Chapter 26 #2
‘It’s just a sprained wrist.’ I laugh it off, aware that to my family it’s definitely not just that. Not after what they’ve seen. Not to them, not to Ash, and definitely not to Bailey either. Anxiety stretches beneath my skin. Where the hell is she?
I pull my phone from my back pocket casually, as if I’m checking the time, and frown. My lock screen is full of message notifications from people checking on me after the fall, but there’s nothing from her.
Impatience whips through me.
‘Let’s talk about it over dinner,’ Cole suggests.
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ I respond firmly. ‘And I’m not hungry.’ I hear my tone, know that I’ve crossed over into rudeness and let out a heavy sigh. I force a smile. ‘I’m gonna head back to the hotel.’
‘Breakfast tomorrow,’ Beth says with a nod, cutting off the argument that’s brewing between Cole and me. She puts her hand in the curve of his arm, glances up at him and smiles sweetly. ‘I’m pretty tired myself,’ she says, to seal the deal.
Cole’s whole demeanour changes, shifting into a big protective bear for his wife now, not me. And thank god for that. The last thing I need is Cole acting as though I don’t know how to look after myself.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ I say belatedly, striding across the room and hoisting my bag over my shoulder. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I can barely look in Ash’s direction as I stalk away from them. A dark cloud is forming on the edges of my mind and I have no idea why, or what it means, only it feels as though it’s consuming me whole.
Bailey
Nothing helps. Not a long soak in the tub, not a glass of wine, not the stupid, funny podcast I listen to when I’m exercising. I feel like my whole body has been stretched too far, like I can hardly think straight—or, more accurately, all I can think of is Beau.
I close my eyes against the wave of pain that rushes over me when I remember the other woman’s face. Ash. The way her expression contorted with love.
Love that I understand, and feel.
Love that I could never compete with.
What have Beau and I been doing?
Sleeping together.
That’s it.
Three weeks of blissful, mind-blowing sex.
Everything else was an illusion. We’ve bared our souls because that was our deal.
In exchange for me mining his consciousness for this article, he made me agree he could mine me right back.
That’s not love, not for him. For Beau, I’m pretty sure he’s standing by the terms of our deal.
He’s got no issue with us ending this on the day we agreed. He’s got no issue with letting me go.
Whereas Ash is one of his best friends. A part of his family. She grew up across the road from their ranch; she’s part of his world—part of him—in a way I’ll never be.
A tear falls from my eye; I dash at it quickly. I feel like my heart has been ripped clear from my body. The sooner I get out of Arizona, the better. The sooner I get away from Beau, the sooner I can start trying to process this mess.
But deep down I know I’ll never be the same again.
Beau
I stand outside her room so long I almost think she’s not gonna answer. Or maybe even that she’s not there? I pull out my phone once more, start to navigate to her number, then hear a scuffle just behind the door, and the slow turning of the handle.
Forget falling off a bull. Seeing Bailey is like a hard punch to the ribs. She’s showered and scrubbed her face of make-up, her hair is scraped back into a loose bun, and she’s wearing stretchy pants with an oversized T-shirt. This Bailey, all casual and sweet, is my absolute favourite.
Our eyes meet and the air between us pulses with tension. ‘Bailey.’ I dig my good hand into my hip pocket. Her eyes drop to the other wrist, and the strapping that’s visible there. Her jaw clenches as she moves one of her hands to the wall, almost like she needs the support.
‘You should go to bed, Beau.’
‘I was planning on it,’ I say, holding my ground. ‘You keeping me out here for any reason?’
She hesitates. ‘I— meant your own bed.’
Her eyes don’t quite meet mine. Ever since I came to and realised Ash was leaning over me, then walking me out of the arena, I’ve had this heaviness on my chest. Nothing to do with my physical injuries, but it might as well have been.
The sensation’s the same, like I’ve been badly winded. It presses down on me now.
‘We need to talk.’ No more pretending. No more playing the part of the goofy, easygoing cowboy.
She hesitates some more though.
‘You can tell me to get lost, but you know as well as I do there are things that need to be said.’
Her jaw clenches, but to my relief she steps back, letting me in.
‘I should have told you Ash was coming.’
As soon as I say it, I realise it’s the worst way to have started this conversation. She nods slowly, like she’s taking that in, but there’s hurt in her eyes, like I’ve just killed a kitten in front of her.
‘You knew?’
Yep, there it is. The wounded accusation.
