Chapter 24 #2
I shake my head. “Millie told me not to google you, and she might be tiny, but she’s scary.
” God forbid she found out I ignored her.
She owns a craft store. Crossing her could mean waking up to a glittered deer head in bed.
“Although, now that I’m getting my information from the source, I might be able to peruse the inter-webs for tidbits about you at my leisure. ”
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe don’t do that.”
“I’ll consider it, but you have to tell me the goods if you want me to make any promises.” I regret the joke the instant it leaves my mouth. “Kidding! I’m kidding!” I repeat a little louder the second time. “That was a joke. A really bad joke, but a joke nonetheless. I won’t google you.”
I am curious about what pictures I’d find, but if I ever get that desperate, I’ll just hop the fence and ask his mom to pull out some photo albums.
“It’s okay, I was messing with you,” he says. “You can look me up. Some of the stuff on there isn’t great, but I don’t really mind that. It’s the stuff that people say around town that bothers me the most.”
“Really?” I feel like I would care more about what the entire world could see over what a few people in a small town might say about me. “Like what?”
“God. So many things.” He scrubs a hand over his face.
“I can’t even tell you how many stories are out there about what happened between me and Silas.
I heard that I stole his girlfriend and that he was the one who tanked my football career out of revenge.
One of my old players told me he heard I burned down the stables on the ranch because my dad banned me from riding.
That’s total bullshit for a ton of reasons, the main one being I quit riding as soon as I got to high school. ”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on.” I grab his arm and cut him off again. “What do you mean when you say you quit riding? Does that mean you used to ride?”
“Luna, focus,” he says through a throaty chuckle, and the couch vibrates with laughter. “We’re going to be here all night if you keep asking about all the unimportant details.”
First of all, does he think I’ll complain if he’s here all night? Secondly, ‘unimportant’?
Is he insane?
I just found out the hot handyman / football coach might actually be a hot handyman / football coach / cowboy! This is the most important detail of all!
“Yeah, yeah. Sure, whatever. I promise I’ll get back on track in just a moment.” I brush him off, needing this information more than my next breath. “But first, I’m going to need you to explain to me, in great detail, what you riding used to entail.”
“You know you’re ridiculous, right?” he asks, but I don’t deem that question worthy of an answer. I stare at him, not blinking once—my obscure party trick—until he breaks. “Fine!” He throws his hands in the air. “Silas and I did barrel racing and tie-down roping until middle school. Happy?”
“I have no idea what any of those words mean, but I still love hearing them.” My insides tingle and my imagination goes wild. “Why’d you quit?”
He shrugs. “I liked riding on the ranch, but rodeo wasn’t really my thing. Dad insisted we all try—you know, family legacy and all that. I bided my time until I could quit and play football. Silas was better than me and stuck with it a little longer, but Ciara was honestly the best.”
“Duh. Obviously, she was the best.” I remember Ciara telling me how overlooked she felt at home, and my heart breaks knowing that she not only wanted to work the ranch, but had the skills to do it too.
Part of me wants to mention it to Tate, but I decide to keep my mouth shut…
for now at least. “Boys drool and girls rule and all that jazz.”
“Silly me, how could I forget?” He rolls his eyes, and it looks so out of place on his stoic face that I have to fight back the laughter bubbling up in my chest. “Do you have any more rodeo questions?”
Only a million.
“One more and a request.”
“What’s the request?”
“It’s not much.” At least not compared to the many requests he’s attended to inside my house. “Next time you come over here, could you take me for a ride around Starlight Ridge? I’d love to see you ride and to have you show me the rest of your favorite places while I’m on the back of your horse.”
“I’d love that.” His face goes soft, and I feel the look between my legs. “What’s your other question?”
“You said you quit riding in high school, but that you quit rodeo in middle school.” I repeat his words back to him. “They were different?”
His flinch is almost imperceptible.
Almost.
“Dad knew rodeo wasn’t for me, and Mom hated every second we were out there.
