29. Candice
29
CANDICE
Back at the ranch house, Nathan and I immediately get on the road. The conditions are safe for driving, and we want to get back to Star Mountain before dark. Nathan agrees to drive, so I take the time to furtively send Winnie some text updates. She was bursting with excitement when I told her about the deal I made with Nathan, and I promised to keep her in the loop.
Nathan and I just had sex.
!!!! Details please.
I put my hat on his head and told him “Wear the hat, ride the cowgirl.”
OMG. You total badass! And you never let anyone else even touch that hat, so you must really like him.
I think hard about how to respond to this. On the one hand, I do like Nathan more than I thought I could. We’re clearly no longer enemies, but I’m still figuring the rest out.
It was just an in the moment thing.
Sure, sure.
How are the plans coming along?
It may seem like I’m trying to change the subject, but Winnie has a lot going on in her life and all of it is more important than what is happening with me and Nathan. My cryptic message is due to the fact that her mom tends to look over her shoulder while she texts, and Winnie’s plans to escape her parents need to be kept secret at all costs.
Just fine.
Keep me in the loop.
“Are you texting all your girlfriends to let them know that you finally had your round with America’s favorite cowboy?” Nathan asks.
“I’m surprised my hat even fit on that huge head of yours, Nathan,” I tease. “But if you must know, I was talking to my best friend, Winnie. Though I will not disclose how much I did or did not say about America’s favorite cowboy.”
“Just make sure you give her all the details accurately. I won’t have anyone thinking that Nathan Booth can’t please a woman.”
“It’s not like I’m going to tell her about each and every orgasm.”
“As long as she knows that there were multiple.”
I sink lower into my seat and close my eyes to fake annoyance. “If I’d known sleeping with you would inflate your ego like this, I never would have done it.”
“My ego has always been this big, Viper.”
“You’re right. If it got any bigger it would defy the laws of physics.”
We’re just joking around, but it reminds me that Nathan is good at putting on a show. He’s good at flirting and deflecting, but deep down I know he’s still upset about what happened with Brad, and what he saw.
“Nathan?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure you already know this, but you didn’t lose against Brad because you’re less of a rider than him. You lost because you have a conscience. And it sounds like he might have cheated. I just don’t want...” I fumble for the right words. “After we went to the Neon Horseshoe, you told me that you were a loser. And I just don’t want you to think that because it’s not true.”
“Thanks, Candice. But it is true. I lost. And I’m not used to that feeling, not anymore anyways.”
“But you only lost because you were upset.”
Nathan sighs. “I lost because I couldn’t put aside my emotions and focus on riding. I was upset and I let that bleed into the ring.”
“Well, so what? People feel things, Nathan. You’re not a loser for failing to suppress that completely.”
“Maybe.”
I sigh. “Have you thought about reporting what you saw?”
“I drafted an email with a report in it the day after the competition.”
“And you sent it?”
“No,” he says, sighing heavily again. “It’s been in my drafts folder for weeks.”
“But why not? Why won’t?—”
“Because I have no evidence. No one will believe me, and they’re even less likely to given that Brad beat me and then I punched him in the jaw.”
“So? Who cares what anyone thinks. You have to report this!” I feel myself getting frustrated with him because this feels like a clear-cut situation. Brad is mistreating his horse and possibly cheating, and Nathan can do something about it.
“Of course you think that,” he bites out.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just that things aren’t as black and white as you seem to think they are.”
I don’t respond right away, and look out the window instead, staring at the snow-white fields rolling by and the red sun starting to go down behind the mountains beyond.
“Fine,” I say. “I get that it’s not easy to report with no evidence. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”
Nathan just grunts in response and doesn’t say anything else. Conversation over, I guess.
The day after we get back from the ranch, I studiously avoid Nathan in the barn. I hide out in the office and try my hardest to focus on paperwork. But the fight we had in the car keeps replaying in my mind. We haven’t bickered like that in a few days, and I was forgetting why I disliked him so much in the first place. I let my defenses down. I let him worm his way into my good graces, with his big smiles and his talented fingers and his huge dick.
But I need to get my head back on straight, because Nathan and I clearly do not work together for anything more than sex. I repeat this fact to myself as I date and initial the next week of work on his community service log. He’s more than three-quarters of the way finished with his hours.
“Good riddance. He’s an idiot,” I mutter, flipping over the page and turning to the next thing in my paperwork pile.
“I agree,” Jenny says.
I look up startled and find her standing in the doorway of the office.
“You should have knocked.”
“I did. You didn’t answer. You were too busy taking all your anger out on that sheet of paper.” She raises one manicured, red brow at me.
I look down and find that I’ve crumpled the corner of Nathan’s community service log.