‘She messaged to tell me she’d be there.’
‘So … why didn’t you tell me?’
I move to the window, wanting to give her some space, and needing that space myself, as an insurance policy against reaching out and touching her.
‘I didn’t not tell you,’ I say carefully. ‘It just wasn’t that important.’
Another monumental screw-up. She practically recoils. ‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t.’ My voice is more urgent now. ‘Ash and I haven’t been a thing for almost two years.’
She blinks, looks away, toward the painting across the room.
‘But we’re still friends.’
‘So why not tell me then?’
‘Because I thought it might make you feel weird.’
‘Well, if you guys aren’t a “thing”, why would I feel weird?’
‘I saw the way you reacted, back in Goodnight. It didn’t seem worth raking over the coals of what I had with Ash, forever ago, letting it ruin the small amount of time we have left.’
She flinches heavily, then turns away, moving toward the minibar. I watch as she pulls out an open bottle of wine, cracks the top off it and pours a glass. Her hands are shaking a little as she lifts it to her lips.
‘I’d offer you a drink, but I presume you’re on painkillers or something.’
‘I’m not, actually.’
She throws me a look I can’t interpret, then turns back to the fridge, removes a beer and walks it in my direction. She holds her hand right out from her body, like she doesn’t want to get too close.
I bite back a frustrated curse, tell myself it’s a good thing that she’s offering me anything, and nod my thanks.
‘I don’t know what to tell you, Bailey. There is nothing about my relationship with Ash that would make her run down to me like that.’
Bailey makes a scoffing sound, moves back to her wine, cradles the glass without lifting it.
‘What? What does that mean?’ I ask, holding my beer tight.
‘You’re serious?’
‘I came here to talk.’
‘What’s the point? Why bother?’
‘What?’
‘You just said it yourself. This was all going to come to an end after your event tomorrow. Why not wrap it up a night early?’
I grind my teeth together, hating what she’s suggesting, but also hating that she’s basing that off some throwaway comment I made. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘I can’t tell you what I want,’ she says, tone strangely measured.
‘But I know it’s not to be the other woman again, and that’s what I felt like tonight, Beau.
It was just like with Kirk. I felt like I was standing on the outside of your relationship with Ash, realising that whatever we’ve got going on, you’ve got with her too.
’ She swallows a big gulp of wine; my insides clench in fierce rejection of her statement, of the idea of her being an outsider to anything in my life.
‘But what does it matter, anyway? This is over, right? Of course you should go back to Ash, and whatever you two are.’
‘We’re nothing,’ I say urgently, my chest too heavy to think straight.
I pace to the other edge of the window, then back, spinning around to face her properly.
‘We’re friends,’ I correct. ‘Good friends. She’s important to me.
But there is nothing romantic going on with us; you sure as hell are not the other woman. ’
‘Are you seriously that stupid?’
It hurts. It lands like a gut punch, all my childhood insecurities wrapping around me, strangling me, so I can hardly breathe.
She closes her eyes, her lower lip trembling. ‘That woman’s in love with you.’
I press my back to the wall, needing it to hold me upright.
‘You know it too.’
I shake my head, wanting to deny it. But the way Ash’s cry filled the stadium, her face when I came to so lined with worry. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, sipping my drink simply to have something to do. ‘Not until tonight.’
‘Maybe you just wanted to ignore it,’ Bailey says, as always getting right to the heart of me.
‘I thought she and I were on the same page. I tried to make sure of that.’
‘Like you and I are on the same page?’
Exactly, I want to exclaim triumphantly. But there’s something in the way she says it, something so laced with barbed rage, that I hold myself still.
‘What’s going on here, Bailey?’
She flinches.
I want to draw her into my arms and hold her there. I want to hold her hard against my chest and stroke her back until she stops clenching her lips.
‘Nothing.’
I put my beer down on the window ledge, a little more heavily than I intended, and brace my hand on my hip. ‘I can’t help it if I don’t get it.’
‘There’s nothing to help.’
‘You’re clearly pissed.’
‘I was surprised,’ she says. ‘I didn’t like how it felt seeing you with her.
That’s normal. Not just because of what I went through with Kirk, but because you and I have been in each other’s pockets these last few weeks.
’ She rolls her shoulders, half shrug, half attempt to ease tension in her neck.
‘But at the end of the day, you’re right.
We’re practically living on borrowed time as it is, so what does it matter? ’