I look at him like he’s crazy.
“Of course he will,” I say, and it must be the truth because I know it, I feel it inside. I’ve never had less doubt about anything.
I’m not staying to argue with them. I’m already jogging toward the lodge they pointed to, the door banging open as I rush in.
“JJ?”
There’s a mess of gear everywhere. You can’t get a group of athletes in the same place and expect them to be neat.
“James?” My voice echoes around the house.
He isn’t here. The nervous energy that’s kept me going is fraying to something like panic, my heart pounding and my palms sweaty.
A head peers out from a doorway. “Raquel?”
I’m not doing this again. “Where is he?”
“He went through for a meeting with Mike a half-hour ago,” the guy says. “Out the back and across to the other lodge.”
Mike.
Does that mean that he’s signed on again?
Does that mean that they still don’t want him?
I’m moving in a dream. I don’t feel tired at all, not as I sprint across the wide open-plan downstairs of the lodge and throw myself out of the glass doors at the other side.
I can’t let him have his heart broken. I have to tell him that it’s going to be okay.
That I believe in him.
That he can do this.
I almost fall as I step out into the snow. A sound comes up from my chest unbidden, something halfway to a sob.
I have to get to him. I have to—
And then the door of the opposite lodge opens, and I see him.
JJ.
He looks so much better: healthy and fit, the glow back over his tan skin, his hair glossy with health. He’s wearing his winter gear again, a down jacket and snow pants.
The man that I fell in love with. The man I’ve always been in love with.
Mine.
He’s so distracted he doesn’t notice me. Instead as he closes the door behind him he leans back against it for a moment, his eyes closing, his head tilting back. As if he’s coming to terms with whatever happened in that building.
Whatever Mike told him.
I take one step toward him. My knees won’t hold me. My legs are about to collapse. My heart has stopped beating or is beating at a thousand miles a minute, I can’t tell which. There is no up and no down. No left and no right.
Only toward and away.
Only this closing space between us.
I have loved him since the first day I met him.
I have loved him since before I knew who he was.
I have loved him unknowing for all the days of my life, when I knew who I was looking for, even if I didn’t yet know his face.
“JJ,” I say, and my voice is cracking and hardly there.
When he sees me, his face transforms. A light comes over him, a glow that no injury or accident could hide.
He’s moving, and I’m stumbling—and JJ catches me as I fall, just like he always has, and always will.
“Raquel,” he says, and my name in his voice is home. Here in his arms, where he holds me just as strong as he always has, close to the beat of his heart, and I can hardly breathe for tears.
I wrap my arms so tight about him that they hurt. So tight that he can’t get away. He has to stay here, close to me, and he holds me just as tight.
“You’re here,” he says, like he can’t believe it, like even the proof of my body crushed against his chest isn’t enough. “You came.”
I try to nod, I try to kiss him, and it leaves me a shaking mess in his hold. I belt my arms around him and squeeze as tight as I can, against accidents and separations, against all of our mistakes.
“I love you,” I tell him, because it’s all that matters. Because he has to know this one truth, this most important truth, the thing that’s worth risking everything for.
He’s strong again, strong and tall and bold, and yet he shakes around me, and his hold is desperate and yearning. As if he wants to draw me into himself.
“Raquel.” He’s choking up. The kisses he pushes to my cheek are clumsy. “Oh my god. Raquel.”
“I’ve always loved you.” I have to tell him, though the words are garbled. I fist my hands in his jacket so that he can’t leave. So that he has to listen and understand. “I have always loved you, exactly the way you are. We’ll work it out, JJ. Together. Nothing matters as much as being with you.”
JJ shakes, something inside of him breaking free, a landslide that reveals the bare truth beneath. He sags into me, and now we hold each other up.
“I love you,” he tells me, and I’ve always known that it’s true.
JJ
My life has been defined by crashes, but none of them hit as hard as Raquel.
Breaking my spine was nothing compared to the impact she has on me.
The night we first kissed.
The day that we parted.
Now, as I catch her and promise myself I’ll never, ever let her go again.
We hold each other so tight that it hurts, and I would hold her tighter if I could. I’d pull her into me so that we were one. Until our hearts shared a rhythm, beating on and on.
She came here to me. She didn’t wait for me to find her and tell her what I’ve done. She didn’t even request the sacrifice I’ve decided to make for her.
The scale of what she has done makes my stomach turn over and my heart miss a beat. My throat is aching, my eyes are hot, and I press my face to her hair and draw in the smell of her.
Home.
It wasn’t the empty house in Jackson.
It wasn’t this season starter.
It’s here, now that I have Raquel in my arms, that I finally come back to where I’m meant to be.
She’s a mess. She’s beautiful. Her hair is tousled. Her hoodie is crumpled. She’s not wearing earrings.
No one else would notice these things. No one but me. Because I know what they mean to her, to my beautiful, neat, always-in-control Raquel.