If he gave us a hard time about that, he would’ve had a lot more to answer for than he was willing.
Riding though…” He pauses and chews over his next words.
“He never thought I’d stop riding. It was expected. Not optional.”
“But you made it optional?”
“You know I played football, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Tate Jacobs was the best quarterback in Celestial. That’s one thing about you that seems to be pretty indisputable across the board.”
“It wasn’t only Celestial,” he says, and my ears perk up even more. “I was the top-ranked quarterback in the country.”
“In the country? Like the entirety of the United States of America?”
“Probably in other countries too,” he says, modesty taking a back seat to confidence. “But they weren’t scouting other places, so I can’t be sure.”
Well, damn.
I knew he was good from the way everyone fawns over him when he touches the football field and from Millie’s slip about him being NFL-worthy. But I thought she was trying to hype him up to seem even more impressive to me than he already was…not that he needed any help with that.
“No wonder everyone is so happy that you’re back to coach.” I state the obvious, still unsure how it’s connected to him riding at home. “But what does that have to do with riding?”
“College coaches started reaching out to me before I started high school. By the time I was a junior, I had something like thirty college offers. Coaches were tripping over themselves to get me to commit to their school.” He says this without pride or boasting, just as fact.
“They were bending over backward to give me whatever I wanted, but there was one thing they all agreed on. If I wanted an offer, I had to promise to stop riding. It was too risky to have their incoming QB1 on the back of a horse.”
“So you had to choose between football and the ranch?” I ask as pieces of this convoluted puzzle start to fall into place.
“Football is everything in Texas, but for my dad, Starlight is,” he says. “He didn’t think I’d choose anything over the ranch and was inconsolable when I did. Didn’t talk to me for a month and held a grudge for longer. Mom had to threaten him before he would come to my signing ceremony.”
I remember the picture hanging on the hallway wall of his parents’ house and how strange I thought it was that his dad looked so unhappy next to his smiling family.
“I’m so sorry, Tate.” I squeeze his hand in mine. “That really sucks.”
“It does,” he says. “I thought he’d get over it once I got to college.
I mean, most of my teammates’ parents would’ve died to give their kids what I had.
A full ride to one of the top universities doing what I love?
Why would he be mad? But he was. He was pissed I’d put my own wants above the family legacy, and he was going to do what he could to punish me for it. ”
“Punish you? What do you mean?”
I’m having a hard time understanding. My mom made too many bad decisions for me to ever judge anyone else’s parents, but as bad as it got with my mom in the end, I can’t imagine a world where she would’ve punished me for going to college.
“Back when I was in college, it wasn’t like it is now.
There were no NIL deals. Name, image, and likeness wasn’t a thing.
You couldn’t get paid for playing college sports, and you were so busy with your football schedule that it was impossible to have a job outside of school.
He used that against me,” he says. “He cut me off and told me if I didn’t want to ride or work at the ranch, I couldn’t expect to benefit from it.
“My dad’s a good man, but he’s also a stubborn asshole, and for better or worse, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
If he didn’t want to support me, I didn’t want his support either.
” He turns his head away, but I can still see the lines of regret on his handsome profile.
“My mom tried to mediate things between us. She’d send me checks.
I’d send them back. He’d leave the room when she called, and I’d only call when I knew he’d be gone.
I loved him and Starlight Ridge, but I was going to show him that I didn’t need them.
I was going to prove that I would be fine on my own. And for a while, I was.”
I’m the kind of person that fast-forwards to the end of a show if there’s even a hint of suspense.
I won’t watch or read anything with a cliff-hanger until the sequel is released.
I hate being stressed in fictional situations, and I hate it even more as Tate talks.
My stomach turns knowing he’s still at odds with his dad.
“I don’t like this.” I shrink into the couch. “I want it all to work out and I hate that I know it hasn’t.”
“It’s not a pretty story,” he says. “Things were already bad. Then my dad got hurt and it got worse. He wanted me to come back, take over Starlight. He said football was a game, the ranch was life. It was legacy. It was fucking stupid.