Change Rein

by Anne Jolin

  Finally free, she takes off in a full sprint towards me, the rain soaking her beautiful hair and mixing with the tears pooling in her eyes.

  My body moves before I command it to, knowing she shouldn’t be running, and wanting to close the distance between us as soon as possible. Grabbing her around the waist, I catch her in time as she launches herself at me.

  We don’t need to speak—just holding each other is enough. She smells like smoke, which makes my stomach churn. We stand like that, still amidst the chaos, finding solace in each other.

  Pulling back, I cup her face in my hands, wiping the stains from her cheeks. “I love you, London.” My mouth consumes hers, our hopes and fears entangling together as our lips do. The kiss reminds us both what we are so grateful to have found in one another.

  Her body starts to sag and her fingers fist into my shirt, her mouth leaving mine as her legs give out. I take the burden of her weight, lifting her into my arms, brushing some of the hair off her face.

  “Excuse me, sir. We need to take her to the hospital,” the female paramedic next to me says, touching my arm in a soothing way.

  “I’m coming with her.” I look down at London, who’s now completely unconscious in my arms.

  The paramedic looks between Larry and me nervously. “Are you family?”

  My mouth opens and closes as I hold on to her limp body, not wanting to let her go. I know what they need me to say, but I can’t say it. She’s not my family—she’s my whole life.

  A firm hand settles on my shoulder. “He’s family,” Larry tells the woman.

  My body convulses as they take her from me, the loss too sudden. They lay her flat onto a gurney, my hand still in hers.

  “Let’s go, son.”

  We climb into the back of the ambulance, and I refuse to let go, even as they load her.

  Each second we drive there takes years to pass. She’s still unconscious. They said that it was likely that, once the adrenaline diminished, her body succumbed to the amount of pain she’d been suffering during the fire.

  “You will have to wait here,” the paramedic tells us as they stop outside the emergency doors inside the hospital. “The doctors will come get you.” She points to the waiting room next to us.

  If Larry weren’t here to physically remove my hand from hers, I’d still be here, begging all the angels in Heaven to let me stay with her. We settle into two chairs, comfortable even in their discomfort, and wait.

  After a few minutes, one of the nurses comes over with information for us to fill out. Her social insurance number, birth date, and a variety of other information. It doesn’t take long for her father to complete the information, and once again, we settle back into silence.

  I wipe my face with the sleeves of my shirt, attempting to dry it. But it’s futile, as both Larry and I are soaked from head to toe. When I taste the salt on my lips, I realize I’ve been crying.

  I’ve only cried one other time in my entire life, and that was when my first horse, Boomer, died, so I’m not familiar with the sensation.

  “You love her.”

  Looking up, I find Larry watching me intently. It was worded more as a statement and less as a question, but I still nod.

  “I’m going to marry her someday,” I tell him.

  As he fixes the ball cap over his head, the edges of his mouth curl into a smile. “I think I’ve known that for quite some time, son.”

  Hours pass, and as they do, my nerves continue to wear thin. They came to tell us that she was going into surgery, but we were left with no more details than that.

  Owen and Aurora come with changes of clothes and hot coffee. The other horses have all been wrangled up on the property and placed into outdoor paddocks for the time being. The firemen weren’t able to save much of the barn, although I hadn’t expected they would.

  We don’t ask about Achilles, and they don’t tell. I suppose none of us are ready to talk about what that will look like for her.

  I may not be a man of faith, but I pray in that waiting room. I pray for my girl, and I pray for her white knight, Achilles.

  A doctor, who can’t be much older than I am, looks up from London’s clipboard in the waiting room. “Are you the family of London Daniels?”

  “Yes,” we all manage to say more or less at the same time, standing in unison.

  The man hesitates as if he’s not sure if he should say this to everyone, but he seems to let it go as he continues, “London is out of surgery. The stress from her actions during the fire caused the hairline fractures to her sacrum to widen exponentially. We had to place pins inside the bone to stabilize the injury. She suffered a great deal of pain, which is likely what attributed to her unconscious state. Her body finally gave out. We are monitoring her fever closely, but we suspect it will dissipate within a few hours, and we’re giving her something for the pain. When she’s awake, you are all welcome to see her, but until then, please make yourselves comfortable.”

  “Sir,” Aurora asks. “Will she be able to ride again?”

  He clips the pen on top of his clipboard and positions it at his side. “While we do expect London to make a full recovery, she won’t ever ride professionally again. Her body will not be able to sustain the prolonged stress that comes with that kind of rigorous training. I’m sorry, but her riding will only be for pleasure from now on.”

  Heavy sadness lays in the air on top of us all, but there’s a guilt mixed into the cloud above my head.

  How am I going to tell her this is all my fault?

  “WE’RE GOING TO BRING YOUR family in to see you now. Are you up for that?” The sweet, older nurse adjusts my IV drip.

  Smiling, I nod. “I am, thank you.”

  My body is exhausted, my eyelids are heavy, but I feel very little pain, thanks to the morphine drip I’ve been given.

