42. Nathan
42
NATHAN
The day of the show, all I can think about is Candice. Her smile. The way she used to look at me when no one else was around. Her hair. How it felt to thread my hands through it and cradle her head.
I should be clearing my head to focus on the competition. I should be thinking of nothing but Ballantine, the ring, and the pattern. Instead, I woke up in the afternoon after drinking alone last night, had coffee at the hotel, and then got to the stables with only an hour to spare. Ballantine, at least, seems happy and calm.
The Western Horsewoman article is out today, but I can’t bring myself to look at it. I don’t want to read about me and Candice—it hurts too much. I’ll read it after the competition, I tell myself, and then I turn off my phone.
I decide to groom Bally myself, hoping that it will put my head back on straight. I’m in the middle of brushing out his mane, when someone clears their throat behind me. I turn and see that it’s Brad Thomas. Fuck. I do not want to deal with this right now.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Competing, just the same as you,” he answers, crossing his arms, a pinched look on his orange spray-tanned face. “I thought you quit.”
At least he’s as unhappy to see me as I am to see him.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I snarl. “This is my home turf and it will feel good to win here. Besting you will be easy, and the icing on the cake.”
“That what you thought last time?” he chides.
“No, but it’s what I thought the six other times before that—and when I punched you in the jaw.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t sue you,” Brad hisses, clearly pissed that I mentioned the bar fight. I ruined his big special night polishing the only grand champion buckle he’ll ever have, and he’s still mad about it. “You’re nothing but a lousy, useless drunk with an inflated ego.”
That just makes me chuckle, because I have a hell of a lot of experience with lousy drunks from all the partying I’ve done and I know that I’m not one. Brad looks at me like I’ve gone insane as I laugh at his insult.
So I go in for the kill.
“At least unlike you, I don’t have to…let’s just say, gentle my horse before I compete.” I smirk and look Brad dead in the eyes, letting him know that I know something—that I’m onto him.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Brad says. “Palladium has a naturally calm temperament.”
“Does he? Didn’t seem like it the last time I saw you lunging him, but we might have different definitions of natural.”
Brad pales, stammers that he has to go, and then all but runs away from me out of the stables.
“At least that got him to leave,” I mutter to Bally. “I should have punched him harder when I had the chance.” I finish grooming him, and then feed him some of his favorite treats. “Tomorrow, we’re going back to Star Mountain, which you’ll love because you had a lot of friends there and got to eat as much hay as you wanted. We never should have left.”
It’s the truth—one I realized after I spoke to my sister and my mother. I should have tried harder to convince Candice that we could make things work. I should have pushed her to tell me how she really felt for me. Instead, I let my pride get in the way. I let my fears hold me back.
I’ve spent so much time worrying that I’m like my father, that I haven’t even give myself the chance to try and be any different. It’s why I spent so many years picking up women in bars and never calling them back. If I wasn’t in a relationship, then I couldn’t fuck one up. If I didn’t owe a woman anything, then I couldn’t let them down by acting like my dad.
I’ve spent my life trying not to be like him. And I finally know, down to my soul, that I’m not. My family proves that. I’ve never let them down, not once. I’ve never not been there for them.
I’d like the chance to prove that to Candice—to show her how dedicated I can be. To convince her that I’ll make her my whole world if she lets me. Screw competing. Screw being on the road away from the woman I love. We’ll find a way to have it all—to have everything.
With that thought in my head, I walk Ballantine from the stables to the competition ring with a smile on my face. The stands are already filling up and the crowd is screaming and cheering. I can smell the excitement in the air, and adrenaline starts to surge in me, sharpening all of my senses. The ring is spread out before me, the golden sand perfectly smooth, just waiting for the horses to carve the pattern into it over and over again with their hooves.
This was one of the first big stock shows I competed in. Hell, it was one of the first shows I won. It’s going to feel damn good to ride in front of this crowd again—to take home the champion buckle again.
And tomorrow, I’m going to feel even fucking better because I’m going to get my girl.