by Anne Jolin
There were pictures on nearly every surface in this room. It wasn’t like their house in Willow Bay. She ain’t had no photos in that house, not a single one.
“Yah,” she whispered, pickin’ up a pink pillow and sittin’ down on the bed with it in her lap.
The room felt wider than the damn ocean, there was so much distance between us. I hated it. Made my arms ache wishin’ they were ‘cross that room holdin’ her.
“You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on in that head of yours, Rayne?” I was askin’ as opposed to tellin’, but I wasn’t leavin’ here ‘til she told me.
Her hands played with a loose thread in the stichin’ of that damn pillow for what seemed like ages before she spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” She shook her head, not lookin’ at me. “I guess I didn’t know how to tell you.”
There was that damn urge to comfort her burnin’ in my heart, but she needed to say her thing, and she needed to do it without usin’ me as a shield from her own heart.
“In my eyes, Ryley never had a father.” She was cryin’ again, thick tears rollin’ down her cheeks. “She lost a man she never got the chance to even know and she’ll have to live with that emptiness for the rest of her life.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ I’d understand why you did what you did, darlin’?” I asked. “Think you oughta know me better than that by now. I ain’t that man.”
Some of that wild hair I loved so damn much fell into her face as she was shakin’ that head of hers so much. “No.” I watched that little body of hers spasm in pain. “I knew you would understand. You’re a good man, Owen, and you would have forgiven me anyway, but that would have made this too hard.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They were beggin’ to run through her hair, but it just didn’t feel right. “I don’t get what’s too hard about bein’ loved by a good man,” I said, shovin’ my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, hopin’ they’d stay put. Truth was, she looked like I needed a drink right about now.
Her face was solemn and grim, like she’d just given up already.
“What do you think losing you would to do her?” she asked, liftin’ her face so she was lookin’ at me for the first time since we’d walked into this room. “She loves you, Owen. She’s already had the chance to have you, to get attached to you, and to need you.”
“She ain’t losin’ me.” I was raisin’ my voice a bit, the frustration kickin’ in.
Never met a woman who fought lovin’ the way Rayne did.
“Maybe not now, but what happens in four months when you go back on the circuit?” She wiped at her tears with the back of your hand. “How many times are we going to lie awake praying you come home? Praying you don’t get hurt?” She choked on one of them sobs, and it damn near killed me. “Losing you would break her, Owen. It would break me.” Huggin’ that pillow tight against her chest, she shook that head of hers again. “I can’t do that again. I can’t do that to her.”
My mind was racin’, and the pieces were comin’ together too fast.
“Are you askin’ me to choose?” I asked her, not expectin’ this conversation to have headed this way. “Bein’ with you or ridin’ broncs?”
Her eyes were full of that fear her Dad had been talkin’ about.
“I guess I am, yes,” she said.
That was more than I could take. My hands fled my pockets and ripped the hat from my head. Runnin’ my fingers through my hair, I started to pace. “That ain’t fair, darlin’.”
“No, it’s not fair. Not at all.” She was agreein’ with me and I was thinkin’ maybe that meant we were on the same page, we weren’t. “I told you I didn’t date cowboys, Owen. This is why. I know you love that rodeo, but I can’t lose you.”
My head hurt just listenin’ to her. “So you won’t just have me instead?” I frowned. “Leavin’ me is still losin’ me, Rayne.”
“Not if it means she gets to walk by you in town or hug you at the fair. Not if it means I get to see you in the produce aisle of the grocery store or on a call to the farm.” Her lips turned up at the corners for just a minute before it faded. “It’s not the same as losing you, Owen. Trust me.”
“So if I don’t quit the rodeo, we’re done? Just like that?” I demanded, not believin’ what I was hearin’.
I’ve loved three things in my life, my family, the rodeo and the Brookes girls. Ain’t seem fair makin’ a man choose between the things he loves.
“If that saves us the heartache, then yes.” Her voice was firm, kind but firm. “Loving you and losing you is not a risk that I am willing to take. Not now or ever. Not if I can help it. Not for both of us.”
“I’ve known the rodeo my whole life, Rayne. I can’t quit that,” I told her, tears brimmin’ the edges of my eyes.
Standin’ from the bed, she walked over to me and placed those hands of hers on my chest. “I know, Owen,” she said real low. “I understand.”
“This can’t be the only way,” I told her, wrappin’ my arms around her.
She stood up on the tips of her toes, and I felt her lips movin’ on mine. “And I love you too, Owen,” she whispered and hearin’ her say that, knowin’ she was endin’ it, was a little like dyin’.
