14. Charlotte
14
CHARLOTTE
COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO — LATE AUGUST
“G ood girl!” I pull the reins and lean forward over the saddle horn, giving Vesper a loving rub along the side of her neck. Her jet-black head and mane shake with appreciation, gleaming in the bright sunshine. We trot back to the rails of the practice arena, where Wilder stands with a foot hooked on the bottom rung. His arms are thrown over the top, hat tipped back as he watches us approach, and Vesper picks up her stride when she spots him.
I think she might be more in love with him than I am.
I’m not ready to say it out loud, the voice of doubt and fear still speaking up when I so much as allow myself to think about it. But that voice grows quieter every day, its protestations faltering under kisses, text messages, cups of coffee, and waking up beside him. It happened like a monsoon in the desert: a sudden shift in the air, a quiet awareness, and then a downpour. My feelings for Wilder have covered every inch of me. I thought it would make me want to run for cover. Instead, I’m spreading my arms wide and embracing the sensation.
“Hey there, ladies.” Wilder reaches for Vesper’s nose strap, laughing when the horse avoids his hand in favor of pushing her head over the rails to knock his hat to the ground. “Aw, c’mon now, sweet girl, that’s not very nice!” He stoops to pick it up, brushing the dust and pieces of grass from it. He holds it in one hand as he reaches into his jeans pocket with the other. “Especially not when I brought you a treat.”
I roll my eyes when Vesper hears the magic word and pulls back from Wilder’s space. If an animal could bat her eyelashes and act coyly, that is exactly what she would be doing in appreciation for the sugar cube that appears in his hand. With unexpected delicacy, she drops her muzzle and extracts the cube between her lips. While she chomps happily, I finally shift my focus to smile at Wilder as he puts his hat back on.
“Why does she get to be ‘sweet girl’?” I tease. I throw the reins at him to tie off, swinging a leg over to move from my saddle to the top rail of the fence. Wilder steps up to stand between my legs, hands bracketing my hips. I balance on the narrow pole, hooking my boots under the middle bar to stay upright. He has a slightly abashed twist in his lips, and I cock my head to give him a pout. “What about me?”
“Baby, we both know you’d kick my ass seven ways from Sunday if I called anything about you sweet.” He pauses, leaning forward to suck a kiss below my ear and drop his voice. “Except maybe your pussy.”
He presses a growl into my skin, teeth nipping. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder of how he devoured me last night in our hotel room. Despite the way it makes my core throb, I shove his shoulders for the crassness, knocking him off his perch. He laughs at the dramatically scandalized look I’m giving him. Vesper whinnies next to us, her commentary on our behavior making me laugh, too. I climb down, unhitch her, and start for the gate. Wilder keeps up on his side of the arena.
“Ves looks good. Handled that last turn and run at the end like she’s been doing this her whole life. You ready to race?” Wilder asks.
The morning after Rooney’s injury, Wilder had his recovery site booked and the trailer ready to transport him. I hated the thought of leaving him somewhere, but the vet who attended to him had a clinic in a nearby town where he could be monitored and rehabbed. Staying with him twenty-four-seven wasn’t going to help him get better any faster, as Wilder reminded me. Instead, he asked if I wanted to get back to work. If I had been struggling with naming my feelings toward him, that one question took care of it for me. He knew me well enough to realize how important sticking to my racing schedule was, and how burying myself in accomplishing it would help me.
We loaded into his truck, and he drove three hours out of the way to Rolling Hills Ranch in Casper. Waiting for us were Cora and Nathaniel Carver, some of the best horse traders in our industry. Wilder shook their hands like they were all old friends and told me what I needed would be in the stable. Vesper was waiting.
“She’s done really well,” I say, looking at her. The onyx-coated, six-year-old Friesian mare is gentle and responsive. She lacks Rooney’s cutthroat instinct, but she’s been easy to train and is eager to please. We’ve gotten along well, and I’m excited to see what we can do at this weekend’s event. “I still can’t believe you bought me a horse.”
Wilder slides up next to me as we pass through the gate, making our way across the grounds to the temporary stables for Coeur D’Alene’s annual rodeo. He brings an arm up behind me until he can sink his hand into my back pocket. I love it when he walks with me this way; it’s possessive and practical. I need to have my hands free to tend to Vesper, but it lets us still be close. Every little squeeze he gives my ass is an added bonus.
