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And okay, yes, maybe she should have sucked up her pride in high school and just been grateful he’d hauled her home from that pit party—but he’d still rejected her.
And thatstillstung.
His footsteps followed and his form filled the doorframe. “Come on, Beth—you already said you need this camp to run. You need me—and I need you.”
She wished he wouldn’t word it like that. It made her pulse whoosh in her skull.
“I’m already the ACD. That’s a full-time job.” She pointed to the paperwork on her desk.
He gave her a look.
You don’t have a real choice.Vivien’s counsel rolled over Beth.
And yeah, okay, she was right about that. She patted fingers against her temples. “You don’t understand.” A little hitch of loss ached in her chest, a raw memory filled with the noise and motion of running the barrels in 4-H.
Yeah, well, kids were fearless. Then they grew up. Particularly fast after being dumped on the head.
How could she admit it to Grayson?
She closed her eyes. Just the thought of admitting it caused heat to flare across her face.
“Are we going to do this or what?” Grayson asked. “You know the camp needs us. And Eli—he needs this. So, are we going to make this happen or not?”
His plea caught her off guard with its palpable need and the raw scrape in his voice.
Like it mattered to him.
She shook her head. Blinked back tears. Why had she let Dad talk her out of getting back on? “I haven’t—I stopped—I fe—” Her words stumbled over themselves. “I just can’t.”
His jaw went slack and he leaned back against the nearest stall after looking out the back barn door, toward the horse paddocks. “What is it?”
“I stopped…” She turned away. “…riding.” And now she sounded pitiful. Just like in childhood when she’d begged Dylan and Grayson to let her tag along.
“Beth?” His voice was soft this time. She didn’t speak. His Adam’s apple bobbed, then he looked at her.
She’d fallen off. That didn’t do the catastrophic somersault off her horse at a gallop any kind of justice. She’d been a human lawn dart.
Knocked unconscious.
She stepped away from the desk. “I don’t know why I ever thought I could do this job.”
He held out his hands as if he could prevent her from stampeding straight out the door with sheer hope. “Please?”
“I’ll find someone else to help you.” Even as she said it, she knew she’d already exhausted her call-down list. “I can’t.” Her voice made a silly, squeaky crack. “I kept riding after my mom…”Left. Why was it so hard to just say it? She shook out the nerves. “Then I had a bad wreck on the barrels.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“It was an out-of-town gaming event,” she answered. “I was mortified.”
“Everyone has a bad fall. Or five. You get back on.”
She shook her head.
“You didn’t get back on?”
“No. Literally. Not once.” And now those stupid tears again. Fast-blink, fast-blink. “Dad wasn’t into horses or 4-H or any of that stuff, but he supported me after Mom left because he knew I loved it.” She smoothed out a crumpled note on the desk. “We’d come out of the last barrel, hit top speed, and Chase tripped. I went flying off him.”
“Ouch.”
