Fearless

by Katie Golding

  I flick the condom onto the comforter, then grasp her ankles and yank her toward the edge of the bed.

  “Door,” she says, and my heart stops.

  “You didn’t lock it while I was putting Gidget in with Aston?”

  She grins wickedly, devilish little thing that she is. “Nope.”

  I dash for the door and lock it as Taryn bursts out laughing. Then I run back to her, leaping onto the bed and lightly covering her mouth with my hand, trying not to smile as I snarl at her. “You are gonna get us in so much trouble.”

  She easily pushes my hand away, beaming up at me as her leg smooths up my side and wraps around my waist, pulling me closer. “Can’t wait.”

  Yeah, me either.

  * * *

  I wake up slowly in Taryn’s bed, my body so heavy and sunk into her pillow-top mattress that I’m not sure where I end and it begins. I’m also not sure where I end and she begins—Taryn’s head on my arm and her back to my chest, peach-scented hair tickling my nose, and her icicle feet woven around mine. A smile sneaks onto my lips, and I inhale deeper the remedy of her, sloshing strength through my muscles so they flex against her soft body, telling me where her skin is against mine and where I need to move closer.

  Taryn moans in her sleep and snuggles a little more against me, her foot petting my calf like she’s scratching an itch. Once she’s got it, she hmpfs and turns more onto her side, bumping her ass against my quickly hardening cock. I find my hand on her hip and absently begin strumming her skin even softer than I do my guitar, breathing her in again and nuzzling a kiss to her tangled hair. But it’s not the warmth between her legs that has me moving closer.

  It’s the fire in my heart, simmering low but getting stronger with every lick of flame lapping up my lungs and singeing its way down my arms. It leaves a trail that sparkles like fresh snow under a sunrise, painting me new colors from the inside out.

  Because it’s her.

  She’s the one.

  And it’s not that I wasn’t in love with her before. It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it or that we hadn’t talked about it hypothetically or that I didn’t know everyone was expecting it. But I never expected it would actually be a possibility, that in the real world outside of fantasies and dreams, of somedays and I’m gonnas, she might actually marry me.

  That she’d want to or I wouldn’t screw it up before then. That I’d ever settle down enough to face what it really means and takes to be someone’s husband, the work and the sacrifices, the patience and the self-control, the honesty and humility required to be worthy of sharing a lifetime with someone. And as I listen to Taryn breathe in my arms, her body bare and warming from mine under the covers, there’s one word I can’t get out of my head: cherish.

  I know why, too.

  Not long after Annie and Jack Henley got married, Jack and I went fishing. He was still the same guy I’d known since he’d moved here at thirteen: scraggly and loud and telling bad jokes no one laughed at but me and Mason. But something about him was different, too. Like he was older than before.

  When I asked him how married life was treating him, he said what I’d been thinking. Different than he’d expected. But better. Jack said he’d loved Annie before, more than he knew what to do with it, which was why he’d asked her to marry him at a green eighteen years old. But something had happened when he’d said those vows to her, he said. Like something had locked. And the way he saw her now, it was like she was the ground beneath his feet.

  No matter where he was or what he was doing, that ground was gonna be there. And he wanted to be that for her, Jack said. He wanted Annie to have the same security she’d given him. He cherished her for it.

  That was the word he used. Cherished.

  I hadn’t understood at the time, assuming his waxing poetic about commitment was gonna bite him in the ass when the whole thing probably fell apart faster than his Bundt cake in Home Economics.

  It didn’t, though. They got two little girls now that are the spitting image of Annie, and every time I see them around town, it’s so customary to see them as a unit of four that it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t.

  With a featherlight touch, I brush Taryn’s hair back from her shoulder, a long breath melting from my chest as I lightly trickle my fingertips down her arm and back up, so in love with her, I don’t know what to do with it all. And for the first time in my life, I understand exactly why Jack Henley was puking in the locker room as we passed around the ring he’d bought. Because he needed Annie to say yes. He needed that ground beneath his feet, and he needed to be hers so much, he couldn’t wait.

