by Lexi Whitlow
And anyway, she wasn’t that kind of girl… and even though it had been five years since college, I refused to think she’d turned into that kind of girl. Whatever she’d been doing and wherever she’d been doing it, I wasn’t about to think she’d just put on an act to get it in with someone.
Julie August was the love of my life, and when I ripped that trailer door open yesterday, I realized I’d never stopped loving her. Seeing her standing there in that pale-yellow dress with her beautiful honey hair wrapping around her neck, my heart fluttered the same way it did when I first laid eyes on her on that college courtyard. And she had been so supportive of my bull riding. Yeah, sure, she worried over whether or not I’d get hurt, but what woman doesn’t? Her worry didn’t keep her from sitting in the stands and watching, and every single time she was in the stands I stayed on the entire eight seconds.
Every rodeo. Every bull, practice run or professional run, if she was there, I stayed on. It was like she was my good luck charm; the magnet that kept my ass attached to that damn saddle. It was incredible, and everyone around me thought so. They called me unbeatable and told me it took a bull to ride a bull. Soon, the nickname stuck, and I was being called Axel “Bullheaded” Rawlings.
Julie always picked that I was bullheaded for other reasons, but I always told her I was just headstrong and knew what I wanted… and what I wanted was her.
The truth was if the rodeo ever became too much and she asked me to quit, I would’ve in a heartbeat. I loved that woman more than I ever did the rodeo, and if there ever came a point where I was hurt, or her nerves were fried, I’d stop just so she’d be alright. Having her in the stands was what kept me on that bull… it gave me the confidence I needed to keep going, even when every joint in my hand was being ripped from its place. And when she left, it was like I lost my grip. My practice ride times got shorter and shorter, and pretty soon bulls were dropping down and bucking me off their backs in two seconds flat.
I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t grip, and I couldn’t ride.
Not after she left.
So, I stopped. I never signed up for another rodeo and reporters tracked me down for weeks trying to figure out why I wasn’t riding. Rumors flew that I’d been hurt in a practice run, and from there, stories about me having concussions and mental issues and losing fingers flew in the local tabloids. But, I kept to myself and helped take in the rough stock being retired from the rodeo, and those rough stock began to breed and have calves. Pretty soon, I had me a fresh batch of rough stock the rodeo was interested in, and when I officially established my ranch, young men soon began tracking me down and asked me if I trained riders.
I shrugged and said, “sure, why not?” And from there my rodeo business was born.
But that’s when I realized something. Yesterday was the first time since my college days that I’d stayed on the back of a bull for the entire eight seconds. I couldn’t begin to explain why I decided yesterday was the day to ride. But something in my gut told me it was time to get back in the saddle.
And Julie had been sitting in the stands watching.
“Shit,” I breathed before I ran my hands over my face. That woman really was my good luck charm. Sitting in the stands and cheering me on to the full eight seconds without me even knowing she’s there.
What the hell was I supposed to do? Her smell permeated my fucking trailer, and it threatened to swallow me whole while my mind sprang back to the memory of what it felt like to have her entire body on my face. How good it felt to feel the meats of her thighs against my cheeks.
I refused to let that woman take me down the way she did five years ago. I refused to lose myself in my anger and my sadness. I refused to continue to ask myself why the hell she never stayed, or what the hell I could’ve done better so she would have stayed. I was a damn good man with a damn good business, and any woman would’ve considered herself lucky to be by my side.
Every woman except the one I wanted, apparently.
Well, no more. No fucking more. I had work to do back at the ranch, and I was already late for my day. I strode over to the bathroom, threw the small door open, and squeezed myself into the shower. The first order of business was getting her tainted smell of my body, and then I needed to pull my clothes on and get on back to my animals. I had training sessions scheduled throughout the day and a pregnant heifer I was watching for a friend who was out of town for another rodeo clear across state lines.
I’d built a good life for myself, and if she didn’t want any of it, then she didn’t have to have it.
I let the hot water flow over my body and wash the remnants of her away as I ran my schedule for the day through my head.
Julie
Julie - Chapter Six
I had forgotten how crisp country mornings were, and the skin on my legs and arms puckered with every step I took towards my house. It was a hell of a walk, over five miles to be exact, but I’d hitched a ride to the rodeo yesterday, and I didn’t have any other way of getting back. The wind blew and kicked up the fabric of my dress, and I ran my fingers quickly through my hair in a desperate attempt to make myself look presentable. My stomach felt physically nauseous when I woke up and realized I’d overslept because I knew if my parents realized I didn’t come home last night they’d send the police force out looking for me.
But I knew I was doing to Axel what I did all those years ago, and I didn’t know what to do.
I’d pulled my dress on over my body as silently as I could, and I went into the bathroom and wet down a washcloth before slathering some cheap soap on it. I could smell him as the crust of our juices crinkled on my leg, and I needed to clean myself up before I made the five-mile walk of shame back to my house.
