44. Nathan
44
NATHAN
In the moments right before I compete, I stop seeing and hearing the crowd. Everything around me goes silent and still. It’s just me and Ballantine together, and the ring in front of us, waiting quietly for our ride. It’s my favorite part about competing—the utter silence and the unity I feel with my horse.
I urge Ballantine forward towards the center of the ring, where we start the pattern off with a spin. Ballantine does it perfectly, like he always does, and a bit of the crowd’s cheering filters into my head as we finish. We start making the circles with the left lead, drawing them large and fast, then slow and small. Then, back in the center of the ring, we move into circles with the right lead.
As I approach the ring wall, a flash of familiar blonde and black catches my eye.
Candice?
No—that’s impossible. It must be someone else with blonde hair and a back hat. Still, as Ballantine and I start the final circle, I look up at the crowd, knowing it will cost me the winning spot. But I can’t help it. I have to know.
Time slows as I realize that Candice is right in front of me, cheering me on, her black Stetson cradled against her chest, her blonde waves loose down her back. On instinct, I pull Ballantine to a halt right in front of the wall, and because my horse is the best damn reining horse in the world, he pulls the stop off easily.
The crowd goes silent as they realize that something has gone wrong.
“What the fuck?” someone yells in the stadium.
Over the loudspeaker, the announcer starts to discuss the moves I should be doing right now. But I don’t care—all I see in Candice. She’s looking right at me, her eyebrows upturned, an anxious but hopeful look on her face. I dismount, and walk Ballantine over to the wooden fence separating us.
“Hi,” I say, breaking out into a grin.
“Hey.”
I lean over and hold my hand out towards her. “Come here.”
“Right now?” she asks. “But the competition…Nathan, you’ll lose, and I know how important this is to you.”
“Screw the competition. I don’t care that much about winning and I already ruined things for myself when I looked at you. There’s no way I could miss you in a crowd, Viper.”
She grins back at me, finally, and moves to take my hand. Not paying attention to the announcer saying some dumb shit about how audience members aren’t allowed to enter the ring, I help her over the wooden siding, and into the ring. Ballantine swings his head to look at her, and she dutifully gives him scratches in his favorite place.
“Hey Bally,” she says.
“Why’d you come here?” I ask.
I may be happy to see Candice, but I want to know what’s on her mind. I try to quell the hope that rises in me, because she could be here for any number of reasons, and I could be making a whipped fool of myself in public for nothing. But I have hope anyway. I can’t help myself.
“I needed to know what you thought of this,” she says, pressing her phone into my hands.
I look down at it. “The article?”
“You haven’t read it yet?”
“I’ve been involved in the rodeo all day, and I’ve barely looked at my phone.” I leave out the part where I was too afraid to face it.
“Oh,” she says, her face paling. “I assumed you read it. I thought that’s why you stopped Ballantine and brought me in here…”
“What are you talking about?”
Around us, the crowd is getting rowdy, jeering at us and calling for us to be removed from the ring. Cameras are flashing and phones are raised, and I’m sure that whatever goes on in here will be on social media within the next ten minutes. But I don’t care. I’m not done here yet.
“Just read it,” she says, pushing her phone into my hand. “Scroll to the end.”
I can recognize when Candice is being stubborn, so I take the phone, even though I don’t care about the damn article anymore. I dutifully scroll past photos of the two of us and quotes from me splashed across the page, until I get to the end.
“What is your relationship with Nathan Booth?” the article reads.
“I don’t need to read this,” I say, the hope draining out of me and ice filling my chest. I know how she answered this question, and I don’t want to be reminded of it.
“Just keep going,” she urges.
I turn my eyes back to the screen, and read.
“While Wilson initially denied any involvement with Booth, she later independently confirmed that she has feelings for him. “Nathan Booth is the love of my life,” were her exact words. It has yet to be confirmed whether Booth returns the sentiment.”
“You’re damn right I return the sentiment,” I say fiercely.
“You still do?” Candice catches my gaze and I see all of her emotions written on her face plainly. Her love, her hope, her fear.
“I love you with everything I am.” It’s not enough—no words can capture the feeling I have when I look at her. I add, “I love you the same way I love being with horses. You are the root of my soul—of my entire being.”
Candice nods at me, and blinks back her tears. “I know exactly what you mean. I love you too.”
I swoop her up into my arms and spin her around, as she kicks her feet up and hugs me back. The crowd turns from jeering at us to whooping, and their excitement intensifies as I kiss her. Our lips fit together perfectly, her taste and smell filling my senses, consuming me.
“Nathan Booth, you will be issued an official warning if you do not exit the ring right now,” the announcer says, sounding irate.
“Yeah, yeah, leaving right now,” I call out. “Get on,” I tell Candice, motioning towards Bally. “And put this on.” I hold my hat out to her.
“You’re letting me ride your horse? And wear your hat?”
“Bally basically loves you more than me at this point,” I say. “And I want the whole damn world to know you’re mine.”
