by Cindy Gerard
One last look at his mother, though, who was bravely trying to ward off tears, and he knew he had to give in.
“Fine,” he muttered, “I’ll stay. But just for the night.”
The relief that made the rounds in the room was as palpable as the sighs.
Jesse closed his eyes, grudgingly admitting to himself what he would never admit to them. His head and his ribs hurt like hell. And he was tired. So tired he barely noticed the cool press of his mother’s lips to his brow, her gentle hand smoothing the hair back from his forehead. So tired he never heard their soft murmurs of goodbye or the sound of the door closing softly behind them when they quietly left the room.
When he next opened his eyes he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours—but it couldn’t have been to a more soothing and welcome sight.
She’d come. As he’d hoped, like hell, she would. As he’d known, deep down, she would.
She was standing at the window, her back to the bed, her shoulder propped against the wall as if she was so weary she needed it to hold her upright. The ache in his head dulled, faded, lost out completely to the sudden ache in his heart.
“Hey, Country,” he said, surprised by the rust in his voice, stunned by the anguish on her face when she turned to the sound.
She was crying. Silently, heartbreakingly crying. For him. And it damn near ripped him to shreds.
“Come here,” he croaked on a gruff whisper, and reached out his hand.
She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t debate. She simply came to him, took his hand, pressed it to her face and bathed it with the warmth of her tears.
“Don’t. . . sweet Lord, don’t do that,” he pleaded, and tugged her closer to his side. “I’m fine. Baby, I’m fine. Aw, Sloan, you’re tearing me apart here.”
She struggled with a controlling breath, did her best to give him a brave smile, but only managed to look more heartbreaking.
“I’m fine,” he insisted again, and tugged on her hand until she was settled, her hip to his, facing him, on the edge of the bed.
And there she sat, staring down at their linked fingers, working to get it together. A few steadying breaths later she managed to meet his eyes.
“So.” She forced a tight smile. “I hope you’re in better shape than the fence. They had to replace an entire panel.”
When he smiled for her, she finally relaxed a little.
“I was kind of hoping they’d leave it—maybe add a plaque or something. ‘Here Fell Jesse James. He Gave It a Helluva Try.’”
When she threatened to tear up on him again, he squeezed her hand. “Hey, I lived to tell the tale. It could be worse.”
“I’m sorry.” Those two words relayed a wealth of regret.
“I know.” He shrugged, put up a front for her benefit. “He’s quite a bull. Gave me the ride of my life.”
Silence settled again, thick with his disappointment, heavy with her uncertainty and concern.
“Well,” she said finally, “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m not even supposed to be here, so I’d probably better go. I... I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She started to rise. He held her fast, looked into those deep, steady eyes and knew he couldn’t let her go. Not now. Not again. Not ever.
“I’ve missed you, Country,” he murmured, testing the fit and the feel and the necessity of emotions he’d kept under wraps for too long. “I’ve missed you something awful.”
She worked hard to avoid his eyes, worked harder at giving his words little import. “I’ve missed you, too, cowboy. But you’re no good to me in the shape you’re in now, so I’ll just leave you to whatever comfort you can scrounge up on your own.”
He watched her face, didn’t believe a word of the breezy lie she tried to use to shield her true feelings. Her quick, tight smile was an illusion, a failed attempt to minimize the significance of his admission—and to mask the lie in hers.
His firm grip on her hand stopped her when she tried to rise again. His harsh whisper ripped the bottom right out of her goodbye. “How much? Tell me how much you missed me,” he demanded.
He hadn’t known how badly he needed to ask until the words were out. Hadn’t known he needed to hear that she’d lived the same hell he had. “Tell me you laid awake at night aching for me. Tell me you couldn’t sleep for the want to touch me. Couldn’t catch your breath for the need to have me inside you.”
She fought to keep from breaking then. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Ignored the lone tear that defied her will and spilled down her cheek. “Don’t do this, Jesse. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
He steadied himself. Fought for a deep breath that had him clenching his jaw in pain. “I don’t mean to nitpick—” he met her brimming eyes with a weary grin “—but you’re the one making it difficult here, country girl.”
He rode out the knifing pain shooting through his ribs, all the time rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, holding tight. “Sit. Please? My head is pounding too hard to argue. My ribs hurt too bad to wrestle you. So just sit, okay? I’ve got something I need to say.”
He had her full attention now. Between the ache in his head and the ache in his heart, though, he wasn’t sure if he could put it all together to make her understand—even though for the first time since he’d seen her in Rapids City last July, his mind was totally clear on what he wanted and what he needed in his life.
Finally, he just took the risk and started talking.
“You interfere with my life,” he stated bluntly. “At every turn. In the straightaways. By just being there. By just being you.
“I can’t get you out of my head,” he continued softly, almost reflectively. “I can’t get you out of here.” He touched a closed fist to his-heart and watched hers spill out through her eyes.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen to me,” he confessed with a crooked smile. “I love you, Sloan. I love you. And I love that sawed-off little squirt of yours.”
