Chapter 12
KENZIE COULD HAVE lolled around in bed all day without complaint, but there were chores to be done.
With snow on the ground, it was all the more important that the animals were taken care of.
She’d see to Indie and Gizmo, but she had no intention of doing it alone.
Nope. If she had to hog-tie and drag him, Ty would come along.
Standing at the foot of the bed, jeans in hand, she considered the man lounging amid the rumpled sheets and wadded-up pillows. “You look thoroughly pleased with yourself.”
“Darlin’, what I just did is the equivalent of tagging a twelve-point buck with a single shot from a rickety bow sporting a crooked arrow less than ninety seconds into the first day of hunting season.
” Clearly proud, he hooked an arm behind his head.
Propped up like that, he was the perfect picture of sanguine masculinity.
His flinch wouldn’t have been noticeable if she hadn’t been looking for it.
“You okay?” she asked with intentional indifference, making it a point to focus on getting into her jeans and then searching for her socks and boots.
“Couldn’t be better.”
“Sore at all?” she pressed.
“In the best possible way.”
Gotcha. She rounded on him, unable to tamp down her smile. “Awesome. Then, get up.”
He stared at her as if she’d just gifted him with a wheelbarrow full of horse apples and expected gratitude for the fresh load of crap. “Get...up?”
“You can get down if you want to, but you’ll still have to get up to do it.”
“Funny girl.” The teasing in his tone was still there, but beneath it ran an undercurrent of unease. “You’re joking.”
“Not in the least.” She sank onto the bed and wiggled her cold toes into thick socks before reaching for first one boot and then the other. “I’ve got a ton to do today, and I need your help.”
She could do everything on her task list by herself, and in fact she’d planned her day that way, not expecting company. But this little lie was one she could—would—live with, and gladly. She could even ignore the way her skin seemed to shrink a bit at the ease with which she prevaricated.
Let it go, Malone. No harm, no foul.
Standing, she grabbed a ball cap off the hook by the door and set about feeding her hair through the opening above the strap and then tightening it.
“Didn’t know you were a Denver Broncos fan,” she said, pointing at the logo on the cap.
Maybe she could get her dad to give up his fifty-yard-line seats.
She and Ty could grab a Sunday-afternoon game, maybe spend the night in Denver and—
“Did you hear me?” he demanded, interrupting her mental weekend planning.
She glanced over her shoulder. “No. Sorry. What was that?”
“I said I’m not leaving the house.”
She fisted her jacket in her hands. She didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to fight with him, or to shame him or bully him into finding the motivation he needed to get off his ass and live again. She wanted him to want it on his own. The way he’d wanted her.
Setting her jacket on the corner of the bed, she crossed her arms under her breasts and faced him. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s not much that needs explaining,” he countered.
“I’m still recovering, Kenzie. If I go out there, I could slip and fall, refracture my neck, damage my spinal cord worse than I did originally.
” He shook his head minutely even as he reached for his brace.
“I could be hurt worse this time, maybe even paralyzed.”
“‘This time’?” Kenzie parroted, confused.
“What do you mean, ‘this time’? You planning on taking another header? Or maybe you intend to roll around in the snow with Gizmo and try to set a new world record for making snow angels while horseback. Wait. I’ve got it.
You’re planning a wrestling match with the colt in stall seven, aren’t you?
” She dug deep and retrieved a shallow smile.
“He’s not huge, but he’s stout as hell. I wouldn’t recommend it. ”
Color drained from his face and left his appearance pastier than Elmer’s Glue save for two small bright spots that rode high on his cheeks. “You’re just like everyone else. You’re not hearing me on this.”
“Oh, I hear you just fine. The difference between me and ‘everyone else’ is that I refuse to kowtow to your temper tantrums or tiptoe around your irrational fears. I’m sick of this, and I haven’t been around you even a fraction of what your family has.
I’m not going to stand around and let you come up with any more excuses about why you can’t do more than feed yourself pureed peas someone else fixed for you.
This stops now, Tyson.” She fought to keep from grinding her teeth as she decided just how hard to push him.
At his mulish look, she pulled the emotional rip cord and let herself free-fall.
