“There’s nothing more to tell. I made a promise, and I won’t go back on it.”
“Then there’s not much of a future for ‘us,’ is there?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with us.”
“Come on. You just went to enormous effort to get me on that long-distance ride to build up my strength. You nearly lost your dog convincing me I was strong enough to face my fears, get over being an idiot, and ride in the stupid Fourth of July rodeo. But you won’t come to support what you’ve helped create. It’s mean.” Her gaze fell, and she hesitated long seconds as if deciding to say more. Finally she bit her lip and drove the knife of guilt deeper into his heart. “And it hurts.”
He’d never experienced bitterness mixed so thoroughly with crushing sadness. “Hurting you is the last thing I want.”
“Then come.”
“Why is it okay that you don’t respect a decision I made to help me live with what I was dealt?”
“Because you’re not living. You’re ignoring.”
“Right. It’s hard to ignore something you think about every damn day.”
For another long, tense moment she remained silent, staring at the floor again, her face as drawn as a funeral mourner’s. Even as he watched, tears filled her eyes.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“I can’t live with this. I can’t live with the double standard. You have one set of rules for me and another for you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? You’ve made me clean out every closet, open every wound and cleanse it, and then start fresh. You get to bury a ticking time bomb by pretending it’s all in the name of love. You get to be self-righteous and call this all a decision you’ve made. Well, maybe I’ve made decisions, too. If I can’t have all of you—all your trust, all your secrets, all the skeletons in your closet—I don’t want any of it. In order to be whole again, I need all or nothing.”
The words slammed into him like the hot shrapnel from the fiery Humvee. She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t really believe his personal decision was something selfish that meant he didn’t trust her.
She shook her head when he tried to take her in his arms. “I need to go back to work, Alec.”
“You’ll leave in the middle of this?”
“It’s not the middle. It’s the end.”
“Not for me. We’ll work this out at dinner.”
“We probably could. But I think I’m too selfish. All or nothing—I’m not interested in a compromise.”
“You have it all. Damn it. You have it all.”
She rose on tip toes and kissed him. Tears had welled over and spilled down her cheeks.
“All but the power to bring you out of the past or help you slay your demons,” she said. “I don’t expect any more from you than you do of me, Alec. Someone I thought was a wise man once said to me, ‘don’t say you can’t, say you can.’ Now he’s the one saying he can’t. I won’t go back there.”
She pulled away, but he grasped her hand. “This is ridiculous.”
“You thinking so is one of the reasons I’m leaving.” She picked up her jacket and purse, walked to where Rowan lay, tail thumping like a pedal on a bass drum, and knelt to wrap her arms tightly around the dog’s neck. “I love you, gorgeous. Be a good girl and heal fast.”
She passed Alec on her way to the door without touching him, and then turned back with her hand on the knob. “Do me one last favor. Stop your self-pity long enough to call your aunt and uncle back. Leave the past in the past, but don’t keep them there. They don’t deserve that.”
“They’re the ones who shut me out.”
“I know. Do it anyway.”
She left, taking the fragile new meaning he’d found in his world with her. Stunned, he looked around his empty house unable to comprehend what had just happened. How did a person eff-up his life in the course of twenty minutes, just because he didn’t want to go the damn rodeo?
Chapter Twenty-Two
IT TOOK HIM two hours to realize he couldn’t answer his own question. It took him five more to get over being angry over Joely’s demand that he call his aunt and uncle.
It took him an entire awful, sleepless night to understand that he couldn’t let Joely end their fledgling relationship. In two short months she’d woven her way permanently into his heart, and if he didn’t fix something, everything he believed about his inability to love and save the people he loved would be true.
Sunday morning he sat bleary-eyed at his table, praying for the caffeine from his coffee to kick in. His world was still off its axis, but in his long night he had come up with only one concrete piece of knowledge. The first thing to fix was the thing he bucked hardest against. The thing that would do the least good. Nonetheless, he let the coffee work its magic, then he picked up his phone and hit the redial.