Was I really ashamed?
No.
Never of Axel.
But it was a small town, and people had a tendency to talk, and I knew rumors would start to fly, and my walk of shame would somehow wind up with me being pregnant and Axel asking me to have a shotgun wedding just before he went to ride his bull off into the sunset. And while the idea of having children with Axel wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to have them in Paris. He was a country boy through and through, and they didn’t need ranchers in a city like Paris.
By the time the sun began to break through the tree line, my house finally came into sight. The sprawling plantation rose above the flowers my mother kept meticulously cultivated in our front yard, and the massive trees that stood on either side of the house shaded the driveway as I tiptoed up the cement. The white house with the towering columns loomed over the town, like the beacon of a lighthouse over the treacherous shores of the sea.
My parents raised horses and bred them for the derby’s, and when they weren’t tending to breed some of the strongest race horses together, they were running summer camps for children and teenagers. When I was growing up, people came from other states to enroll their children in the camp my parents ran, but when my dad got sick, the doctor told him he had to slow down some. He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and promptly had a pacemaker put in, but he couldn’t keep up the schedule he was used to. My mother and I tried to pick up the slack as much as we could, and even Axel jumped in for a time while we were in college to help during the summers. But the three of us couldn’t pull the weight my dad used to, and the camps had to close themselves down around the time I graduated.
My mother kept breeding and raising the horses, and my father helped her with the feed and repaired the stalls when they needed repairing, but his health was slowly deteriorating, and with that deterioration came less and less he could do. Last summer they sold the back half of their ranch to help pay the bills. Twenty-eight acres of land sold back to the city so they could cultivate more living areas for the growing community college. Granted, they still had twenty-eight acres of land between them and that construction going on, but it was the hardest decision my father ever made.
And to this day I think my mother re
gretted it.
I stood in the shade of the porch longer than I should have, and it wasn’t until the sun began to shine around the column that I realized I’d probably waited too late to walk in. But, I figured my parents would just now be stirring, and if I could get up the steps before they actually came out of their room downstairs, I’d still be home free and could dodge all the questions they might have. Sure, they knew I was going to the rodeo, and I’m a big girl who can stay out all night if I wanted to, but it wouldn't take them long to put two and two together once they realized Axel “Bullheaded” Rawlings was being featured during the bull riding event.
And I wasn’t ready for the questions they were going to throw my way.
I dug out the spare key from underneath the mat and slowly slipped it into the lock. I opened the front door, and it dumped me into a high-ceiling foyer, and when I turned to place the key back underneath the mat, I locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it into my house without anyone suspecting me, and I smiled when I shut the door behind me and leaned up against it.
“You should’ve used the back door.”
I jumped when I heard my mother’s voice waft from the kitchen, and I cursed underneath my breath before I closed my eyes. I knew I was cutting it close, and it was my fault I got lost in my own stupid memories while I was standing out in the driveway.
“Hey, mom,” I smiled weakly. I slowly padded down the hallway and stuck my head in the kitchen, and I saw my mother sitting there. If there was ever a woman that exuded country sophistication, it was her: back straight, shoulders rolled, hair neatly pinned, and her stud earrings she wore as part of her nightly appearance shone from her ears. Sure, the wrinkles of time and work had etched themselves into her skin, but her voice was light, her legs were always crossed at her ankles, and she always used her manners no matter the situation or person.
“Why don’t you come have some coffee?” she asked.
I watched as her body slowly rose from the chair. She placed her coffee cup down on the table, and I knew when she asked that question I really didn’t have a choice. That was the thing about my mother: she would always phrase commands in the form of a question to make herself appear unthreatening when really, she expected you to obey every word that poured forth from her lips. I never did figure out how to mock the grace and poise she had when I was a child, but my father always told me I wasn’t something to be harnessed.
“No, your father isn’t awake yet,” she said lightly.
I heard her pour the cup of coffee before a spoon began clanking around the ceramic. She padded back towards me, and she placed the cup down in front of me, and even though I sat back into the chair and tossed my wild hair back, she sat with her back straight and curled her delicate fingers around the jovially-colored mug.
“Where were you last night?” my mother asked.
“Went out with some friends after the rodeo,” I said before I brought the mug to my lips.
“When will I convince you I wasn’t born in a barn, Julie?”
I sighed into my mug and closed my eyes before the question that spewed forth from her lips graced my tired ear drums.
“Were you with Axel?”
The mere mention of his name fluttered my heart and lurched my gut, and tears formed behind my closed eyes before I closed them and took a large swig of my coffee.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you have a productive… conversation?” she asked.
“Probably not the one you think I should’ve had,” I quipped.
“So, he still doesn’t know about Paris?”
I opened my eyes once I got my emotions under control, and I saw my mother shaking her head. My parents adored Axel back in college, and my father always told me he was the one I was meant to be with. My mother thought he was the epitome of a southern gentleman, and my father knew he was the only one who wouldn’t try to tame the wild spirit that was my soul.
