That’s what she’d said, about me not realising Ash was in love with me. Youof all people.Like I made a habit of not seeing it, when people loved me. When she loved me?
But we were so clear, from the very start, about what we were and what we weren’t. She has her whole life mapped out, and it’s as far from bull riding as can be.
Which means it’s hard to see a future for us, but that’s not the same thing as her not loving me.
In fact, I’d bet my last buck on her having thrown me out of her hotel room because I was breaking her heart just by being there and saying all the wrong things. Talking about always being careful with the women I ‘sleep with’, like that’s all we fucking were.
‘Holy shit.’ I stand up, wipe my hands on the napkin again, then stare around, like there’s someone here who can tell me what the hell to do.
How to fix this.
And what I want.
Because the truth is, if Austin’s right about Bailey, if I’m right, then what? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m as shit scared as ever of loving someone and losing them. It doesn’t change the fact I’ve always had a good idea of how to protect myself, and it doesn’t involve letting someone like Bailey in.
But how can I keep her out? How can I walk away, if she’s prepared to offer me her heart?
No matter what life throws at him, he gets back on the bull and rides through the pain—courageous, determined, and probably a little bit foolhardy too.
Is she right? Am I courageous enough, foolhardy enough, to take the biggest risk of my life and let myself love Bailey, and be loved by her, knowing there are no guarantees in anything?
Then again, what’s the point of life if you don’t take a risk, from time to time?
I stride toward the door of the bar, the question ricocheting inside my brain like a pinball, with no clear answer.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Beau
Ireally thought that on the fifteen-hundred-odd-mile drive across from Vegas to Houston, I’d work my shit out. But the closer I got to Bailey, the more my mind seemed to turn to mud, clarity nowhere in sight. Meaning I’m sitting here now, two days after reading her article, staring at theHouston Standardbuilding with no fucking idea what I came all this way to say, just hoping when I see her it will make some kind of sense.
My body’s stiff.
The stupidity of driving through five states with no firm plan hits me again.
What the hell am I even doing here? She hasn’t answered my calls, or written back to my messages, since that night in Phoenix. The last thing she said to me was ‘goodnight, Beau’. What the hell kind of arrogance is it to think that just by showing up here, something’s going to shift between us?
It’s early in the morning, still mostly dark. I lean back against the seat of my car, pull my hat down over my eyes and do my best to get some sleep. Maybe, just maybe, when I wake up I’ll know what the hell I’m doing with my life.
Bailey
I have no words.
Literally.
Writing the article on Beau wrung them all out of me. I poured my heart and soul into that piece. Everything I thought and felt and hadn’t been able to say to him, everything I know I can never tell another soul.
I wrote about Beau the man. The man I knew. The man I love. I wrote about his courage and his commitment, his strength and valour. I showed that he feels fear, but pushes through it, because I’ve seen that now. At least, that’s how it is with bull riding. What I didn’t put in the article is the other side of him: the man who’s perfected a shield of humour to keep everyone at bay. Even me, in the end.
I existed in a sort of fog as the words poured from me, almost fully formed inside my mind. I wrote the damn article, sent it to my editor, then—and only then—did I allow myself to collapse. I’d been staving it off since Houston. A feeling of bodily exhaustion, weakness. A sense that I’m broken in ways I didn’t know it was possible for a human to break.
As soon as I’d hit send I gave in to it, crawling into my bed and barely moving, just letting the grief wash over me. The sense of having had something special and not known how to keep it. Or rather, of knowing I couldn’t keep it.
While I hate to argue with Tennyson, I have to disagree with the entire concept that it’s better to have loved and lost, than never having loved at all.
I wish I’d never met him.
I wish I’d never met that goddamn cowboy and let him charm his way into my already-bruised heart. I wish I’d never known the perfection that was being with Beau, the way he made me feel. I wish I’d never seen his home, and how he fit there. Watched him with his family, and yearned for them to be my family—something I didn’t realise until I was writing the article and their voices all swirled together, making me sob, because of how much tangible love there was between them.