Candice nods.
“If I’m yours, then you’re mine, too.” She takes my hat out of my hands and puts it on. Then she settles her grandpa’s hat on me. “There.”
“Perfect,” I say, grinning down at her.
Candice hops on Ballantine’s back, and together, we start walking towards the exit. Seeing my girl riding my horse makes my chest swell with pride, and the crowd starts cheering for us again.
“One sec,” Candice says. “I need to take care of something.”
She stops Ballantine, turns in the saddle, and looks directly at the section where she was seated. With a wicked grin on her face, she holds up her middle finger and then blows them a kiss.
“You’ll have to explain that to me later,” I say.
We exit the ring, and Candice dismounts.
“Should we stay to see who wins?”
“Nah,” Candice says. “I already know it will be Kelly Peters. Her score was better than Brad’s.”
“Hell yeah. Kelly is the shit,” I say. “I’ll have to congratulate her later.”
We walk Ballantine over to the stables, where I make quick work of untacking him and cooling him down a bit. Once he’s tucked into his stall and munching away, I turn to Candice.
“I’m going to stop competing,” I say.
At the same time, she says, “I want to attend more of your events.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m going to attend more of your events,” she repeats. “If we’re doing this thing for real, then I need to be there for you.”
“What about what you said before? What about stability?”
She shakes her head. “I’ll get over it. I already talked to Beau about it. The rescue can survive for a few weeks at a time without me.”
“No, no, that’s not how this will work,” I say. “I’m going to stop competing and come live with you in Star Mountain. That way you won’t have to say goodbye to me all the time. You won’t have to worry about me leaving because I’ll always be by your side.”
She rests her hand against my cheek and strokes over the skin there, with a tender look in her eyes. “You’re a prince of a man, Nathan Booth. You know that?”
There was a point in my life where I would have laughed the compliment off, and said something about how I was just a player. But the month at the rescue changed something in me. The month with her changed me. I don’t think I’m the best man in the world—that title probably belongs to Beau—but I am a good man. The only thing that ever held me back from becoming one fully was myself.
“Being good for you is easy,” I say. “The easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Why the change in career plans so suddenly? Your mind was set when you left.”
I sigh and take her other hand in mind. “As you know, I was worried about the ranch. I’ve felt responsible for it for a while now, but Cassandra convinced me that things there are really, truly okay when I saw her this week. I also wanted to keep being able to support the rescue.”
“What do you mean?” Her brown eyes are concerned.
“I’m the anonymous donor, Candice. I thought you would have figured that out by now.”
She blushes. “I had an inkling. But I assumed that if you weren’t mentioning it, you wanted to keep it a secret. Beau especially wouldn’t take kindly to any sort of charity, which I’m sure you know. I’m not so proud. Money is money and money saves horses. I’d be stupid to turn yours down.”
“Practical as ever, Viper,” I say with a smile.
“But seriously Nathan, you don’t need to factor helping us out into your career plans. It’s not your responsibility.”
“Well, if I have my way, one day it will be,” I say, stroking her fingers with my own.
“And I’m sure when that day comes, I’ll say yes,” she says, clearly understanding my meaning and making my heart stutter. “But for the time being, don’t take on more than you can handle. What do you want to do? Don’t think about me, or the ranch, or the rescue. Do you want to keep competing? Do you want to keep doing endorsements and brand deals?”
I think about it seriously for a moment. In truth, I enjoyed being off the road for a month. I enjoyed being in one place—hell, I even enjoyed sleeping in the bunkhouse, even if it was a damn sight more uncomfortable than the hotels I’ve gotten used to. Ballantine liked being at the rescue, too. He liked being outside for most of every day, instead of getting carted around every few weeks in the trailer he hates so much.
I liked having a place to call home.
I also like the rush of competition—of winning, but also of riding my best and my hardest, of being in sync with my horse.
I explain as much to Candice.
“I’ll keep competing, but I’ll stick to the biggest events, and that’s it. I’ll do brand deals if good ones come along, and the rest of the time, I’ll be at Star Mountain with you, working with the horses if you’ll keep teaching me.”
“We can work together. Expand the business, work with the local ranches...”
“Go to every horse auction between here and Wyoming and buy as many as we can fit in the barn.”
“I like the way you think,” Candice says, leaning in to nestle herself against my chest.
“Will you be okay when I have to leave?”
“I’ll have to learn to be. I’ll use the times when I can’t go with you to practice learning to trust that things will be okay between us, no matter what. Before, I was trying to protect myself from losing you by letting you go, as stupid and convoluted as that sounds. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“That’s not stupid, Candice. It makes a lot of sense given what you’ve gone through, and I’m going to work my hardest every day of my life to be your rock.”
“You already are,” she whispers against my chest.
We stand there in the quiet of the barn, Ballantine next to us in his stall, the smell of hay and horses all around us, until I whisper to Candice that my hotel is waiting for us.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” she says, pulling me towards the exit and out into the night.