“He rides the buck. He don’t tame it,” my father always said.
And he was right. No matter what I did, I did with all the passion in the world and Axel never once tried to stop that. He’d laugh and sometimes poke fun at my sincerity and passion, but he never tried to stop it or talk me out of it.
“You owe it to him to tell him, Julie. You broke that poor boy’s heart.” As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I know my mother was right.
“Yeah, and that’s all that seems to get brought up,” I murmured.
“Well, what else is there to say?” she asked.
“How about the fact that I hurt just as much when I walked away?”
“Then, why did you walk away?”
“Because Paris called and offered me my dream job, Mom!” I exclaimed. Why was she not able to understand that?
“And why did that require not telling Axel?”
“Because I knew if he asked me to stay that I wouldn’t go!”
I felt my breath hitch in my throat before tears sprang to my eyes. I knew my mother meant well, but I’d never really talked about it with them. I never talked about how leaving Axel that night really did alter me in some way, and how it altered the fashions I designed while I was working up the ranks in Paris. A little piece of him was in every design, and every fashion that went on a man I imagined on his body.
Images of his chiseled form came wafting back to my mind, and the sounds of last night began to echo off the corners of my memory before my mother’s voice broke through my musings and told me something that absolutely rooted me to the kitchen chair.
“Axel came to look for you after you left. Showed up on our doorstep looking like a wet dog trying to figure out where you were. We had no idea what he was talking about until we found the note in your room about the job in Paris, but by the time we came back to show him the note Axel had taken off for his car and skidded out of the driveway, and that sweet boy never did come back.”
“He… he came here?” I breathed as the blood slowly drained from my face.
“The day after graduation, yes,” she nodded.
I was stunned. Axel had come to my house looking for me. After leaving him cold and alone in his dorm room after all of those graduation parties, he ran to my parents’ house looking for me. I felt a wave of guilt rise up in my throat, and I couldn’t stand to take another sip of my coffee. Tears ricocheted down my cheeks, and in any other moment in my life, I’d be embarrassed to cry in front of my mother. She was the epitome of emotional reserve, and I’d never even so much as heard her yell unless she was shouting across the barn at my father. But at that point, I didn’t care. I’d just left Axel to wake up naked and cold and alone in a trailer five years after I’d done the exact same thing to him, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
“You owe him an explanation, sweetheart. If anything, to clear your own conscience.”
I didn’t know if I could tell him. How could I look at the only boy I’d ever loved and tell him I didn’t trust myself around him? How could I look at the man he had blossomed into and tell him that he’d tamed the strong, untamable woman? How in the world was I supposed to look at the man I’d now left twice to wake up alone that the reason I left him behind was because I didn’t think he could come with me if I offered. That I didn’t feel he had a place in Paris.
How in the world could I possibly tell Axel that the reason I left the way I did was because I wasn’t strong enough to do it any other way?
I felt the bile rise to the top of my throat before I pushed my coffee mug away, and when I shoved myself away from the kitchen table and headed for the staircase I knew, deep down, I had to talk to him.
I had to tell him everything.
I knew, deep down, my mother was right.
Axel
Axel - Chapter Seven
I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them be for so long. I had no intentions of staying overni
ght in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from my past. So, I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, give them plenty of sweetened water to drink, and went ahead and opened their stalls so they could get some fresh air in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons today, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place.
My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman lit up my world back in college. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experience with her, and every night I woke up with her in my arms was like the first time I’d ever woken up next to her. The light would always catch her hair just right, and her light snoring would always make me smile. There wasn’t a morning where I’d grind into her back that she’d push me away or tell me she was too tired.
God, I missed slipping in between her wet heat in the mornings.
. Nothing could mimic the feeling of sliding into her from behind every morning before I got up and made us coffee, and every morning it happened, I knew it was where I wanted to be.
Until she up and left and never looked back.
It was disgusting, really, how much I loved that woman. I told with the guys at the rodeos that she was just my lucky charm, but, she was the woman I planned on spending the rest of my life with. The week after we graduated, I had a ride planned. I was gonna take her with me, and if I won, it would give me $5,000.00. I was gonna take that money and buy her the ring she deserved, and I was gonna get down on one knee at the next rodeo, in front of God and everybody else, and ask that woman to be my wife.
I wanted her to bear my children and be my family. I wanted her to sell her fashions out of a store she dreamed. I wanted to build that store for her alongside her father with my bare hands in between my traveling to rodeos, and I wanted to have a farm full of animals to retire to so we could watch our grandkids run around with the ponies and puppies. I wanted to wake up every morning and smell her heat on my skin. I wanted to slip behind her in the shower every evening and slowly press her back against that tile wall. I wanted to make her dinners and take her out and experience family vacations with her. I wanted to yell and scream and fight behind closed doors before pounding her into the wall while grunting how sorry I was and how beautiful she looked wrapped around my cock.