“Sorry. Just got a bit too caught up with work, I guess.”
“Clearly.” She sits down in the old leather chair across from me and crosses her legs. “So come on, tell me about whatever Nathan has done now to piss you off so badly.”
“Nothing.”
“Are you serious?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say. “We got into a fight on the way home from the ranch.”
“Isn’t that normal for you two?”
“It’s been happening less and less now,” I admit begrudgingly.
Jenny whistles. “And how was staying at the ranch?”
“It was fine. It was nice meeting his family. We went for a ride together, too,” I say quickly. I feel my face heat at the memory of what we did on that ride, and I know I must be visibly blushing.
“Oh my God,” Jenny whispers. “You two hooked up.”
“No!”
“Yes, you totally did. You’re blushing. You and Nathan hooked up and now you’re mad about it.”
“Fine,” I say. “We kissed. And then we fought in the car on the way back and it annoyed me.”
“Who did you kiss?” Lila shrieks as she barrels into the office, her little feet pounding against the ground.
Beau and Tomás are hot on her heels, and I immediately say, “No one, sweetie. I said I was missing someone, not kissing them.”
I glance up at my brother to assess his reaction, but he’s busy trying to stop Lila from crawling around on the floor and he seems none the wiser. Whew.
“I leave her alone with you two for ten minutes and she escapes,” Jenny says.
“She’s a demon,” Tomás says. “A cute one, but a demon nonetheless.”
“I am not!” Lila says in her tiny, garbled toddler voice. Like many kids her age, she practically speaks her own language, one that we all thankfully understand.
“You are sometimes,” Jenny mutters. “But Beau and Tomás are big boys. They can handle it.”
I glance over at my brother, who is panting slightly and looking more stressed out than he does when he’s foaling a mare. But I know he worries about Lila, and Jenny too. He just wants the little girl to stay safe, and there are plenty of things she could hurt herself on in the barn. He takes his babysitting duties very seriously.
“I’m not sure how you do it Jenny,” Tomás says.
“You just do it. You have to. And besides, it’s fun.” She shrugs and looks at her daughter with unguarded love and joy in her eyes. Lila is grabbing at things on my desk, and I calmly remove them from her hands as soon as she’s done investigating each one.
“Why don’t I take you down to the paddock to visit Bubba? We could bring him in and you could help me groom him, Lila,” Beau suggests.
“Yes! Yes! Mommy please? Please yes?” Lila asks, jumping up and down, her red curls flying everywhere.
“Of course,” Jenny says, giving my brother an inscrutable look. “I’ll get started on the payroll while you’re at it.”
The men and Lila leave, and for a few minutes, the office is filled with the sounds of Jenny and I filing papers and typing on our laptops.
“So,” she says. “You and Nathan?”
“Maybe. It was just a kiss,” I say, lying once again.
“So you don’t hate him so much anymore?”
“He still pisses me off, which is good because it means I won’t catch feelings for him and be upset when he leaves or it doesn’t work out. He’s safe.”
But the words sound like a lie, and I nearly choke on their sharp, traitorous edges.
Nothing about Nathan Booth is safe.
After Jenny leaves to feed Lila dinner, I sit in the barn office and think.
I take off Gramps’s hat and place it on the desk in front of me. More than anything in the world, I wish he was still here, so I could ask him for advice. Grammy, too. She would know exactly what to do.
“I can’t believe I let him wear your hat,” I say out loud. “I have no idea what I’m doing. With any of it. Nathan, the barn, my life.”
I close my eyes and try my hardest to imagine what he’d say to me, what wonderful, wise advice he’d give me, but nothing I think of comes close to the way he was able to instantly make anything feel better. Sometimes, even just sitting in silence together while we polished tack or groomed the horses was enough. I’d enter the barn upset about something at school—a boy, or a mean girl in one of my classes, or my math test—and I’d leave feeling like he set me right.
And if Gramps couldn’t fix it, Grammy could. With her sure hands and her warm hugs and her way of understanding everything.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I try, but fail, to recapture the feeling of being with them. They’re gone. That thought swallows me, over and over again, consuming me in waves. Normally, I avoid feeling like this by focusing on work. And I have so much of it to do that it’s an ever-present crutch. I go to bed every night too exhausted to feel sad.
But deep down, I am crushingly, overwhelmingly sad. All the time.
For myself, for Beau, for our parents and our grandparents. For our family. We’ve all endured so much. My grandparents could have collapsed when they lost their daughter and son-in-law but they didn’t. They raised me and Beau instead, pushing down their own grief to put our needs first.
And my brother—my brother is the strongest person I know. Shouldering and weathering the loss of two sets of parents with stoicism and a level head.