His aunt answered on the first ring. “Alec?”
He recognized her hopeful desperation even though he hadn’t spoken to her in so very long. She’d clearly been waiting for this call. Guilt stung quick and deep. When had he stopped being the bigger man?
“It’s me, Aunt Chris. How are you?”
He got no reply. All he heard was a small choked sob before his uncle picked up the phone.
“Alec? Son? I’m sorry. Chris will be right back. Believe it or not she’s so happy to hear your voice I think it plain overwhelmed her. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Uncle Rick. I was away when you called. I . . . I’m sorry.”
Finally he was sorry. Truly angry-at-himself sorry that it had taken him so long to call even just to hear their voices. Whatever words had been said, whatever the future held, these were his only living relatives. No matter what they needed, he needed them.
“Alec the last thing on God’s little green earth is for you to be sorry. I’m really kinda glad your aunt is too choked up to talk. I have some things I’ve needed to say for a long time and I haven’t known how to begin.”
“Rick, no. We don’t need to go into the past.”
“Oh, yes, we do. In a big way.”
Alec had expected a cordial call. An obligatory conversation. He’d been willing to accept that, and once he’d heard Rick’s voice, he’d even welcomed it. Honest, open feelings, however, were not something for which he had prepared or developed armor. He tightened his voice and tried to brush the looming deep emotions aside. Keep controlled. Tell them all was forgiven. Everything was past and everything was good. That was how he’d get through the call.
“I don’t know why,” Alec said. “It’s just great to hear your voice.”
“I should have called you long ago.”
“That could be my line just as well.”
Perfunctory. Expected. Good; Alec could work with this. He swallowed and started the next platitude, but his uncle plunged them straight into the fire.
“I can’t ever take them back.” For the first time Rick choked up, and Alec’s throat closed over a thick, painful lump. “The ugly words, Alec, you’ll never unhear them. And I will never truly be able to live with myself for saying them.”
“Don’t—”
“Let me finish. Please, son. Then I’ll let you talk to your aunt. People say that words blurted in the heat of emotion reflect honest feelings you would normally hold back. I don’t think it’s true. I believe I would have said something just as awful if Buzz had come back without you. I can’t prove that—but I was so damn angry at the war, the military, at Buzz, at you. At myself for not stopping either of you.”
“I know, Uncle Rick. I do know this.” Alec wanted him to stop. He needed time to breathe, and to halt the reopening of wounds that had finally, after three painful years, scabbed over.
“Grief is an ugly thing, Alec. I handled mine about as poorly as a man could by leaving it to fester for so long. It’s not enough, but I’m sorry. I didn’t ever mean what came out of my mouth.”
It was just an apology. Alec did
n’t want it to matter or be enough, because if it was, then everything his wall of strength had been built on was gone. He had nothing to brace against, nothing to hold himself accountable for, and no reason to hold onto the stubborn resolve that convinced him he was strong. If he forgave his uncle as simply as this, it would mean Joely was right—he’d been holding part of himself back, and he’d never really healed.
“I love you, Alec. I miss you.”
He felt it. The crumbling of the wall built from isolation and heartache. The hole it left was big but no longer painful.
“Alec?” His aunt came on the line.
“Chris. Is he all right?”
“Darling, he’s a big, stubborn mess, but he’s smiling. And I love him as much as I love you.”
“I want to talk to him again.”
“Okay. But me first.”
“Wait. I have to ask you, why? Why finally after all this time?”
“That wonderful girlfriend of yours. She’s a special lady, Alec. She said she learned about us from you, and she believed you were ready to hear from us.”
“She shouldn’t have called.” He fought lamely for the last shred of indignation, but it was useless. The hole in his life was filling rapidly with something warm and grateful and belonging entirely to Joely Crockett.
