Chapter 8
8
Essie
T here wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t ache. A good ache, the kind that came from a long day spent on horseback in the autumn sunshine. A satisfying ache, the kind that came from fully focusing my mind and body on learning something new.
And it was new, that was the crazy thing about it. I had spent my whole life around horses. First as a barn rat, latching on to the Hale family, helping with ranch chores because they were nice enough to let me ride their horses whenever I wanted. Then as a horse owner myself and professional barrel racer.
That all helped, but the actual business of horse training was entirely new to me. I had only ever been on the client side of things. I’d had no clue what it took to turn a horse and rider into a winning team. The nuance of it all. As a barrel racer, I had focused on how a horse performed for and with only me. Now the thing I cared most about was getting the horse ready for someone else—and since riders had their own quirks the same way horses had their own quirks, this was no easy task.
But damn, it was interesting .
It was something I could see doing a good long while. Maybe not forever. Forever wasn’t something I could wrap my brain around. But a decade, at least.
I wasn’t interested in planning out the rest of my life. Right now, the only thing I wanted to plan was dinner.
With both Mom and I working long hours most days of the week, we usually made do with whatever she brought home from Sweetie Pie. That didn’t mean I couldn’t cook. I actually loved cooking, when the mood struck me. I had a whole Instagram account dedicated to chefs and recipes so I never had to make the same recipe twice. I loved scrolling through, discovering food I would otherwise never know existed. Aspen Springs was my favorite place in the whole world, but good luck finding a restaurant that served anything other than burgers or pizza.
Tonight I was making red lentil curry, if I could reach that can of coconut milk. Normally grabbing things off the top shelf wasn’t an issue for me, since I was on the tall side, but my shoulders were still burning from this afternoon’s ranch chores.
I groaned as I lifted my arm. And then suddenly there was another arm stretched over my head, swiping the can of coconut milk in front of my face. I knew who that fucking arm belonged to before I even turned around. Brax had chosen his aftershave and deodorant in high school and never wavered from it. I would recognize that spicy clove scent anywhere.
He was frowning when I turned to face him. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, looking me up and down like he was searching for injuries.
“Why are you literally everywhere?” I grumbled as I reached for the can. “Give me that.”
“I can’t be literally everywhere,” he reasoned. “It’s literally impossible. But if what you mean is we seem to run into each other a lot, well, the explanation is simple, really. You work at my family’s ranch. My house is a block from yours. There’s only one grocery store in this town and, being human, we both have to eat, so here we are.”
“Gee, thanks so much for explaining the obvious. You just can’t help yourself, can you?” I shook my head. “This is why people don’t like you, Brax. In case you were wondering.” I moved to get past him, but he angled his cart to block my path.
“The only thing I’m wondering is why you’re rubbing your shoulder like that. What’s wrong with you?” he asked again.
I immediately dropped my hand and glared. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. Aches and pains are part of ranch work. I guess it’s been a while since you did anything but sit at a desk and get soft.”
“Honey, there’s nothing soft about me, I promise you that.” His lips quirked.
I gave him a skeptical look and took my time with it, my gaze lingering where it would hurt the most. But the joke was on me because that only served to remind me of what James had said about Adam being the small brother. My cheeks felt hot as I pushed past him.
This time, I was successful in outmaneuvering him. I had almost made it out of the aisle when his hand clamped down on my shoulder, his fingers splayed across my collar bone above my breast. “Hey!”
“I can fix this.”
“It won’t work,” I said. “You’re too irritating. It makes my muscles even more tense. My body will reject you.”
But his thumb found the knot where my shoulder met my neck and I whimpered. He laughed softly. “There you go,” he soothed, like I was a high-strung filly.
I wanted to stiffen up again just to spite him, but instead my eyes drifted closed and my head lolled to the side, giving him more room to work. His hand slid under the collar of my shirt. The knot didn’t stand a chance against the gentle, relentless pressure. It melted away. Fucking traitor.
Brax leaned down, his five o’clock shadow scraping the shell of my ear. “I think your body likes me just fine,” he whispered .
“Yeah, well, my body likes a lot of things that aren’t good for it,” I muttered. “Tequila, bacon, Bobby Waters.” That last one happened to be a bull rider with more charisma than brains, and a mistake I’d embarrassingly made more than once, usually after too much tequila.
His thumb dug in with sudden force and my eyes popped open. “Do not ever say his name when my hands are on you,” his voice growled in my ear.
I twisted to stare up at him in disbelief. “Are you serious right now? I’m not—” The words evaporated in my throat at the fury in his eyes.
I had never seen him like this before. Annoyed, sure. Irritated, most definitely. But this was something else. Something that made every cell in my body shiver with sudden awareness.
And still, I couldn’t resist taunting him, just a little. “Take your hands off me, then, because I’ll say whatever name I want.”
He didn’t move, just kept staring at me. Waiting me out.