Another tear falls and I don’t bother wiping it away. No one else is here to see me, and letting myself cry for once feels good. Then, a knock sounds at the door, and I hastily wipe the tears away. I bet it’s Tomás with a question about one of the horses.
“Come in,” I call out.
To my surprise, it’s Nathan. He looks weary and pretty much like I’m feeling right now. His usual smile is gone, and his eyes have lost their spark.
“Hey,” he says. “I wanted to talk, if you have a moment.”
“Sure.” I pray that my eyes don’t look too red.
Nathan sits across from me, and as soon as he looks at me, he immediately frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“Um, nothing.”
Nathan stays quiet, and just stares at me like he knows I’m lying.
“Well, nothing more than the usual.” I tap the top of the hat in between us.
“Ah. I understand. You miss them.”
“Yes,” I say.
I feel my face crumple all over again, and I cover it with my hand as I silently sob. Nathan reaches across the table and takes my other hand in his. He holds it gently as I cry, simply giving me the space and time to let it out, without making me feel like he pities me or something. I always hate crying in front of other people because I’m used to being strong, but crying in front of Nathan feels okay—I know that he won’t judge me for it.
I take a deep breath and steady myself once more. Nathan wordlessly passes me a tissue and I blow my nose and wipe my eyes.
“You could tell me about him, if you wanted.” He gestures at the hat. “I know that talking about the dead can hurt but I also think it can help. My ma talks about her parents all of the time—it helps her keep them alive.”
“Well, keeping everything inside is clearly working out so well for me,” I say wryly. “I try to talk to Beau about them, but it’s hard for me to say much without crying.”
“Say as much as you want and cry as much as you need to, then,” he says with a warm smile.
“Okay.” I think about what to tell him for a moment and then say, “My grandpa’s name was Bryce, and my grandma was Iris. He was really tall, and unshakeable. The kind of person you could depend on. And she was kind and funny. She made this place a home, for all of us, including the horses. She used to bake them special treats to eat on Christmas, and they all adored her.” I sniff a little, and another tear falls, but I keep going. “They were really in love. They had this type of reverent, gentle love for one another, and it was really beautiful to witness. I think that’s why my grandpa was so good with the horses. He had gentleness in his own life, so he knew how to give it to others.”
“Did he teach you how to work with them?” Nathan asks.
I nod. “He taught me everything I know.”
“But I’m sure you were a natural, too.”
“Gramps always said I was. Beau, too.”
“What about your parents?” Nathan asks. “Were they horse people?”
“My mother was. She grew up here, and apparently she was just as good with the rescues as Gramps was.”
“And your dad?”
“My dad was not a horse person, not really anyways. He liked them well enough, but his family was from Boston, not here. We saw his parents at least once a year when we were kids.”
“You should go visit them again,” Nathan encourages with a smile. “It seems like family means a lot to you.”
“It does,” I admit. “I want to have one of my own someday. I mean, kids of my own. Everyone here at Star Mountain is already my family.”
“Even me?” he asks quietly, looking down instead of meeting my gaze.
“Even you,” I affirm.
“Good. Because I came here to apologize to you. For the fight we had in the car. I got pissed off at you when I should have listened.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I admit. “For being so hard on you—but I still think you have to report it.” It’s the best I can do. I have to put horse welfare first, over people’s feelings—always. It’s my job.
“I know,” he says. “I’ve known that I needed to report it since I saw what happened. I just…” He pauses and picks my hand up again, chafing warmth into my cold fingers just like he did yesterday. “I just need to talk to my manager about how we should do that. I have to tread carefully since I don’t have evidence and I stand to gain from Brad being penalized. There’s a lot of ways it could go wrong.”
“I get that. I know you care just as much about this stuff as I do.”
“No one cares as much as you do. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever said that about me.” His words work their way inside me and gently scab over some of my biggest insecurities. Because I can be a hard ass, most people think that also means I don’t care. But I care so much it keeps me up at night, and Nathan sees that. He sees me.
“Well don’t get used to it, Viper,” Nathan jokes. “I wouldn’t want your head to get as big as mine.”
“Impossible.” I roll my eyes. “Here.” I hold the log I initialed earlier out to him. “You’re nearly done from the looks of it.”
“Do our lessons count as extra hours?” Nathan says with a wink.
“Ass.”
Nathan and I bicker back and forth for a few more minutes, and then he heads out. He’s going out to the Neon Horseshoe with Beau and Tomás. I almost want to ask him if I can tag along, but I immediately think better of it. The flirtatious, charged energy between Nathan and I is getting difficult to ignore, and I don’t think we’d be able to tone it down in front of my brother.
Defenses?
Guess I’ve never heard of them.