“I needed to do something.” He shrugs, like it wasn’t a life-changing gesture. Having Vesper meant I didn’t have to sit out events until Rooney recovered, losing money and—potentially—my National standing. “Besides, it’s what you do for people you lo—care about,” he finishes lamely.
I keep my eyes on my boots, sparing him from confronting the fact that we both heard him catch himself. But I can’t help the way my heart beats wildly, or the warmth spreading through me at the smallest hint that Wilder McCoy loves me the way I love him. For two people who make a living in dangerous occupations, we are both full of chicken shit.
“Hey, want to go somewhere with me?” Wilder shifts topics, opening Vesper’s stall for the weekend. He walks the perimeter, checking carefully under the soft hay lining the floor. When he finishes, he takes Vesper’s reins and settles her inside.
“You know, we’ve listened to episodes of Murder, We Heard that start like this, right?” I say, pulling off my saddle and starting to remove my tack. I toss a brush at Wilder, who immediately starts working Vesper’s coat, much to her pleasure. The unamused look I get from him over the mare’s back has me laughing lightly. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” is all he gives me as we finish up boarding Vesper for the night. His enigmatic smile never falters as we head back to his truck and begin driving out of town.
* * *
We wind through trees and along beautiful vistas for nearly forty-five minutes, the houses becoming more spread out and beautiful mountains filling in the space between. Paved roads begin turning to gravel when Wilder finally signals left. The dirt road leads away from the main road into stately fir trees and tall grasses, a flat parcel leading into gently rolling hills. Deeper on the horizon stands a mountain, verdant and lush with trees. When Wilder slows the truck to a stop, he rounds the hood to open my door.
Standing in front of the truck with a beaming smile, Wilder stretches his arms wide at the flat land. It has stakes and electrical boxes, as though the expanse has been surveyed. There’s a poured slab of concrete and wooden framing on the sides, the setup for a residence. I can’t help but smile back as I think of our whispered conversations in the deep of night: Wilder’s dream.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him honestly. The land has enough flat space to build whatever home and outbuildings are needed, and there is plenty of clear space to build trails and explore. The sky has a brilliant cerulean, fluffy cloud traveling lazily across it, visible over the tops of the trees. “Do I hear a creek?”
“The property has some creek frontage and butts up against the shore of a smaller lake.” Wilder nods. He walks to the back door of the truck, pulling out a plaid blanket before reaching out a hand for me. “C’mon, I want to show you around.”
We wind along a footpath through the trees, breaking from the line to glimpse the edge of a lake with crystal-clear water lapping at the shoreline before dropping into inkier depths. Wilder spreads the blanket out in the thready shade of an aspen near the shore, settling comfortably and indicating the spot next to him for me. I pull my hat off, placing it behind me, next to where Wilder has his. Something about being here, with that image of our hats together, crawls into a part of my brain I know I won’t ever be able to get it out of. It’s filled with promises and dreams and things you don’t think about until you meet someone you want to share them with. But as the easy silence stretches between us, I can’t help but feel as though I have met that person, and I don’t hold back when a question tumbles from my lips.
“Is this place yours?”
“Yeah.” Wilder smiles so brightly it ignites the light blue fractals of his eyes and consumes his whole face before he gives a huffing laugh. “I mean, it will be, so long as I can keep up with the mortgage payments.”
“And is it everything you hoped to have when you were growing up? Did little Wilder want a ranch in the mountains?” I bump his shoulder, enjoying his happiness and thinking of what Wilder was like as a kid. He’s never really talked much about it, and I’m not one to push. My own complicated relationship with my parents makes me respectful of people’s family dynamics.
Wilder’s throat bobs, and he swallows thickly, the joyful look on his face draining away to be replaced by a more somber, contemplative one. Unease settles heavy in my stomach, prickles of awareness that we’ve entered new territory set my emotions on high alert. I move to backtrack, offering to change the subject when he gives me a sad smile and shake of his head.