Well, he could wait forever. I wasn’t giving in.
Except…the look in his eyes was doing uncomfortable things to my insides and I was aggravatingly damp between my thighs. Plus he hadn’t done my other shoulder yet and it was every bit as knotty.
“Fine,” I huffed, turning back around. “Not that it matters, since you will never have your hands on me again, but I promise I won’t say his name.” His name wasn’t worth saying, anyway, so no loss there.
The pressure immediately lessened. He rubbed in gentle circles, easing the tension he had put there himself. “There, was that so hard?” he murmured.
“Shut up and do my other side.”
He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your deal with him, anyway?” I asked. “I didn’t know you’d ever met before.”
“The deal with who?”
I had the feeling he was testing me. There was a mocking note in his voice. “You know who,” I sassed back pertly. “I’m not allowed to say his name, remember?” When his other hand joined the first, it felt like a reward. “Is it because of Zack?” Zack didn’t ride bulls, but they both competed in the steer wrestling event at rodeos.
“No, he and Zack are good, as far as I know. Zack’s never said anything to the contrary. I fucking hate that guy, is all.”
“Oh.” I didn’t press, mostly because I didn’t care. The man had magic hands. I leaned into his touch and moaned. “Mmm.”
Mrs. Gottlieb, reaching for a can of stewed tomatoes, stared at us with her mouth agape.
“Mind your business, Mrs. Gottlieb,” I said, but my tone lacked its usual snap due to my muscles melting into puddles. It was a lost cause, anyway. Mrs. Gottlieb was a farmer’s wife and president of the Aspen Springs Beautification Society, and she had never minded her own business a day in her life.
“It’s indecent, that’s what it is,” she muttered, hurrying away, eyes averted like she was afraid we might start fornicating right there in the grocery store.
Brax’s chest rumbled with a low laugh. “She has six kids. You’d think she’d know what indecent looked like.”
I moaned again. “Don’t stop.”
There was a pause as his hands spasmed on my skin. “I’m beginning to see her point.”
“Harder,” I said, because I could never resist putting on a show and also because, good golly god, it felt like I had died and gone to heaven when Brax kneaded the knot.
“Behave, hellion,” he warned.
“You know Mrs. Gottlieb is still listening, even if she can’t see us. Might as well make it worth her time.”
“Yeah, but so is my dick and if you keep it up, I’m going to have trouble walking out of here.”
The words stunned me into silence. I didn’t shock easily and had a policy of having the last word, but this was Brax . Accusing me of making his dick hard. I couldn’t have been more surprised by a parade of talking elephants.
Brax despised me.
Then again, maybe that was the point. After all, he was far from my favorite person, but that never stopped my dumb body from reacting to him with inconvenient lust.
“I’ve always said that hate makes people horny,” I said. “Good to know it’s true even for uptight prigs like yourself.”
I heard his sharp inhale, felt the slow release of his breath. I was glad I couldn’t see his face. I had the feeling it might hurt me somehow, and I had been hurt enough by this man who used to be my closest friend.
He squeezed my shoulders, then took his hands away from me altogether. “Pirate’s first show is next weekend. I doubt I’ll make it, but it should be a good time.”
The abrupt change in conversation nearly gave me whiplash. His detached tone was like a door shutting politely but firmly in my face.
And that hurt, too. But it was a hurt I was familiar with.
Our friendship hadn’t ended with a big fight. Everything changed the day he almost died, and I didn’t even realize it in the moment. We still talked. He still gave me a ride home from school when Jack stayed for ROTC. A week into it, I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.
Our easy way with each other was just…gone. He didn’t tell me dirty jokes anymore. If I touched him, he moved away. We didn’t laugh or goof off together. And when I tried to talk to him about it, that tone right there was what he gave me. Polite. Distant.
Back then, I got mad. I yelled. And when that didn’t work, I finally understood. Because I had been there before, standing outside a glass wall with the person I loved on the other side, begging him to love me back. I could see him through the glass, but I couldn’t reach him.
If you don’t stop crying when I leave, I’m not going to come see you anymore . My dad said that when I was seven, during one of his infrequent visits. It had worked. I stopped crying. But his visits remained as sporadic as ever.
I learned from that, too.
I cried a lot when I realized Brax and I would never go back to the way we used to be. It had broken my heart. But I never let him see that. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, anyway.
So I just…stopped. Stopped asking for his attention. Stopped expecting him to care. Eventually, I stopped talking to him altogether, other than forced civilities. Somewhere along the way that civility turned into purposeful antagonization. In my defense, he started it.
But I couldn’t resist egging him on.
Even though, deep down, I knew it was because I still craved his attention, however I could get it.
Fifteen years ago
I propped my socked feet on the dash, making myself comfortable for the forty-minute drive to the trailhead. I had kicked off my Chucks the second I had slid into the passenger side of Brax’s old Ford pickup. One hand floated out the window—Brax’s truck pre-dated air conditioning—catching the hot breeze on my fingertips, while the other rested on the bench seat between us.
