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My arm curled around her head as she kept kissing her belief into my skin. Like she could erase what it meant.
“You keep trying to find the things that aren’t there.”
“But they are, Caleb. You’ve just lost sight of them. Or maybe you’d never seen them before. Never believed yourself more than who you’d allowed yourself to become. Or maybe he’s brand new. But he’s here, right now.”
God, she was perfect. Too good. Chaos that had come from out of nowhere, a disturbance that was nothing but a balm.
I urged her up to look at me, my thumb stroking over the apple of her cheek.
Her eyes were wide and trusting.
Lips pouty and trembling with her faith.
“Reckless Angel, shining your light into my life. You deserve so much more than the scraps left of me, and I’m the asshole who took you, anyway.”
“But you’re my favorite asshole.” Somehow, she teased it in the middle of the disaster I’d created, and a chuckle rumbled as I pulled her back down to me.
“Do you expect anything less of me?”
“Never.” I felt her smile against the skin of my chest. “I’ve come to like him quite a lot.”
“I’m sorry for losing control today,” I whispered low, my fingers playing over the soft expanse of her back.
Fury simmered in the depths at that bastard I wanted to end.
Her head shook where she was plastered against me. “He came looking for trouble, Caleb. Jeremy thinks he’s God’s gift. It’s no surprise that after all these months he thought I would still drop to my knees at the sight of him. He likes to take what he wants and doesn’t like it when someone tells him no. He never should have come here in the first place, but he crossed a line today, and he suffered the consequences.”
“I want to hurt him, Paisley.”
She quirked a wry smile my direction. “I think you already took care of that.”
“And he was the fool to push it farther with what he painted on my car.”
“He’s an idiot. A spoiled brat throwing a fit. He’s not worth it.”
“Did you love him?” The thought of it made me irrationally angry.
She hesitated, lost in thought, before she softly answered, “Yeah, I did. I should have known when he put his dreams in front of mine that he wasn’t worthy of that love, but I know that now.”
I brushed my fingers through the silken locks of her hair. “What happened?”
Hopeful sadness washed across her face, and she cleared the roughness from her voice. “You know how much I love horses?”
Softness swelled, and I kept brushing my fingers through her hair as she looked at me through the shadows. “Yeah.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment, the smallest amount of shyness taking hold. “I always knew they were my passion. Where I belonged. From when I was just a little girl, about Evelyn’s age. My uncle had horses, and I was obsessed from the first time my grandparents took me there one Sunday afternoon. I’ll never forget it, the way something in me felt complete for the first time.”
Air huffed from her nose. “I started riding then, learning everything I could about them. When I was ten, I started doing the rodeo thing. Barrel racing. My grandparents would drive me around to all the towns, supporting me, believing in me.”
Wistfulness edged her mouth. “My grandpa always said horses were in my blood. But as I got older, it was training them that really got me. Taking a horse that was scared and unsure, an owner that was scared and unsure, and bringing them together. Teaching them how to trust each other. But it’s more than that…”
Her head dropped as if she were embarrassed.
I tipped up her chin, needing to know.
“It’s love, you know?” she said with a small shrug punched with emotion. “Being with a horse that way. It’s seeing the beauty of creation. The ability for two species to come together, a human and a horse, and share a bond that is so strong. I love being a part of that. When I was twenty, I started saving. Scraping together every penny to buy a little plot of land. Five acres. Five acres where I was going to make my dreams come true. And I did. Time River Equestrian Center. I was so proud of what I’d built there, thankful for the people who started to bring their horses to me.”
“What happened to it?”
She let go of a hollow laugh. “I’d finally built it up a bit, but it was the land that had become most valuable. I’d been dating Jeremy for a couple years, and he convinced me to sell it and invest the money into a restaurant he wanted to open in Arizona. He’d made it out like he couldn’t live without me, like he needed me with him, and there were plenty of horses there that needed help. He’d promised to help me start over there.”