He watched a range of emotions flicker in her eyes as he waited for her to say the words. In the hall, a call light rang softly. The rustle of activity pulsed outside the room. And his world was reduced to a moment that lengthened and taunted until he thought he’d explode with the want to hear what he needed her to say.
“Help me out here, Country.” A tight smile masked a niggling little prickle of panic. “Say something.”
He had no choice but to let her fingers trail free of his as she rose stiffly from the bed and walked to the window. Stared outside. “What do you want me to say, Jesse? That I love you? I think you know that.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “I think you’ve always known that.
“You want me to say that I believe you love me?” She turned back to the window, touched her fingers to the glass, stared past them into the night. “I believe you do. At least, I believe you want to.”
“You believe I want to? What does that mean?” A tension that should have transitioned to elation only tightened the pressure in his chest.
She turned back to him then, looking torn and troubled and weary. Crossing her arms tightly beneath her breasts, she leaned back against the wall. “That’s the problem, Jesse. I don’t know what loving means to you. Does it mean I’m the one? The only? Forsaking all others? Forsaking all else?”
He stared at her through blank eyes.
“When love comes down to commitment,” she continued, her dark eyes probing, “does it mean loving me when it’s convenient? Loving me until that urge to wander is stronger and more compelling?”
He raised a hand, let it fall, at a loss to understand. “I don’t know what you want me to say. What else can I say? I want you with me. Always. You are what’s important in my life. You. Noah.” Again, he searched for the right words, for the answers she needed. “The National Championship—hell—the title would be a hollow, empty victory if I don’t have you with me.”
She tipped back her head, swall
owed, gathered herself. “Do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you just said? You’re in the hospital. I’m told you have a concussion, cracked ribs—and you’re still talking about the title. You’re planning on riding tomorrow, aren’t you?”
There was a challenge in her voice. In her eyes, there was more. His reply echoed everything he saw there, the anger, the helplessness, the utter sense of loss. “I’ve got to ride. Sloan. . . I’m so close. Too close to let it go now.”
“Forsaking all else, Jesse,” she said with such a pointed, beseeching look that finally—finally—he understood.
He felt his stomach turn over. Felt a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with cracked ribs. “You ask too much.”
She tucked her hands tighter around herself, looked at the floor, looked at him. “If too much is wanting you whole and sound, then, yes, I’m asking too much.” Her voice was soft, but the conviction in her words was as hard as stone. “If asking you not to ride like you do—recklessly, dangerously—is asking too much, then yes, I’m asking too much.”
This time, he was the one who looked away, his jaw clenched, his eyes hard.
“Why do you do it, Jesse? Have you ever asked yourself why you risk it all? Every time? Every way? Have you ever once stopped to think about what drives you to the edge when most people are content standing just this side of it?”
Everything inside him suddenly wanted to close off. Everything in her voice wouldn’t let him.
“You haven’t, have you?” It was more statement than question. More truth than he wanted to face. “You lie here now; lucky to be alive, and you haven’t even asked yourself why you feel you have to ride and risk everything tomorrow night.”
He didn’t have to look at Her to know there were tears again. Silent, devastating.
“That’s what I can’t risk, Jesse. It’s not- what you do—it’s how you do it. Why you do it. I don’t know what drives you. I don’t know when enough will be enough for you. Will it be when you end up like D.U.? So broken and beaten you can hardly walk let alone compete? And when will it be enough with me—when I can’t satisfy that itch, or subsidize the thrills?”
A renegade streak of anger shot from the ashes of the flames she’d doused. “Rodeo is my life. Don’t ask me to give it up.”
She moved back to the bed, still hugging her arms around herself as if it was the only thing holding her together. “I’m not asking you to give it up. I’m asking you to consider why it’s so important to you. I’m asking you to figure out why it’s the only commitment you’ve never run away from. If you can’t do that, you’re never going to figure out what it takes to stay.
“I can take it,” she said, when he looked away, his eyes brooding, his expression closed. “If it turns out I’m not enough to satisfy whatever it is you need, I can take it. To be with you, I would risk anything—even waking up some morning and finding you gone. But I can’t take that risk for Noah.”
The silence was weighted with her regrets. “He wants a daddy so bad, Jess. I can’t let you play that part then hurt him by walking away. . . just walking away from both of us someday.”
He let his head fall back to the pillow. “I’m not going to walk.”
Sadly, she shook her head, met his gaze with a certainty that was crushing. “You won’t just walk, Jess. You’ll run. You’ll run and you’ll keep on running unless you’re willing to stop right now and ask yourself why you’ve run this long. You’ll run until you figure out what makes you lie here with injuries that would waylay a normal man for weeks, and talk about riding tomorrow night.”
“I have to ride tomorrow night.” He was begging now. It ate at his pride, eroded his honor, and still he begged. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re wrong, Jesse.” Her voice was as weak as her belief was strong. “I do understand. You’re the one who hasn’t figured it out yet.”
He heard the words in his head long before she whispered a ragged goodbye, would taste the silk of her mouth long after she pressed a kiss to his forehead. And he would feel the warm spill of the tear that fell to his cheek from hers long after she walked out of the room and out of his life.