I hold her in my arms as she breaks, squeezing her in toward me, and I hope that she knows the words I can’t say: that I’m never letting her go. Not ever again.
She is the most precious gift I have ever been given, and I’ll never deserve her. But I’m going to spend my whole life trying, all the same.
I hold her tiny body in my arms, lifting her up so that she can fly. Like she always should. Like I fly, when I’m with her.
When I finally let her down, she reaches for my face, and her kisses are wet.
She is so goddamn beautiful that it makes my heart skip a beat.
Covered in tears. Dark-eyed from lack of sleep. Pale like she’s not well, red-cheeked like she’s been out in the cold.
She is so beautiful that it hurts to look at her.
How did I almost throw this away?
I need Raquel like I need snow. I need her like I need the winter chill and the feel of my muscles working. I need her like I need air.
I wasn’t wrong to know I needed to board.
But I was wrong to think I didn’t need Raquel just as much.
When she pulls back her hands stay twisted in my shirt, tugging it painfully around my shoulders. She doesn’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere. My hands move possessively at her hips, holding her close, so that she knows how much I need her here.
“They’ll take you back,” she says, urging the words into me. “They’re going to take you back, JJ.”
She thinks Mike let me go.
She thinks…
“You can do this,” she says. Through her tears I can see that steel inside. The side of her you’d be a fool to mess with. “You’ve always been capable of it. Nothing has changed. Do you understand? You can do it. And if you have one missed season or two bad years, it doesn’t matter. Because I believe in you.” She squeezes me again. “And I am always going to be here to support you.”
Always. I try to say it and the word catches in
my throat. Not that I don’t mean it. Because I mean it so much that I can’t breathe around it.
Raquel is fierce, and this jump she’s taking is braver than any ride I’ve ever taken.
Those months in the house, I thought her work made her cold. But now I see the side of her she tried to hide: the one that has made so many athletes face their fears, defeat their insecurities, and seize their dreams.
When Raquel looks at me, I can feel all of her love and all of her trust.
I feel like I could do anything.
“I’m not going to let you just give up.” Raquel’s voice is getting stronger. “I can’t watch you stop fighting for the thing you love. It makes you happy.” Her hand slips free and comes to cup my cheek, her thumb over the bone, pressing as she looks between my eyes. “I love you happy. Do you understand?” She presses forward then falls back, as if she wants to kiss me and still she wants to speak. “I love you happy.”
“I was such a fool,” I tell her.
“No,” she says, fierce and brave. “You communicate like a block of wood sometimes. You hide what you mean under that handsome smile and the way that everyone loves you. You’re a thousand times more comfortable helping other people with their problems than talking about your own. But you’re not an idiot. You’re a dreamer. You’re an athlete. You’re the most passionate, driven person I’ve ever met. And if you’re crazy, it’s the kind of crazy I want.” She pauses, her lips pressing together as if she steels herself. “The kind of crazy I want my kids to be.” Her smile flickers. “Even if it’s going to terrify me.”
The word kids sends a shock wave through me. Like our future opens up in front of me, and everything is changed. I can hardly talk, too desperate to kiss her cheek, to hold her.
“I don’t want to terrify you anymore,” I tell her, a shake in my voice. “I want to show you how much you mean to me. I want to work out a way to do this that doesn’t—I’m so sorry I frightened you. I’m so sorry I didn’t keep you safe.”
She shakes her head, as if determined to brush the words and our history away. “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not okay to—not communicate with you. To not put you first.”
“Boarding is who you are,” she says, firm and settled. “I was wrong to ask you to give it up. I was wrong—”
But I don’t want her to think she has to give up everything. I don’t want her to think that I wasn’t wrong, so wrong.
She starts reaching for me as I draw back, but when I lift the folded papers from my pocket she stops. Her legs stay close to mine as if she can’t bring herself to open any distance between us, but the backward curve of her spine lets her look at it.
When she looks back up at me she smiles, and it kills me.
She thinks they signed me on. And she’s happy for me.
“Your contract,” she says. “I knew Mike wouldn’t let you go.”
So this is it. This moment, right here.
My heart thud-thud-thuds in my chest, counting down time. I manage to shake my head, and confusion comes over Raquel’s face. She tilts her jaw.
“What do you mean?”
“Mike doesn’t get to decide.”
Raquel looks confused. “They didn’t… Mike would never… Someone else didn’t cut you, did they? That’s awful, they can’t—”
I shake my head. “Mike doesn’t get to decide because I’m the other signature on that piece of paper.”
Raquel shakes her head again, but this time it’s slower, lost, as she searches my expression for what I mean. “I don’t understand.”
I let go of her. It hurts, but I need her to see this. I unfold the paper, holding it there so she can see it. The line where the signatures should be is blank.
I watch as her gaze scans over the page, and precious frown lines scratch in over her forehead. When she looks up at me again her eyes are so wide and so deep. She can’t find the voice for what she wants to ask. She doesn’t need to.
I smile, and I mean it.
“I told Mike I’m not signing on this year.”
