Chapter 16 #2
“Then you pull yourself back up by the bootstraps and try again. You probably won’t be any good at first, but you got good once, you could do it again if you really wanted to.” I kissed her temple. “Hell, you’re about to have the arena space to practice.”
“Yeah,” was all she said, and I knew she was done talking about it. She reached blindly next to us, grabbed a piece of chocolate, and popped it into her mouth. “I love Kit Kats, they’re my favorite.”
I grinned to myself. “I know.”
She sat up, looking at me over her shoulder. “How’d you know? You ask Savvy?” She grabbed another and ate that one.
For some reason, I was nervous to admit to her what I knew this conversation would lead to. I took a large sip of champagne. “I remembered.”
She stopped chewing, her brows furrowing. “You remembered.”
I nodded. “Mhm,” I hummed, draining my glass.
She faced me fully. “From when we were children? Seventeen years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Wha—how?”
I let out a heavy breath. “Well, when I was thinking about what I could do for you today, I realized I actually knew…a lot about you from back then.” I reached out, brushing her hair behind her ear. “See, the thing is, I noticed you lookin’ at me so much because I was already lookin’ at you.”
Her lips parted, and she stared at me for a long, hard second, her eyes darting between mine. “Are you saying you had a crush on me?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I think so. I didn’t realize it then, but lookin’ back, that’s definitely what it was. I just thought you were my favorite of the girls, but it was more than that.”
“You asshole!” She shoved me back, both of us fully laughing now. “After giving me all that shit for checking you out, and you were doing the same damn thing!”
“So you finally admit that you were checking me out when we were naked? You weren’t just ‘fulfilling morbid curiosity’?”
Her face flushed pink. “When we were naked,” she mocked, making her voice as deep as she could. “You make it sound so scandalous.”
“Okay. When I was naked, and you held my clothes hostage.”
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head at me. “You sure do like to exaggerate.”
“There’s no exaggerating how hard you looked when I came out of that clearing drippin’ wet and buck ass naked.”
“Oh my God, I’m leaving.” She tried to get up, cheeks now a glorious red.
I pulled her back down on top of me, wrapping my arms around her waist as she straddled me. “Like hell you are. You’re stuck with me now, baby.”
Claire smirked, humming contentedly. “That sounds nice.”
She kissed me slow and sweet, tasting like champagne and chocolate and everything I could ever need. My hands slid down her waist into her back pockets, and she rocked her hips against me, sending a jolt of need through me.
“Do you ever wonder what things would be like if that day never happened? If our dads had never shown up?”
“Please don’t bring up our fathers while you’re grinding on top of me.” She giggled and stilled. “But yeah, I do sometimes.”
“That day was terrible,” she said softly, resting her head in the crook of my neck. “I think that was my first real heartbreak.”
I ran a hand along her back, watching the sunset. “I sometimes wonder if my dad would’ve been different had that merger happened. Less jaded. Less hard on us kids.” If he would’ve been an actual father to me and not the distant, judgmental man he had been.
“My dad said it was your grandfather’s fault,” she said.
“Mount said the same thing about yours. He said someone told my grandfather that yours was going to push mine out of the land deal, so he bought it up before he could. All the money my family had was on the line, so he couldn't risk losing it all.”
She sat up then, frowning. “That’s not what mine said. My dad said my grandfather hadn’t seen it coming, that yours blindsided him. That he was relying on the merger because my family was practically broke.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it. Golden Bridle is on the up, Circle M is doin’ just fine.”
“Yeah,” she said, giving me a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “All in the past.”
“My grandfather kept a bottle of wine he had bought to celebrate when the merger closed. We should open it. I bet it’s good. It’s been sitting in the basement for damn near fifty years.”
Her head tilted, and the setting sun backlit her hair just right, making it look red like pomegranates. “Are you sure?”
I stood and held a hand out for her. “Yeah, let’s go get it.”
There weren’t a lot of bottles of wine on the wine rack anymore; my grandmother was the one who drank and collected them, so the collection had dwindled significantly over the years.
But I had always been told as a kid to never touch the bottle on the top rack to the far left.
Being told not to do something as a kid naturally made me want to all the more, but by the time I could reach it, I’d forgotten about it.
But now, I finally got to and I couldn’t think of a better reason for it.
Sharing it with Claire felt somewhat full circle, considering we were the two heirs of the ranches that were supposed to come together.
It felt oddly significant, as if making a declaration to leave the past behind.
To not let this one thing from so long ago haunt our families anymore.
When I slid it out of the wooden rack, a piece of paper fell to the ground, its edges worn and yellowed.
“What’s that?” Claire asked, picking it up. She squinted at the paper. “It’s too dark to read it down here.”
Back upstairs, she turned the kitchen lights on, reading it over. Her eyes got wider with every line. “What is it?” I asked, coming behind her.
“Beau…it’s the merger. A handwritten contract for it.” She looked up at me, stunned.