Chapter 33
Riley
It clicked so fast once I started thinking about it. It’s not what I can do with the supplies, but how I can bring in more people to use the supplies that’s the problem. And it all comes down to fear.
Fear is such an universal feeling that drives all actions—or most of them, I guess—and we all feel it. I do, often. Like the minute I realized my issue with being around horses was fear too.
Fear of remembering too much about my parents and my life before it changed completely. Of getting that flip in my stomach feeling at missing barrel racing, something that used to be so dear to me, and not being able to do anything about it because trying to get back to it would be too painful.
The barn smells like Dad and memories, yes, but it didn’t cause the visceral reaction I was bracing myself for. It felt lighter somehow. Talking to Saylor about everything that went down and mending our relationship, then watching Juniper heal, confirmed it for me.
Even more when I was painting with her. Every time I feel less alone, less anxious, less fearful, it’s when I’m creating.
Then, the idea popped up, and I think I can pull it off. And if I do, this is the perfect way to get both worlds: pay for the supplies and hopefully even more towards the camp and use my degree for something useful alongside my art.
Or Lilly will kill me.
One or the other.
“So where are we going?” Saylor asks from the front seat as I pull my Jeep into a parking spot in front of the market.
“The fact that you asked zero questions until now should be studied.”
“As long as I’m not robbing a bank, we should be fine,” she adds. I hand her the box with the flyers as I grab the stapler, and we step out of the Jeep.
“No banks. We’re just going to drop these off around town and staple the rest everywhere else.”
She opens the box, pulling out a flyer and inspecting it more closely than a prescription. A smile spreads over her face, and when her blue eyes meet mine, I see something I’ve been searching for for a while—pride.
“Riley, this is genius.”
“Right?” Art our town needs something like this.”
“I hope so. I posted on socials too, so let’s get this done and see how it goes.”
We spend the next few hours driving around town and dropping flyers in different stores as well as in neighborhoods.
We laugh and we cry as we catch up on life.
By the time I get back to the cabin and check my email, both my inbox and heart are full.
About a dozen emails requesting information for the first session, which is Friday night, and a few others asking for kids sessions too.
This could really work, but until I know for sure, I’d rather keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
The class was fully packed. I decided to start with the younger kids and then move on to the teens.
Two back-to-back, completely full groups, and I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be.
I was thriving. I caught him watching me, and, for a moment, I wished he’d recorded it just so I could have proof of the magic starting to ensue here.
After the last student leaves, I close the door and slide down to the floor, a smile fixed on my face—a deep, genuine kind of joy I haven’t felt in a long time.
“That was amazing!” I exclaim, closing my eyes and just breathing in the silence of the empty room.
“It was,” he says. I pat the floor next to me, and Dom joins. I lean back, resting my head on his lap, looking up at him.
“It was so much fun. I can’t believe I did that. I wonder how many more things are out there I haven’t tried that would make me happy like this, you know? Things where I can use my degree, my love for art, my body.”
As I speak, I notice a change in his eyes. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the fact that I said how many things are out there?
I want him to see this side of me too, not just the girl who belongs to the world, who can’t be tied down by a house or a career. Or, at least, that's how everyone else sees me, and I don’t want him to fall into the same group.
I want him to see the capable side of me, especially since nobody has ever made me feel this way before. I want to be enough for me and for him. I want him to want me for the whole package.
“Do you want to go out and celebrate?” he asks, freeing me from my thoughts.
There’s a weight behind the question. Is he testing the boundaries of the just having fun arrangement we’d made?
I can see the desire in him, but I want it to be more than that. I want him to want to take me out and make a night of it, to show me off, but I also don’t want him to put his armor back on.
I sit up, a playful smile spreading across my face. I move closer, shifting to face him directly, and take his face in my hands. I don’t want to move too fast, and while I would love to tell him to do as he pleases, I need to take this slow and not jump headfirst as I always do.
“Actually,” I whisper, leaning in close until our breaths mingle, “I thought of a better way to celebrate.”
I watch the way he looks at me, part captivated and part wary of the trouble I might be. “And what is that?” he asks.
“What if I ride that mustache of yours until I come on your tongue, and then you fuck me into oblivion?”