Raquel’s mouth drops open, and a shocked breath filling her lungs. “No. You can’t do that. Riding is everything to you. It’s your whole life, it’s—”
“It’s less important than spending this year focused on my relationship with you.”
She’s caught, enraptured. “You don’t have to do this. I mean it. I’m here to support you. I’m here—”
“I don’t have to,” I tell her, letting the paper fall. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is to stroke her hair from her face. To cup her cheek. To look deep into her dark eyes, and jump.
“I don’t have to,” I repeat. “I want to.”
That quietens her. She’s listening with bated breath, and I can feel that her heart skips a beat. Can see it in the flush on her cheeks and the quiver in her lip.
Finally, I’m going to give her what she’s deserved all along.
“I love riding, Raquel. I love what it’s given me. I love pow days and crazy-ass trips with my friends. I love pushing the limits of what I can do. I love the rush and the challenge and the way that it makes me feel. But I look at you…”
I could never begin to tell her all the things that I see when I look at her. I don’t have the words. They’ve never been what I’m best at. What words could describe this feeling in my chest, anyway?
But I have to try. Because for Raquel, trying is always, always worth it.
“I want to ride and come home to you. I want to ride and come back to our children. I want to ride because it makes my life better, not because it’s everything in my life. I want it to be part of something beautiful.” I swallow. “I want it to be part of the life I build with you. Forever.”
When I drop to my knees, Raquel lets me go. Her hands come up to her face, unable to hide the wide O of her mouth.
I didn’t plan to do this. But now the moment’s here, I couldn’t do anything else.
People might say that it’s crazy. That it’s too soon.
But every moment that we’re not together is a waste. I see that now so clearly.
We were made for each other, Raquel and me. Every second we’re apart is wasted time.
I look up at her, and it’s not on one knee. It’s on two. Like I’m praying. Like I’m promising. Because for her, it’s both.
“You’re the love of my life, Raquel. You always have been. You always will be. From the day I met you until the day I die.”
Before her mouth, her hand is trembling. I reach up, hopeful, and she lowers it to me after a moment. When I wrap her slim fingers in mine the shaking intensifies, and I hold her so gently, as if I could stop it all. Make it all better. I slide my thumb over the space where ring used to be.
I don’t have it here. The first time I did this, I felt like that really mattered. The five-figure ring with expensive stones and a designer label. The beach under the stars. The thousands of candles.
Now I look at Raquel and I realize all that’s ever been important is her. Not rocks or money or romantic settings.
Just her.
“Marry me.” My voice is steadier than I thought it would be. “I have been such an ass. I fucked up so bad. But I love you more than life itself. And I promise, I’ll dedicate my all to being the very best husband I can be.” I squeeze her hand. “Forever.”
We don’t need the stars. They’re in Raquel’s eyes. That bright shining light, breaking to a thousand glistening points that spill down her cheeks.
Falling stars, just as she falls into my lap, reaching for me as she sob-hiccups.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes. Always.”
I wrap my arms around her and find her mouth with my own, and in this moment I know: whatever else happens in my life, whatever else I can do or can’t, I can face it.
So long as I have the woman I love beside me.
Part 5
Winter
Raquel
Sometimes we get to go
back.
Years ago we followed the realtor here in a rented car.
This spring I was dropped here by a taxi, all on my own.
Now we are back in winter, and JJ opens the door of the truck for me. As I slip down he catches me in his arms, and our kiss lingers until we’re breathless.
When he sets me down, we can’t speak to each other. Not yet. We don’t need to. We’re both thinking the same thing: that this is home.
It’s only a house, stone and glass and wood. Once it was only photos and a floor plan on the realtor’s website. After that it was a reminder of all that I’d lost.
Now it’s back to being what it should be: the place that we’ll raise our family together.
The memories still crowd around me, but this time they’re not ghosts. They’re old friends, welcoming me back to the place that I’m meant to be.
JJ waits for me at the door from the garage to the house, jingling the keys over his fingers as I collect my purse and my jacket. I’m halfway to him when his mouth breaks into a grin.
“Wait.”
“What?” I’m confused as he steps toward me, and once I realize what he’s doing I’m laughing too hard to protest, humor and happiness bubbling up in my chest. He sweeps me into his arms, carrying me like a bride. Like the first time we came here, years ago.
“You do this after the wedding,” I tell him, just like last time, settling my arms around his neck.
“If I’ve learned one thing these last couple years, Raquel,” he says as he begins to walk, “it’s that we shouldn’t wait to do the shit that makes us happy.”
The man that I love carries me into our home, and I’m aglow with happiness. His body that once was broken now moves smoothly and easily. My weight is no problem for him as he holds me one-handed to open the door before stepping us over the threshold.
The man who I thought would never carry me again holds me in his arms, and I’m overcome with it. His grit. His strength. His courage. His tenacity.
I press my face against his neck and take in a deep breath, treasuring his smell, his heat, the way his strong arms wrap around me.
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 31