“You’re wrong, Alexander. She got through to your uncle in a way I’ve never been able to. Convinced him that saying what he’s wanted to say for so long wouldn’t be useless. Don’t ever be angry at her for coming to us.”
“I love you, Aunt Chris,” he said.
“We love you. With all our hearts. We despaired of ever telling you again.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I should have understood your grief better. Rick’s grief better. Please, let me tell him that.”
“He’s still composing himself. First we need to talk about your cousin.”
“Oh, I don’t think—”
“No interruptions,” she said, the warmth in her smile as audible as her words. “We’re going to talk about Buzz and this crazy idea you have that you need to avoid the rodeo because of him. And if you’re going to argue with me, then settle back into a comfy chair, because I’m going to keep you on the phone until we come to an agreement.”
In the space of one old-fashioned lecture, his aunt made him laugh. He didn’t know why; he was pissed as hell at the new topic and her threat. At the same time, it was hard to stay angry when he’d gotten back a mother, a father, and a woman he loved all in the span of five minutes. He could argue with Aunt Christine until he was blue in the face, but in the end, she was going to talk him into something they both wanted.
“HAT IN HAND, literally I see.” Vince opened his back door to Alec two days later, wearing a shit-eating grin Alec would have wiped off his face with a smack upside the head earlier in the week. Instead he simply stared at his friend, who thought Alec had simply come to have a couple of pictures taken, and work out an extravagant introduction for Ghost Pepper’s return on the Fourth of July.
“This is going to be pure gold,” Vince added. “Glad you came to your senses.”
“No. I’ve lost my senses,” Alec said.
“C’mon, man.” Vince led him through the kitchen and into the same dining room where Joely had met him weeks before, and where Alec had been such an asshat. “This’ll be great for rodeo, fantastic for your fans, and it won’t hurt you either.”
“Well, now? I’m not so sure about that.” Alec half-smiled for the first time. “Truth. I’m not here for a damn picture. You bragged once you could teach a one-legged cowboy to ride a saddle bronc. I’m asking you to make good on that claim.”
Vince’s ugly, bearded mug twisted into such utter shock that it made this asinine plan of Alec’s almost worth the soul-searching he’d done in order to get here.
“What the hell? Is this the apocalypse? You got inside information about Armageddon?”
“Yeah. I got it from my aunt.”
“Christine!”
“Tough as ever in that way that always made us feel good about being told what buttholes we were. Remember?”
“One of a kind, your aunt.”
“I need to ride that horse. Evidently Buzz is up there raising some kind of holy hell because I’m disrespecting his memory. Don’t ask me, please. Chris is also just a little bit of a nut job when it comes to heaven.”
“I remember that, too. And if Buzz is causing holy hell, it’s gonna get him kicked the wrong way back through those pearly gates. I’d best get you riding, son.”
Alec patted his cheek firmly with the flat of his hand. “Wipe that smirk off your face or I’m outta here, even if my cousin’s eternal fate might suffer.”
“Fine. When do you want to start?”
“You’ve got a mechanical bucker. Take me out there.”
Vince truly looked as if he’d just matched his lottery ticket to the winning numbers. “Let’s go. First you’re going to show me every little inch of that peg leg of yours and we’re gonna figure out what it can do. Then, by God, we’re gonna turn you back into ‘Morr-i-SEE!’ ”
Alec hadn’t thought about that in a very long time. The name chant the crowd had always bestowed on him before and after a ride.
“I’m not him anymore,” he said as he followed Vince back toward the door. “I’m not looking for or expecting crowd approval. Just get me three seconds on GP and I’ll name my first born after you.”
“Shit, what’ll you give me if I get you eight?” Vince led him out into the yard.
“I’ll kiss you in public.”
Vince sputtered. “Three it is. By the way, where’s your girl?”
“That’s the other thing.” Alec stopped and grasped him by the arm. “She doesn’t know a thing about this, and you’re not going to say a word. Not to her and not to anybody. Nobody knows until the announcer tells the crowd in two weeks. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“You sure?”
