Chapter 23
Maggie
The chute flies open.
My gut plummets.
Hadley moves with the bull. Each spin. Each buck. He rides it out.
My camera hangs around my neck, untouched. I glance at the clock, keeping it in my peripheral as it climbs through the numbers more slowly than usual.
“Gallagher, do your job!” Knox yells over the chutes.
I throw him a dirty look and regret it when Hadley’s tossed from the bull.
Not before the buzzer, though, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
I am acutely aware I’m right where I never wanted to ever be. Worrying over a rodeo man who gets on a death trap week after week. If this is anything like what Mom felt with my father . . . I don’t want it.
Steeling myself, I raise my camera and snap images of Hadley hauling himself from the dirt. Checking over his shoulder as he makes it to his feet.
Logan rushes past, his two comrades trailing behind as the bull turns back, heading for Hadley.
The bull connects with his hip, tossing him aside.
He lands at an odd angle as the three rodeo clowns swarm the bull. A moment later, the bull disappears through the return gate. Hadley doesn’t push to his feet.
“Oh, ladies and gents, we have a cowboy down!” the announcer entertaining the Falkland arena hollers.
Hadley . . .
He rolls a little to one side, his head up and looking around as his hand grabs his leg.
“Medics, you are needed in the arena,” the announcer adds.
Willow and her medics file out into the arena a beat later. The stretcher slides underneath Hadley on the ground, and he’s rolled onto his back. Then I see the angle his leg is at. The wrong angle.
Logan and the clowns help carry him out on the stretcher. All I can do is stand there. Hadley’s removing his helmet as they walk past me, those brown eyes finding mine.
And . . .
I can’t do this.
I cannot do this.
Tamping back the sob clawing its way up my throat, I press a hand over my mouth. My eyes burn, and I look around the arena. The crowd is silent, all eyes on the cowboy being carried out.
Levi appears by my side, and I compose myself.
“You doin’ alright?” he asks softly.
“I—”
He gives me a knowing look and grips my shoulder. “He’ll be okay, Maggie. He’s in good hands.”
“Yep, I know.”
“Chute three’s about to blow, camera at the ready.” He leaves me to the action as he wanders back behind the chutes.
The gate bursts open and Spencer rides down an eight-second ride, and all the while I snap his moves on the back of Dynamite.
After the riders are done, I pack up my equipment and head for Levi’s office. Managing to navigate the rabbit warren of back rooms, I find him outside the infirmary, talking with Willow.
My footsteps echo down the corridor, and Willow leans around Levi and offers up a smile. “Hey, Maggie. He’s not here.”
“Oh no, I wasn’t—”
Levi turns and meets my gaze. “I can drive you over if you want.”
“Wh-where is he?”
“Falkland General,” Willow adds. “Possible fractured leg.”
My skin is all of a sudden too tight. Heat prickles up my skin. I swallow and choke on the movement.
“Hey, he’ll be fine.” Levi’s brows drop as he reaches for me.
“I can’t do this.” I fly back down the corridor a heartbeat later.
“Maggie!” Levi calls after me, but the sound echoes around my head as I bust through the door and out into the night air.
People startle, conversations stopping, as they turn to see who just snapped the door almost off its hinges.
“Sorry,” I breathe, keeping my head down as I stalk my way to my van. By the time I make it there, tears are coursing down my cheeks, hot, wet, and falling freely. I rip the van door open and climb inside. Slamming the door shut behind me, I curl up in the corner.
Head in my hands, I force steady, slow breaths in my nose and out my mouth. A skill Cap once taught me.
That crumples my face like nothing else.
Ugly sobs rack through my body when I don’t manage to rein in the emotion. As if every horrible moment I’ve lived through all just collided, I rock on my seat, crying. Desperate to rid my body of the trauma, the pain, and the fear of what happened, what could happen, and ending up like my mom.
“I promised I wouldn’t do this. I fucking well promised,” I choke out. Dammit.
I am barely falling for this man, and I’m a wreck the first time he gets hurt.
I don’t know how to compartmentalize this. I don’t know how to hand over my heart in my palm to some two-ton devil every week and hope it doesn’t get crushed.
I’m obviously not as brave as my mother, because she lived this life with my father for years before . . .
A fresh torrent of sobs and tears overwhelm me.
My heart is tearing in two, and we haven’t even given over the deepest part of ourselves yet.
Or maybe we have already.
A soft knock rattles the van’s sliding door.
“Maggie, you in there?”
Brady.
I suck in a breath, swiping at my wet face in an effort to dry it a little.
“Maggie, Hadley wants to know if you’re okay.” He shuffles on his feet. “You’re okay?”
Oh god.
He’s the one in the hospital, and I’m what he’s worried about. He’s lying in a hospital bed and all I can think about is my stupid self. The damage I’ll take if this goes wrong. When this ends . . .
I don’t deserve him.
Another text lights up my phone.
Hadley.