“I grew up with a father who loved his relationship with Jim Bean more than he loved his relationship with me or my mother. She disappeared before I was five; a kiss on the forehead goodnight and a whisper of loving me forever is the last thing I remember about her. Pretty sure I got her eyes and her will to survive.”
He watches the water at the rocky shore, clearly lost in another time, another place, with people who hurt him. The sad, wounded little boy alone in a broken family. I want to reach out, wrap him in my arms, and erase the pain with promises of the love I feel for the strong, kind, brave man in front of me. But I don’t. I sit beside him, allowing myself to cover his hand with my own and wait until he’s ready to continue.
“I ran away when I was fourteen.” He swallows around the confession. “Stole everything in the old man’s wallet when he was passed out for the third night in a row. He was supposed to have bought groceries and an oil change for the truck. I’d never been so grateful he went to the bar instead. It was enough to get me to the next county and hide until I talked my way onto a crew. I harvested hay for a whole year, moving from place to place, sleeping in bunk houses, and hiding my pay in the lining of a worn Resistol hat I found in a barn.”
I can’t stop my sharp inhale. It’s hard not to compare that with my own life at fourteen. My teenage rage was wrapped up in being told I couldn’t enter another junior rodeo because I had to study for finals. I wasn’t scraping out an existence because my parents couldn’t be bothered to buy food for the house.
“At sixteen, I went with some of the other workers to the rodeo in Tulsa.” Wilder’s mouth lifts at the corner. It’s not quite a smile, but I can tell his story is turning, becoming brighter as he talks. “First time I ever saw anything like it. Sure, I’d spent plenty of time with horses, even helped with a few stock drives when the opportunity presented itself and I needed the money. But when Curtis Stanton went eight seconds on a bronc named Lock, Stock, and Velvet? It was like I had been drifting and finally saw the shore.” He tosses a rock into the shallow waters of the lake, the ripples fanning out and clashing with the small waves. “I didn’t watch any other event. I spent the whole night trying to find a way to talk to him. When I managed to, I begged him to teach me.” Wilder laughs, soft and tender. It’s filled with wonder, like he still can’t believe what happened. His hand underneath mine flips, his large fingers threading between my own, squeezing with reassurance. He looks at me, his other hand coming up to brush a thumb along my cheek. I lean into the touch. “I don’t know what he saw in me, but he changed my whole damn life. Instead of telling me to get lost, he took me to Colorado. He found me a spot on a ranch and started teaching me how to ride.”
He lets out a long exhale, a wry smile teasing at his lips before he readjusts us, pulling me tight against him. I lean in as his fingers trace up and down my arm in a steady, soothing pattern, as though he’s trying to erase my sadness.
“Hell, Charlie, I’m kind of sorry for all that,” he says, a shrug jostling me a little. I twist to ask, but he expects the question. “You asked if this was what I always dreamed of, not about my shitty childhood. I just can’t think of what I want in my life without also considering what’s led me to here. How badly I don’t want to see that past ever come to light again.”
“I’m so sorry you went through all of that, Wild,” I tell him earnestly. I’m still facing him so I can look him in the eyes. He gives me a small nod, lips pressed firm, before he seems to blink it all away. I take it as permission to continue, “It wouldn’t make sense for you to feel certain of what you want when certainty isn’t something you grew up with.” I settle against him once more, wrapping his arms around me. “You don’t have to have it all figured out right now.”
“Can I figure it out with you?”
My heart kicks up at his whispered words. His life before might not have been what any kid should have to endure—a sad and scary existence compared to mine. But he has what he wants now. He’s worked for every dollar, every ounce of peace he has, and I wish I had that kind of strength. My life is planned out for me if I can’t win and earn enough to stand on my own two feet, a bitter motivation to keep being the best. It’s been hard and lonely. Only now, with the summer air floating the smell of pine and possibility along this tiny shoreline, I don’t think it has to remain that way.
I lean forward, pressing a soft kiss against Wilder’s lips. He kisses me back, equally as gentle at first, before his mouth moves more firmly against my own. I gasp at the urgency I feel when he brackets my face, angling me exactly where he can devour everything I’m giving him. As his fingers slip into my hair and my own find the hem of his shirt, I know this is the kind of moment that can change a life.