“More than. What’s not sure is whether or not I’ll actually go through with this insanity. Hell, I might not survive today.”
“Tell you what. You die, I’ll kiss you in public before they close the casket.”
“Freak.”
“C’mon, cowboy. Let’s go buck you off a fake horsie.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
ALEC’S SAFETY VEST and heavy fringed chaps felt like a lead straitjacket and shackles to his quivering body. He’d been donning them daily for two weeks, but today they might as well have been foreign shackles he’d never seen in his life. He brushed his hand over the PRCA logo on his breast, and the sponsorship badges, some of which were obsolete now but brought back memories so strong they nearly obliterated his real thoughts.
To his right, looking like he, too, was gathering strength from old memories, Ghost Pepper waited to be loaded into the chute. Vince came around the horse’s rump and slapped Alec on the shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, I didn’t think you’d really do it. Damn, I am the happiest man alive.”
“I hate you.” Alec gave his annoying friend a weak smile. “You didn’t tell her, right? She doesn’t know?”
“Relax, Morrissey. This is the best-kept secret this side of the key to Fort Knox. She’ll faint dead away, I promise.”
“She’d better not.”
“Well, she’s about to have her two minutes in the spotlight, and then you’ll find out. You ready?”
“Hell and a half, no.”
“You worked hard. I’m impressed. I truly am.”
The truth was, Alec wasn’t scared of the idiotic ride he was about to make. Vince and one of the best sports medicine guys Gabe had been able to find him had definitely worked hard to teach him how to make the spurring motion required, and how to fall safely with his leg. What he was scared of was that Joely would hate him for it. For not telling her his plans. Again. For not letting her in on the reconciliation with his aunt and uncle who were, in truth, the ones who’d begged him to do this. F
or making her live with the thought that he was still angry about her interference.
His life had spun one hundred and eighty degrees. He could still hear his uncle’s words once he’d come back on the line. “My greatest regret is that I made you believe your ability to protect the people you love was flawed. But look at you—you love Buzz so deeply that you’ve put a knife through your own heart to protect his memory. You’ve stripped yourself of something that you love, and there’s no need. Go. Show that girl of yours who you are, and give me back my son.”
Well, here he was for one last three-second ride. Rick said show her? He’d show her.
“Put the horse in,” Vince said to the handlers.
Maybe he was a little nervous. Alec lost his ability to swallow and his stomach lurched. Good, he told himself. Nerves were good.
JOELY SAT ASTRIDE Muddy Waters, her heart rate strangely calm considering it had been a runaway train all day. Now that the lights were about to go out in preparation for her ride, there wasn’t any more she could do to prepare. Harper had schooled her all week, letting her practice her gallop even after she’d fallen once and scared the pants off of everyone watching. That had been ten rides ago. Tonight she’d either triumph or fall on her ass. It hardly mattered.
She scanned what she could see of the crowd, wondering why she tortured herself. He wasn’t here. But she’d heard the most bizarre rumor. From Heidi Bisset. She’d found Joely earlier and sauntered up in her spangled finest.
“I heard Alec was back.”
There’d been nothing to say except no, Heidi was mistaken. Joely knew for a fact. Heidi hadn’t pushed it, and she’d walked away leaving Joely with another insight—she didn’t feel the least bit of jealousy. In its place was a weird sense of compassion. Heidi looked like what she was—a thirty-year-old buckle bunny. Joely didn’t miss it at all. She might have lost her man—despite the flowers that had been delivered every day since she’d walked out on him—but she’d gained something more substantial than anything Heidi had—total self-respect. She hoped one day Heidi would find the same pot of gold.
She thought about Alec’s roses. One a day until she’d received a full dozen in twelve different colors—a rose rainbow. She had no idea what they meant, but they made her miss him. Made her know she needed to not give up on him—the way he’d never given up on her.
The Bride Wore Starlight Page 30