  The doctor just spent the last twenty minutes briefing me on my surgery and the damage to my body. The recovery process will be mostly uncomfortable, as I’ll have to wear a brace for most movement while the pins settle, but otherwise, I will be healthy.

  “You will never ride professionally again. I’m sorry, London.”

  I remember his words as the nurse leaves the room, and once again, I wait for a crippling sadness that never comes. Not that I wished for the devastation, but I expected it to be there.

  “Bridge.”

  Drawing my eyes to the door, I see my daddy’s worn face. “Hi, Daddy.”

  He enters the room slowly, followed by my siblings. Last is the other half of me. After circling the foot of my bed, he folds his massive frame over the bed, resting his forehead on mine.

  “I missed you.” His tears fall onto my cheeks.

  I rest my palm—the one without the IV—on the side of his handsome face. “I missed you too, cowboy.”

  The weight on his shoulders seems terribly heavy as he runs his thumb over my lower lip. “I love you, London.” His lips brush mine in a sweet kiss in front of my family before he settles down into one of the chairs next to my bed.

  Blowing him a kiss, I try to ease the tension in the room. “You better, because I love you.”

  Daddy takes the seat on the other side of my bed. His face seems so strained, and it’s obvious they know.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  “It’s okay.” I lace my fingers through his.

  When he looks at my hands, the softness in his heart bleeds through the rough exterior most people only ever get to know. “You just love it so much.”

  “I love to ride.” Tears beg to be let free as I squeeze Daddy’s hand. “But it’s always been about more than competing for me. It’s about feeling.” I smile at him. “It’s about feeling like she’s with me. Momma always told us riding isn’t about just being in the saddle. It’s about everything that gets you there. That’s what I love. That’s what reminds me of her. Not a medal or a ribbon, but the feel of a horse’s coat under my hands or the sound of their hooves on the ground. I have passion for th
e sport, and it will break a part of me to lose that, but the passion I can’t live without is the horses themselves.”

  A tear slides down my Daddy’s rough cheek.

  “I didn’t lose that. Now, my heart just has a little extra room to love them is all.”

  “She’d be so proud of you,” he whispers.

  “Remember, Daddy. Our hearts have to break a little sometimes. How else would we make room for all that love?”

  Standing up, he brushes the hair off my face. “Of all the angels on Earth, my sweet girl, you have to be the strongest.” After kissing my forehead, he excuses himself from the room.

  “You could teach!” Aurora brightens. “I mean, not like I do for volunteering. I mean like really teach. You could train people.”

  “I could.” I smile at her.

  Owen’s hand squeezes my ankle through the blankets at the foot of my bed. “You can still ride, Bridge. It’s just gonna look a little different from now on is all.”

  “I love you guys,” I tell them. “Would you give me just a few minutes alone with Branson?”

  They take turns giving me delicate hugs and kisses on my cheek before shutting the door behind them.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, running one of my hands through Branson’s hair.

  “I’m just . . .” His voice trails off. “I’m scared to tell you.”

  “To tell me what?” My hand moves down the side of his face before falling back down to the bed.

  His face is a war of emotions. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen play on his features. “That this”—he chokes on the lump in his throat as he looks over me—“is all because of me.”

  My body reacts before I have time to stop it, and in sitting up so quickly, my injury protests. I wince against the pain, and he frowns. When he opens his mouth to speak, I shake my head.

  “This is not your fault.”

  “It is.” His head hangs. “You don’t understand.”

  My heart rate picks up. His tone makes me anxious, as I have no idea how he thinks an accident like this could be his fault.

  “Make me understand, Branson.”

  He begins to pace at the foot of my bed. It’s a nervous habit of his I’ve noticed during our time together. I don’t push him. He’ll speak when he’s ready, and not a moment sooner.

  “It wasn’t a coincidence”—he exhales—“that I came to Willow Bay.” Turning his back to me, he rests a hand against the hospital wall and his body begins to shake. “I saw you everywhere. I tried to write it off as infatuation and let it go, but you plagued me. You were on my TV screen, in my paper, and then I read that article . . .”

  I wince. The article still haunts me, but I’m learning to let it go.

  “I wanted to kill that pompous idiot for the things he said about you. Even a simple mind could see your passion wasn’t weakness.”

  My mind ping-pongs, and I stumble in an effort to say something during his pause. “So, you knew of me before you came to Willow Bay? That’s not terribly odd, Branson. Millions of people I’ve never met know of me for the very same reason, and that hardly justifies you being responsible for an accident.”

  “I came to Willow Bay, because of you.”

  What?

  “I came to Willow Bay for you.”

  My palms start to sweat. My hands start to shake, my heart praying. “What about the fire? Your barn?”

  “I needed a reason to be near you. I wanted to see if what I felt for you could possibly be real, and, if it was, if you would feel the same way about me in return.” He spins to face me, gripping the bar on the edge of my bed until his knuckles turn white. “I staged it—the fire.”

  The blood inside me boils at the thought that he could be responsible for something as horrible as what I’d just gone through, but I’m reminded of the person he is, and instead of acting irrationally, I wait. I wait for him to give me one goddamn good reason why I shouldn’t kick him out of my hospital room. Even though the thought of losing him kills me.

