figure out why she’s pushing this. “I’m fifteen miles in the opposite direction. And I can drive myself.”
“Just let me do this for you!”
I step back, holding up my hands.
She looks just as pissed as she did when she caught me chopping wood, and I doubt she even knows why she’s pushing this. But I’ve become painfully aware over the last few weeks that breaking up doesn’t mean all the love you felt just gets canceled overnight. It lingers and lingers, no matter how mad anyone got.
Doesn’t mean she wasn’t right to do it, though.
Taryn’s always right.
But I guess, for whatever reason, she’s also made up her mind about hanging around me a bit more. Maybe trying to see if she can like me some again. And it’s a lot easier to let her have her way than fight the rotation of the earth by trying to change it.
“I’m tired of arguing about petty shit.” She tears the ponytail holder out of her hair, letting it fall like a shiny blond waterfall around her shoulders. “I’m picking you up tomorrow at three, so be ready to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you really don’t want a ride home?”
I shake my head. “I need to talk to Lynn. Try to convince her to let me cut her a check.”
“Well…” Taryn crosses her arms, already back to thinking a million thoughts at a million miles an hour. “Where are you going to put Gidget if she says yes?”
She sounds just like Lynn. And I don’t have an answer for either of them. Because Lynn already said Gidget can’t stay at the ranch much longer, because she needs the space for a new horse she’s about to buy.
Taryn doesn’t wait long for my response. She shrugs, saying like it’s nothing, “Well, let me know if she says yes. Gidget can stay at my house in the barn with Aston until you get it figured out.”
I can barely speak, I’m so stunned by her offer. “What? Why?”
Taryn watches me. Everything about her getting softer. “Because I’m trying to forgive you, Billy,” she says, and my throat chokes closed at how much she sounds like she means that. “Okay? I’m here, and I’m really trying. But sometimes, you really piss me off, and you don’t make it easy. And before you ask, no, none of this is getting fixed overnight, so I’m still not comfortable with you calling me or coming over. I need more time.”
“Okay.” I can’t argue with anything she said, not that I want to if there really is hope. “So are you not…selling Aston anymore?”
She knows that’s not all I’m asking. And there’s a whole lot riding on that answer. “I don’t know yet. I hope not. But that kind of depends on you.”
God, just the fact that she said that… “Taryn, I swear to you I will never again—”
“I know. And I know you had your reasons, and you didn’t mean to hurt me, and I know it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse, and I should be grateful for that, and I am. But I can’t just wake up and pretend like it didn’t happen, Billy. I can’t just go back to before. I—” She
stops herself, saying a lot more calmly, “I will see you tomorrow. That’s the best I can do right now.”
“It’s enough,” I promise. “It’s more than enough.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t push my luck any further. I just watch as she goes over and gathers up all her stuff, then heads toward the door. She stiff-arms it without another word of goodbye, stomping outside to her truck, and never once looks back.
But she’s still fighting with me. Still chasing me and letting me chase her. And I guess between two motorcycle racers, that’s all that really matters in the end.
“Guess we’ll try again tomorrow.”
Chapter 10
Taryn Ledell—Back Then
If there was anything else in the world I could have wanted, I couldn’t think to name it, I was so damn happy. I smiled endlessly down at Billy, his hat on my head and his head in my lap, stretching out in a field somewhere in Hargrove Ranch as I combed my fingers through his hair. He’d been whittling that apple all afternoon, seemed like, peeling it in smooth chunks that came out looking like flattened silver dollars every single time.
“Tell me about our ranch again,” I breathed down to him, soaking in the warmth of the mid-May sun shining down on us. “The land, the house. I want to hear about all of it.”
His arm stretched up, extending another piece of apple to Gidget, who was standing directly next to us because they had some sort of separation anxiety, as best as I could tell. “Yeah? Well, it’s gonna be a lot bigger and better than this one. And with way less people crawling all over it.”
A chuckle tickled its way out of my chest, mostly from loving the way he shivered when I ran my nails across his scalp just so. “What do we need so much land for? It’s not like you need to compensate for anything.”
He snorted. “Awful kind of you to say. And yes, we do need all that land.” He peeled another chunk of apple, acting like he was gonna give it to his horse, then eating it himself at the last minute. Gidget didn’t seem amused, nipping at Billy’s hand and stealing the rest of the apple. Billy just chuckled and scratched the underside of his horse’s jaw, clicking closed his knife and hooking it onto his back pocket. “How are Gidget and Aston Magic supposed to stretch their legs on anything less than forty acres? Isn’t that right, buddy? We need more space than that, don’t we?”
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