I flip it over on the dash and keep my eyes on the highway. I’m driving home by myself. No road trip buddy this time. He’s laid up in the hospital another day. Or so Brady tells me. I still haven’t been able to make myself visit.
I’m scared.
Because I’ve since realized when it comes to Hadley Jones, I’m in big trouble.
The kind of trouble I was hell-bent on avoiding.
Don’t fall for a rodeo man.
Don’t attach yourself to someone who risks his life every week.
Those black-and-white areas I’d identified, those hard lines . . . they are so grey and blurry they may as well be static on the television now.
Grey as the day is long and all over the place.
The phone vibrates, ringing.
Hadley.
Then another call a minute later from an unknown number, and I’m guessing belongs to one of the cowboys. Maybe it’s Brady.
Most likely.
I keep on putting distance between us, not stopping once on the way home from Falkland. For once, I’m glad the trip takes eight hours. The more time I have to analyze, the better.
I think.
Because this became very real, very quickly.
And there is a part of me that wants to turn this old girl around and make a beeline for Falkland.
But the self-preserving part, the much, much larger part of me is sticking to the course.
Heading home. It’s when that larger part overrides the smaller one, crushing it like it doesn’t matter, like it’s insignificant, that I start to sob.
Nothing insignificant feels like this.
Approximately three million, nine hundred and seventy-eight thousand, four hundred and one what-ifs and possibilities run through my mind by the time the familiar Field sign comes into view. And I’m a wreck.
Add to the mix I was late with the article deadline last week and had a performance review so uncomfortable I was half hoping they’d fire me on the spot, now this . . .
When did my life get so damn complicated?
I turn Betsy into the parking lot outside the lodge and let her idle to cool down. My forehead hits the wheel as I wait. My eyes are puffy from crying the last hour or so. My heart a little weary.
Mom is walking down the front steps on her phone as she rounds the front, opening the passenger door and hopping in. “Sweetheart?”
My chin wobbles, and I press a hand over my mouth to tamp back the sob. Why is this killing me? I mean, I had a plan. I thought I was past the aftereffects of the incident in the Ukraine, but every painful thing that’s ever happened to me seems to be bubbling to the surface.
And I can’t stuff it back down. It’s like there is now something missing. A major piece of my proper operational mechanics is . . . gone.
“Maggie?” Mom’s hand rests on my shoulder.
“Sorry, needed a moment.”
“What’s going on, hon?”
I can’t look at her. If I do, all I’ll see is Mom living those early days after Dad died. No matter how many times I remind myself Hadley is okay, my mind can’t let go of how it could have turned out so different. How it still could.
“Hadley got hurt,” I finally utter.
“Oh no. Is he going to be okay?”
I turn to find her worried gaze. Is Mom reliving the worst day of her life, thinking about all the ways rodeo can go wrong?
“I think so.”
“Ah, that’s good. I’m glad he’ll be alright. But why are you so upset?”
A fresh torrent of tears wells up. Before they have a chance to fall, I swipe them away and suck back a breath. “I don’t want history to repeat itself, Mom. I’m not as strong as you. I wouldn’t survive.”
She shuffles over on the seat and takes my face in her hands.
“Now you listen to me.” I give her a small nod and she tilts her head.
“Losing your father was hell. But in comparison to what the dark gave me, the light gave me much, much more. For one, it—he—gave me you. Years of love and the life I’d wanted.
Yes, I asked him to give it up when you were born.
It wasn’t a demand, it was a request. I knew the man I loved and the chances we took every time he strapped onto a bull. ”
“But you lost him. You lost that life because of rodeo.”
“I would have lost him anyway if he hadn’t been able to do the thing he loved. And you and I, we did survive. It was hard, I’ll never say it wasn’t. But we made it. Then Brad came along.”
“I don’t want to go through all that. I just want—”
My attention drifts to the lodge, seeing Brad moving behind the front desk as he works.
For the first time in forever I understand there is one thing I want more than a photojournalism career, always traveling around the countryside or the world on assignment.
“I want Hadley. But at the same time, I don’t want to lose myself. I want a life, not a small-town existence. And, honestly? I don’t know if those two things can coexist.”
“Nobody, not even I, can tell you what to do. But I can tell you this: the only opportunities we regret as we get older are the ones concerning the heart.”
She pats my face and I wipe it again. It’s almost dry, despite the blubbering I’ve done in the last few hours.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She pushes out the door and walks around the front of the van. I do the same, grabbing my bag and gear. Mom stops on the stairs and turns back. “You know, you’ll never know what kind of life you could have until you at least talk to him, sweetheart.”
I stop in my tracks.
A hopeful smile pushes over her face. “Levi says hi.” She walks up the stairs and through the front doors.
Huh.
Guess that’s who she was on the phone with.
I lean back into the van and reach for my phone off the dash. The screen lights up with three missed calls from Hadley. Leaving the door open, I sit on the side step and dump my bags on the ground at my feet.
I tap Hadley’s number and take a long, steadying inhale.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Sunshine? Tell me you’re okay.”