  “A colleague of mine who I’d worked with for years and trusted immensely was supposed to simply find an old photo of a barn fire similar to my property and have it leaked to the local press, only enough so that your father would take my request. It was fraudulent, but it shouldn’t have been harmful to anyone. The staff would be paid regardless, and no one would be the wiser.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Francis disobeyed a direct order, deeming the lie too unbelievable, and set fire to the entire barn. I was lucky he thought it wise enough to do so when the horses where all turned out to their paddocks for the day, but the knowledge that he’d caused so much destruction on a whim both terrified and angered me.

  “I fired him on the spot. I should have turned him in to the authorities, but he knew the part I’d played in the event itself and threatened to embellish that. Instead of taking chances, I paid him a year’s severance to leave and never come back. It didn’t work. He kept causing trouble.”

  “The break-in,” I whisper. “The first day we kissed.”

  He nods, shame weighing heavily on him. “That was Francis. It was after that I knew I’d made a mistake. I came clean to the police after our first night together, but they weren’t able to do much. He said I ruined him, and thus, he would ruin me. The threats weren’t taken seriously enough, as I had no way to prove any of it at this point.” When he lifts his head, tears and guilt wash down his face. “I never thought he’d come after my horses at Willow Bay. He hadn’t popped up in weeks on any of the authorities’ radars, so we assumed he’d just let it go. I’m so sorry. You should hate me.”

  My brain’s a little sluggish from the painkillers, but even so, I don’t hate him. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that he knew about me and sought me out on purpose. Is it weird and extreme? Sure. But that doesn’t negate the fact that I still fell in love with him by my own free will. He didn’t force me, and he isn’t, despite what he may think, a bad person.

  “Branson, come here,” I whisper, tapping the empty space beside me.

  His hesitation hurts my heart, but eventually, he comes.

  “Look at me,” I lift his chin with my hand and trace the stubble along the lines of his jaw. “We are not the mistakes we make, nor the things we fear, and most certainly not the things we bleed for.” I lose a single tear, as does he. “Fate, and a little help from you,”—I wink—“brought us together, and Momma said, ‘When fate brings you your person, its job is done and it’s on you to keep them.’ So you can try runnin,’ or whatever other absurdities are in that handsome head of yours, or you can save us both a lot of trouble and heartache by just stayin’ put.”

  His words drip with uncertainty. “How can you forgive me for this?”

  “Do I wish you’d told me about everything before now? Yes. Not because it means I would have handled anything differently, but because we are always stronger together than we are apart, Branson. Regardless, we will handle it from here on out as a team. Whatever that looks like, I’m with you.” I pull him towards me by the back of his neck. “I forgive you. Do you understand me?”

  He nods.

  “That forgiveness has nothing to do with being earned. It’s on me to give, and that’s my choice. You don’t need to be my hero. I don’t need one. You’re more than that. You’re it for me, Tucker. Don’t you get that? You’re my second chance. It doesn’t matter if I can’t compete again for the rest of my life because you’re the only gold medal I want.”

  When he crashes his lips against mine, his suffering and his joy melt into me as the passion of our kiss heals the wounds we’ve earned.

  “You’re it for me too, London.” He pulls away, resting his forehead on mine. “Even when you’re cheesy.”

  “You did not just call me cheesy!” I exclaim, slapping his arm.

  Running his thumb over my bottom lip, he grins. “I like it.”

  “You better.”

  “I’ve got to go make some calls. I’ll send your family back in, okay
?”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  After standing up, he kisses me softly on the lips. “Whatever I did to deserve you, I don’t know and I don’t care. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  As he moves towards the door, a smile spreads on my face.

  “Hey, cowboy?”

  “Yeah, angel?” He pauses at the doorway.

  “You’re gonna owe my daddy a barn.”

  The sound of his laughter fills both the room and my heart. “You got it, babe.”

  You don’t know when the love you’ve been waiting for will come your way, but when it does, you’d be wise to remember that you aren’t perfect, and neither are they. Forgive, do your best, and when things need a little more fixin’ than that, you’d best change rein.

  AUTHORITIES CAUGHT FRANCIS LATER THAT same day on a Greyhound bound for nowhere after Branson had offered a handsome reward for anyone with information on his whereabouts. They were able to issue a warrant for his arrest when the fingerprints lifted from the Tucker Farms lock used to chain the side door closed came back as a match to his.

  Francis cooperated with the police for a lesser sentence and pled guilty to arson. The investigation and his statement informed us that he’d used rags soaked in gasoline to start the fire and positioned them around the barn where he’d suspected they’d do the most damage. The fire investigators said we were lucky. Francis knew very little about what he was doing and didn’t leave himself enough time to chain the front doors of the barn shut. They found a matching chain and lock in the driveway, but he’d had enough self-preservation instincts to flee before getting caught.

  Are we lucky? I suppose so.

  Two months later, in the chilly winter air, my family broke champagne over the front doors to our new barn. We built it in the exact same place as the old one, though it has some improvements. While it wasn’t easy for Daddy to let Branson pay, he understood why he had to. It was part of cleansing his soul of the wrongdoings he believed he was the cause of.