  Goose bumps flutter across my skin, and I know it isn’t fair, but it hurts too much to hold inside. I pull Taryn a little closer, closing my eyes and bowing my head to the back of hers, silently praying the vows I need to make, my voice in my mind asking questions and answering strongly, though my hands on her body are trembling with the weight of what’s happening in my heart.

  After the final one, I’m breathing fast and my pulse is racing, and I carefully lift my hand from her hip to pinch away the water at my eyes before I grasp her shoulder and kiss her tangled hair, settling comfortably into the new world before me and feeling as though I’ve grown up five years overnight.

  Feels damn good, too, and I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to know another way to be other than this one, and I can’t wait to tell her. About the ranch and how even though she may not be ready to get married yet, I am the moment she is.

  She’s the one.

  I hold her as she sleeps for I don’t know how long. I don’t count the minutes or the seconds or her breaths or nothing. I just soak in the knowledge that she’s going to be the woman I’ll always wake up to. I think about the day when I won’t be able to remember a time when we slept in separate beds, in different houses. And I wait impatiently for the rest of our lives to start.

  We have some tough years ahead with the distance that stretches and pulls us during the circuit, but I’m not worried. For the first time ever, I’m totally at peace knowing my racing career won’t last forever, and one day, we’ll come home for good. I know we will, as much as I know there will always be ground beneath my feet.

  When Taryn finally starts to leave the world of her dreams and come back to me, I’m no longer the same man she went to sleep with, and she must feel it. She hums and turns over, snuggling into me with a soft smile before she’s even got her eyes open. “You’re happy this morning,” she whispers, brushing a kiss to my throat before her hands smooth over my hips, pulling them harder against her as she moans and nips at my collarbone.

  I chuckle, tucking the covers tighter around her and lost somewhere beneath her fingernails teasing and tickling my side. Yeah, I’m happy. My mind’s still echoing with the words we whispered to each other last night, starting with all the things I’d missed about her: big things, small things, stupid things, and important things. Things I’d taken for granted and won’t again. Taryn said her own list, things I wasn’t aware of and will make sure to keep doing because I hadn’t known what they meant to her. We made apologies and a lot of promises, and it ended with Taryn saying that she was mine, and she wanted me to know that.

  I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I guess I understand what she meant. Because in a lot of ways, all the ones that matter, I’m hers, too. Have been for a while now.

  I sweep some of the tangles back from her face, brushing a kiss to her forehead. “Morning, honey.”

  “I need coffee,” she mumbles through a yawn. But then she winds her leg around mine so no one is getting out of this bed anytime soon. “I’ll make us some eggs and biscuits for breakfast if you give me, like, five more minutes.”

  It floods me all over again, and I squeeze her tight. “I’m okay.”

  She shifts to squint up at me, all sleepy and pouty and more beautiful than I
can ever remember her being. “What? You’ve literally woken me up twice before just from your stomach growling in the morning. You’re not hungry? Are you sick?” She reaches up to feel my forehead, and I can’t keep from laughing, turning my face into the pillow to try to keep quiet. Taryn starts tickling me, asking, “Huh? What’s wrong, Billy? You don’t like my cooking, is that it? What’s the real story here?”

  Her cooking’s amazing and she knows it, and it just adds insult to injury that I’m gonna miss her perfect omelet with ham and cheese and onions and tomatoes and the biscuits she makes from scratch that are even fluffier than my mama’s. I think because Taryn uses some kind of flour that isn’t really flour.

  But either way, I’ve stayed too long already. I gotta get Gidget back to his stall at Hargrove Ranch before Lynn notices he’s gone and calls the damn sheriff on him missing. But I can push it five more minutes. Maybe ten.

  I finally get enough air in my lungs to turn over and give Taryn some payback, stealing her wrists into my hand and locking her against me so she can’t keep tickling me into oblivion.