“Put on your big-boy Pull-Ups and get out of bed already. You’re freaking twenty-five years old. ”
“Twenty-six.”
“What?”
“I turned twenty-six while I was in the hospital.”
“And you think that fact—that you’re older—works in your favor?” she exclaimed. “Did you fracture the logic center of your brain, too?”
He scowled at her, jaw set in a mutinous, hard line.
She pressed on, unwilling to give up the ground she’d made. “You proved you’re man enough to get the job done—and more than once—this morning. Time to get that flannel-clad ass out of bed and back in a pair of Wranglers, cowboy.”
“No.” He pushed himself up, hands shaking as he tightened the neck brace’s Velcro tabs. “You don’t get to come in here like some...some...”
“The phrase you’re searching for is ‘knight in shining armor,’ but that doesn’t fit with your image of yourself, does it?
” She spoke so low she knew he had to strain to hear her.
Damn if she’d speak any louder. “Because then you’d be the damsel in distress.
Truth is, you are the damsel on the railroad tracks in this little vignette.
But no one tied you down. There is no mustache-twirling villain to blame.
There’s only you. And now your private audience is throwing popcorn at you as the train bears down, yet you’re just lying there shouting about the injustices you’ve been dealt.
Get over it, Tyson. Cut the invisible ropes you’ve bound yourself with and get up already. ”
“Don’t you stand there and pretend to understand what this is like for me.”
“Oh, I don’t have to pretend. I know. I’ve lived this before, Tyson.
Always on the outside, but this is a familiar glass house.
” She grabbed her jacket and stormed toward the door, her throat burning with words she hungered to say but knew she’d regret, words she’d never be able to take back.
She didn’t want his pity, but she wanted him to understand that he wasn’t the only one hurting. Not even close.
Spinning to face him, she clutched her jacket in one hand and yanked the borrowed ball cap off with the other.
“I was thirteen when I saw my only brother killed in an accident eerily similar to yours. But it wasn’t during a show.
It was in the middle of an open-range branding.
An exceptionally large bull calf got squirrelly.
Michael roped him.” She swiped at the single bead of sweat rolling down her temple.
“But the calf fought, got wadded up in the rope. Michael’s horse didn’t have the experience to get out of the mess, and the three of them went down.
Two of them got up. My brother wasn’t one of them. ”
Wide-eyed, Ty opened his mouth and then closed it when she made a stop gesture with her hand. “Don’t.”
She’d achieved her goal—shocking him—with incredible efficiency.
But the undisguised pity he didn’t even try to hide proved more than she could bear.
She felt the first emotional fissures open, the sensations not unlike someone dragging the tip of sharp needles along her skin.
Superficial scratches that would provide weaknesses, places that would split with the right amount of pressure.
But the next words out of his mouth created a kind of emotional epoxy that bound everything together. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. If I had...” He trailed off, his eyes closing as he fought to find the words.
She would spare him that much, at least. “How could you have known? You were fifteen. I wasn’t even on your radar at that point, so it wouldn’t have meant anything to you.
Not on a personal level anyway. But my life was forever changed.
Mom totally withdrew, first from her charitable and volunteer works and then from society altogether.
It was as if she lost her will to live.”
Ty’s brows drew together in apparent anger. “I realize she lost her son, but she still had you.”
He hit so close to the heart of her decade of hurt, becoming invisible in the shadow of a good man’s death, that she took a physical step back.
She couldn’t go there. Not with anyone, but particularly not with him.
How could he understand the consequences of Michael’s death?
How could he possibly grasp the fact that his love-’em-and-leave-’em approach felt very much the same to her?
She couldn’t. Not without turning those fissures into gaping wounds.
Instead, she pressed on. “While I pretty much lost Mom, Dad began wrapping up his rodeo career. He gave it all up so he could be there for Mom. So while I lost my mom’s awareness, I gained my dad’s time and attention.
He turned that focus on me, on helping me become national champion.
” What she didn’t say was that she’d followed that path for her father, stepping directly into Michael’s boots.
She’d never been able to fill them, though. Not for either parent.
“What about you?”
She whipped her gaze up to meet his. “What do you mean?”