Perfect .
Not just because the red brick school building was in the rearview mirror, although that didn’t hurt. I preferred to think of myself as running toward something rather than running away from anything. It was something my dad liked to say. If you spend your life running away, your past will always be chasing you, dictating every move you make. Run toward your future, baby girl, and you’ll make yourself a life worth living .
Dad was always running toward something. Not me. Or my brother. Or my mom. We were the things he saw in his rearview mirror as he ran toward whatever exciting thing caught his attention. There was always something.
It was shitty of him. I knew it was shitty. But, damn . What a way to live. Pure freedom. That was what I wanted for myself. Minus the whole teen pregnancy and subsequent abandonment of offspring, of course.
So right now, I wasn’t running away from school. I was running toward an afternoon of fun with my favorite person in the world.
“Aren’t you happy we did this?” I asked, unable to keep the smile off my face.
Brax paused for a beat. “Yes.”
I studied his profile, wondering what internal calculation had made him hesitate before coming to, in my humble opinion, the only correct response. It couldn’t be the school part. Final grades had already been turned in. I was once again looking at a B- average. Brax had straight A’s. He was the top student in our class, and I had no doubt that next year, he’d be the valedictorian. It wasn’t even close.
He just didn’t like breaking a promise to Jack. That was my guess. Fortunately, the pleasure of my company outweighed such pesky details. I hoped.
I loved Jack. Next to Brax, he was my best friend. But despite sharing a womb for nine months, we didn’t have a lot in common. We didn’t have the same taste in food, or music, or hobbies. Brax was the only thing we shared.
Most of the time that was fine. Despite our lack of common interests, we got along great. The three of us were always together. Whatever trouble I was quick to get us into, Brax and Jack were just as quick to get us out of. I felt good having them both with me. Safe. Indestructible.
But honestly, sometimes I wasn’t in a sharing mood.
Like now.
Between school and chores at his family’s ranch, Brax had always been busy, but now that he’d taken a part-time job with the only lawyer in Aspen Springs, it felt like I never saw him anymore. And when I did see him, Jack was right there, too.
That never used to bother me. But lately…lately it did.
Like he felt the weight of my thoughts, Brax found my hand on the seat between us and tapped my knuckles with his index finger, his eyes never leaving the road. “What?”
“What do you mean, what?” I asked.
“You’re staring at me. And you haven’t spoken a single word for five minutes. It gives me a spooky feeling, like the calm before a storm.”
I laughed. “You can relax. There’s no storm brewing. I was just thinking, that’s all. Summer’s coming.”
His left hand twisted on the wheel. His right hand was still on the bench, not actually touching mine, but so close I could swear the tiny hairs on our fingers brushed each other’s like an electric current.
“You got the rodeos planned out?” he asked.
“Hell, yeah, I do.” I grinned.
This summer would kick off my last rodeo season as a junior barrel racer. I was at the top of my game. The championship title was mine to defend, and I intended to do exactly that. There would hardly be a weekend I was at home while I traveled to rodeos from Oklahoma and Tennessee to Nevada and Texas. It was exhausting, but it was also exhilarating. A taste of the real life waiting for me.
“One more year,” I promised myself softly.
“And then?” he asked, like he didn’t know.
That was one of the things I loved about Brax. He gave me space to ramble on about my hopes and dreams for my future, no matter how crazy it all sounded. He never tried to temper my enthusiasm with bummer advice like be realistic , the way Jack would.
“And then world domination, silly. Make a million dollars on the barrel racing circuit. I’ll be the next Charmayne James.”
He glanced at me quickly before returning his eyes to the road. “You’re not going to be the next anyone. You’re going to be the first Essie Price. Little girls will pretend they’re you when they trot their ponies around barrels.”
I meant to say thank you, but the words came out a strangled clump of sounds I doubted he could decipher. If I were the crying sort, my mascara would be black streaks on my cheeks right now. Fortunately, I wasn’t.
I punched him on the shoulder. “Damn straight.”
“Ow!” He rubbed his shoulder, and I immediately regretted it because it meant his right hand took the wheel from his left. “You trying to run us off the road, hellion?”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t hurt you.”
Inside, I glowed at the nickname he had given me. It wasn’t the kind of thing a boyfriend would call a girlfriend, like baby or sweetheart, and I liked that about it. It meant he wasn’t going to use it on someone else someday. It was all mine.
He grinned. “Nah, you didn’t hurt me. Just wanted to offer you a little encouragement. It’s tough throwing punches when your hands are so little,” he teased. He placed his right hand on top of my left, engulfing it in his.
I stared at our hands. My hands were a perfectly normal size, thank you very much, but I couldn’t deny they were a lot smaller than his. And even though they were calloused from years of riding, they didn’t have his strength, either.
“Jerk,” I said.
But I left our hands where they were.