  “That’s it,” I growl, Taryn bursting out in giggles as I tackle her into the bed, my hands on either side of her propping me up as she laughs under me.

  “Oh no, I’m gonna get it now…”

  I pretend to scowl at her and slowly shake my head. “So much trouble.”

  Taryn cracks up even more, sliding her hands up my chest and settling them around my neck and looking so damn happy, it kills me that I’m gonna have to ruin it by telling her I gotta go.

  I’m always telling her I gotta go, and it’s not fair to either of us.

  “Can’t wait to hear what my punishment is gonna be,” she says cheerfully, and I can’t bring myself to do it—I lower down to kiss her instead. She’s more important, and she needs me here. With her, right now, making up for the time we’ve lost.

  Gidget’s fine, and Lynn can get over it. Taryn comes first.

  “Let me go make you some coffee,” I whisper into her lips. “Won’t be two minutes.”

  Taryn beams and lifts another hazy kiss from my lips, then pushes me off her. “Nope!” She tosses the covers over my head, leaving me fighting to get out from under them while she gets up from the bed. “I need you to live another day. You can get the wrath of my mama tomorrow.”

  I chuckle and prop my head in my hand, already missing her against me as I watch her get dressed in the same clothes I took off her last night.

  “Two minutes,” she says with a wink, slipping out of the room and shutting the door behind her.

  I collapse into her bed, breathing in the trace of her shampoo on the pillow and the heady scent of sex still in the air, and not a single moving box anywhere in sight. I clap once, quietly, rethreading my hands behind my head and staring at her ceiling.

  The ground steady beneath my feet.

  I thought.

  Chapter 18

  Taryn Ledell—Present Day

  “Wow.” Lor looks up, sitting across from me on her down comforter, her legs pretzeled and that great big horse painting above her bed scrutinizing everything that happens in here. The rest of her giant white room is silent apart from the blow of the heater swirling vanilla candles and rustling the notebook paper of Mason’s letter in her hand. “He made…some really good points.”

  I nod so hard, her overly soft bed wiggles with the force of my agreement. “Mm-hmm.”

  She scrunches her face at me, leaning closer and her voice dropping like she’s scared he’s somehow going to hear her. “He’s a really good writer.”

  I laugh, taking back the letter. “Right? Who would’ve thought?”

  “Has Billy read it?”

  “Nope,” I tell her, folding it up and leaning over to put it back in my purse. Under the silk interior lining, where I unstitched the corner just enough to fit the folded letter inside, super secret and totally safe. “And he’s not going to. Ever.”

  “So…” Lor shakes her head at me when I sit up and face her, but she’s gotta already know what I’m gonna say based on how badly I’ve been beaming since I bounded up the stairs to her bedroom and threw open the door.

  I keep it cool for a second. But not a very long one before I throw my hands up excitedly and squeal, “We’re back together!”

  “What?” Lorelai grabs my shoulders, shaking me. “Are you serious? What did we talk about!”

  I crack up laughing, still giddy and loose from undoubtedly the greatest three days of nonstop sex anyone could ever hope to have. “I don’t care,” I tell her, shaking my head and letting her shake me. “I don’t even care.”

  “Ugh!” She throws me down sideways onto her bed, and I curl into myself, laughing so hard, my stomach hurts. I’ve missed being this happy, and it’s so good to have it back. To have all of it back. Exactly how it’s supposed to be. “You’re hopeless.”

  “I know,” I breathe, pushing myself into sitting up. “But hear me out, okay?”

  “No.” She crosses her arms, glaring at her trophy shelf. “I’m mad at you.”

  “Lor!” I chuckle. “Come on. You know I never wanted to break up with him. You were with me that night. It was…bad.”

  She rolls her eyes, waving her hand over the words, “But you didn’t have a choice because you backed yourself into a corner telling everyone you’d be out the door the second he even thought about riding a bull.”

  “Yeah.” I lightly push at her shoulder. “Jerk.”