The atmosphere in the Thomas Mac arena on finals night was charged with excitement. It was a celebratory mood. It was the last night of the National Finals, the big night—and the rumor that buzzed from the box seats to the general admission section was picking up speed and momentum with each new telling.
The seemingly impossible was going to happen. After taking a horrendous fall in last night’s competition, a fall that had landed him in the hospital, the word was out that Jesse James was going to ride.
The anticipation grew with the passing of each moment, until the champions of the first six events had been crowned and speculation settled into fact. And the fact was, he was here and his bull rope was in his hand.
The ring announcer’s melodious voice summed up the momentous event. “Even competing healthy, it takes try and courage for a man to strap himself onto the hurricane deck of one of these monster bulls, ladies and gentlemen. By the tenth and final round it’s not likely that there’s a bull rider among the sixteen finalists that isn’t dealing with bruised muscles and aching joints. But I’ve got to tell you, it takes more than courage for a man to check himself out of a nice soft hospital bed and show up here with a concussion and cracked ribs just to give you a good show.
“Let him hear your appreciation, folks! Show Jesse James what it means to you that he’s hell-bent on riding tonight so he can stay in the hunt for the national champion.”
Whistles and cheers collided with a raucous level of applause as the spotlight swung to chute number two and glinted off the metallic blue fringe of Jesse’s black nding chaps.
His expression hard, Jesse watched the chute crew settle Nightmare, a big, stout, spotted bull that he’d ridden to the tune of ninety-two points in Houston last May. All he had to do was stick him tonight, and the title would finally be his.
Pain was no longer a factor. He was in a different place now He no longer heard his mother begging him not to nde. No longer heard his brother’s threat to hogtie him to the bed. Didn’t see D.U., his squinty-eyed stare telling him without words to back away from the ride. And he did not dwell on the haunted look in Sloan’s eyes last night when she’d left him.
White-hot fire lanced through his ribs as he settled carefully over Nightmare’s back. When the dizziness hit him, he rode it out, then bent to catch his bull rope and hand the trailing end to a grim-faced Yancy.
“Pull it tight,” he said, then waited to start his wrap.
Sloan was there. He knew she was there. Somewhere. Watching, hurting, damning him, thinking she understood when she didn’t understand at all.
She didn’t understand what drove him. What made him how he was. . . what made him the man he was. She didn’t understand what he had to do.
He looked up abruptly when he heard his name, saw by the pinched look of concern on Yancy’s face that he’d said it more than once.
“Check it,” Yancy said, his face set as hard as stone when he reluctantly handed Jesse the rope.
For a long moment he sat there, the bull’s great girth heaving beneath him, his vision blurred, his ribs sabotaging every breath he took. Then, automatically, he started his wrap. Over his hand, behind his knuckles, back over his hand again, weaving between split fingers, pounding it tight with his fist.
Around him, the crowd had hushed. Below him, the bull bellowed and shifted, muscle and blood and bone gearing up to chew him up and spit him out.
Ride him, Jess. Show ’em what you’re made of, son.
No matter where he was, no matter what he did, he heard those words, his father’s words, in his head before every ride. Crystal clear. Warmed by pride. Achingly familiar. They were the source and the strength he relied on. The challenge that would take him home.
“Ready, Jess?”
Slowly, he looked up into the chute boss’s expectant stare.
Slower still, he let his gaze search and find the woman who asked too much.
She was watching. Not five feet away. Her eyes were brittle with fear, brimming with tears.
He looked away. Closed his eyes. Let out a breath.
Show ’em what you’re made of, son echoed again and again and again in his head, until finally, in the midst of thousands of expectant fans, he was suddenly alone with one single, stark reality.
For the first time in his life, Jesse considered the impact of his father’s words, those words he’d carried in his head, in his heart, since he was thirteen years old—and he acknowledged, at long last, who he was trying to please.
The truth of it was devastating. The realization numbing. And the weight, the weight was suddenly too much to bear.
Sloan had understood long before he had. Not the force that drove him, even he hadn’t understood that. Not until this moment. What she’d understood was that he had to pick the time and the place and, above all, the reason to figure out and to accept it on his own.
This was his time. This was his place. Above all, she was his reason.
The national title may hinge on this one last ride, but he realized with absolute clarity that his life didn’t. His life rode on the one woman who could make him stop running. His life rode on the woman who had forced him to look inside himself for the answer.
It became easy then. What he had to do. The decision he had to make.
He gave up the past for the present. He gave up the dead for the living.
He traded pride for love. Proved it was love in the most conspicuous way he could.
Before seventeen thousand filling Thomas Mac arena and millions more on national TV, he let go of a dream, embraced a future and said the three words he’d never said in his career.
“Turn him out.”
The chute boss exchanged a long look with Yancy, then leaned in close. “Say again, Jesse?”
Jesse slowly loosened his wrap, reached up and, gripping the top rail of the chute, eased off of Nightmare’s back. “I said, turn him out, boys. This isn’t going to happen tonight.”