  She half shrugs. “Valid. But I still say you didn’t have to take him back. He did ride the bull, in case you forgot.”

  I level a look at her. “A, he did it for a reason that was…okay, I don’t agree with it, but I understand it. Billy doesn’t know how to not protect his brother. And B, why would I not take him back when I’m still in love with him? I was really fucking pissed, sure. But mostly, I was just scared that night. And it didn’t help that I’d been trying to figure out how to tell everyone that I was going to turn down the offer for him, and he went off and did the one thing that could jeopardize our future. Publicly. But the worst part is…none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t tried to tell him what to do in the first place.”

  Lor gapes at me. “What kind of freaking Kool-Aid does he have you drinking now?”

  “Really.” I blink at her. “You’re gonna let a guy say what you’re allowed to do?”

  She wrinkles her nose, looking down at her comforter and mumbling, “Not if he wants to see me naked.”

  “Exactly,” I tell her. “All those lines in the sand…they moved. And I’m not saying that what he did was right, but I am not willing to lose him forever over it. We both fucked up.”

  Lor shakes her head at me, seemingly at a loss. But with her own boyfriend distancing himself until their relationship concluded in a breakup voicemail, she hasn’t exactly been feeling forgiving toward men in general.

  “Well, I’m officially confused,” she says. “Because if you were pissed when you broke up with him, and you were mad when we got home from Valencia, when exactly did you decide to take him back? Just…curious. For the rest of us trying to play catch-up over here.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “I don’t know. I mean, when he went and got that X-ray, that was a big deal. Billy would wrap himself in barbed wire before he’d complain, and he hates to ask for help. So the fact that he went over to Adam’s, and he was taking the injury seriously… I knew he’d finally heard me outside Up-Chuck Buck’s. That I wanted him to start standing up for himself and that I needed to feel safe about us having a future I could count on.”

  Lor flinches. “Hold on. When did y’all go to Up-Chuck Buck’s?”

  “Oh, get this,” I tell her, because apparently in the mess of everything, I forgot. “Maggie and Jack invite me out there for Jack’s birthday, and who do I run into? Billy. Because Mason had him out
trying to get him laid the first night y’all got back from Valencia. His brother didn’t waste a minute.”

  “Ugh.” Lor reaches over to grab her beer from the nightstand. I’ve got a drink going warm somewhere over there, too, but mine’s a hard sparkling water, peach flavored. “Guys always do try to screw their way over a broken heart, don’t they?”

  “Yep. And Billy is a really good guy. I’m never going to find someone else like him, and I don’t even want to look. It killed me to tell him it was over, and he was so upset about it. But putting us back together just wasn’t as simple as saying ‘I forgive you’ and acting like it never happened. There were so many things that needed to be fixed. Big things. And I needed time to calm down. We just needed…space. But not too much space.”

  Lor slowly pulls the bottle from her lips, her smile growing. “So that explains the workout sessions! You were keeping your tits in his face.”

  I sputter into a jumble of laughter. “No, I was not! I was keeping the door open.”

  Lor cracks up laughing. “Sure you were, Taryn. With the sports bras and leggings in thirty-degree weather.”

  “Oh my God!” I tell her, “I was fucking freezing the whole time!”

  We both crack up harder, and I reach over for my can of hard sparkling water on her nightstand, taking a sip and trying to catch my breath. It’s so weirdly relieving she just gets it, but she’s always made me feel like I’ve got her in my corner. Because I do. And she’s got me in hers, too, if she ever needs me.

  “The thing is,” I tell her once I’m settled enough to speak again, so much love in my heart and my whole body, it shouldn’t fit inside me. “He just did his workouts and told me stories that made me laugh. Through this whole breakup, he did everything right. He respected my boundaries, he didn’t push me, and he waited to ask for another chance. Three whole weeks he waited. And when I let him back in… He started being honest about everything, even the little stuff, and he apologized to my mama. Made an absolute fool of himself doing it, but he did. He said he was sorry, to her, and for hurting my whole family.”