Her lips pressed into mine and I could taste how much this was hurtin’ her.
Kissin’ her back, I gave her everything I had and then some.
My mind was already countin’ the things I’d miss about havin’ her. The way that lavender soap of hers smelled on her skin. The way that wild hair of hers could never be tamed and the way it felt havin’ her and Ryley tucked into my arms at night.
When the kissin’ finally broke, I pulled away too fast. This slow breakin’ was agony.
I walked toward the door and she stood standin’ in a room filled with the Rayne I ain’t ever had a chance to know.
“Tell me somethin’, that horse I had her workin’ with, Gee? He’s the one from that day, ain’t he?” I asked, stoppin’ at the door.
Her shoulders sagged. “Yes.” She nodded, tears still fallin’. “Hell’s Gate.”
I nodded, then I walked out, leavin’ one love of my life for the other.
Seemed like a damn cruel twist of fate.
Three Months Later – February 2015
THE DAYS SEEMED DULLER WITHOUT Owen around, but we did the best we could. The transition had been hard on Ryley. Well, it had been hard on us both, but I threw myself into making it easier on her and tried to forget about the empty hole in my chest.
I think a part of her knew it was coming after the argument at our house that day, but a bigger part of her was still young and hopeful that everything would work out.
It hadn’t.
I could count the times I’d seen him on one hand since the morning he walked out of my Mom’s house. The day he dropped off Ryley’s tenth birthday gift on our front porch, he didn’t know I’d been watching from the window. The day he showed up to shovel our driveway after the snowstorm on Christmas Day, Ryley had spent all afternoon playing in the snow as he worked and crying all evening after he left. Then there was the third Wednesday in January.
Nora and Sadie had taken the kids for their usual dinner and a movie, but I hadn’t been able to work. My concentration had fell by the wayside in the last few months and so I decided to take a drive. That drive had led me through the gates at Willow Bay Stables, and before I knew it, I was parked outside his trailer.
Just sitting there.
I waited there, idling like a lovesick teenager in my blue bug, who still prank called her crush after school because she was too afraid to actually talk to him.
The songs changed more than once on the radio while the heat blared into the car. I was cold and eventually my wits finally got the better of me, I did a three-point turn in the gravel and saw his truck coming down the driveway. We locked eyes as he pulled off to the side to let me pass and I smiled. It didn’t reach my eyes and neither did the one he returned.
They wer
e polite smiles, the kind you gave a stranger in line behind you at the shopping mall. I hated that we’d become the people who exchanged those smiles, but I understood why we had. I couldn’t love another man who lived the life Todd had, and Owen couldn’t choose between the career he was born for and us.
It wasn’t a fair ultimatum, but as someone wise and cruel once said, life isn’t fair.
That didn’t lessen how much we still missed him.
I leaned back into my desk chair and puffed out a breath of air. Some days I could lose hours thinking about Owen when I should have been working or sleeping. Today was no different. The clinic was slow because no one wanted to venture out of their homes more than they needed too in this snow and it was Friday. People were headed home to hunker down for the weekend in front of their fireplaces.
“Ray, baby.” Nora appeared in my doorway. “You keep frownin’ like that so much, you’re gonna need Botox in no time.”
I figured she was likely only half kidding.
“I’m fine,” I told her.
She walked further into my office and leaned a hip against my desk. “That sounds about as believable as the first time you said it,” Nora scolded.
Today she was wearing a pink long-sleeved shirt under a pair of orange scrubs. Leave it to Nora to look like spring in the dead of winter.
“Really.” I gave her the best smile I could, which was in fact kind of sad. “I’m okay.”
“You know there isn’t a single thing wrong with not being okay, Ray.” She picked up my coffee mug and handed it to me. “Heartbreak happens to the best of us.”
I knew that she was right. That millions of people around the world had suffered through more than I had, but that didn’t make my pain feel any lesser. Nora knew what had happened between us, I’d told her the evening I picked Ryley up from her and Sadie’s house. They’d smothered me in hugs and cursed him for not choosing us as friends were so obligated to do but no one was really mad at him.
You couldn’t be mad at him because falling in love with us hadn’t been his fault.
Something good does always come from darkness and what had happened between us was no exception. The day I came home from Peace River, I told Ryley about her father. She knew hardly anything about him, and that was and always would be on me.
I told her how in love we’d been all through high school, and how he’d been born to ride a horse like no man I’d ever seen before in my entire life. Until Owen, that is, but I left that out of the story.
It wasn’t easy to tell her what had happened to him and why I’d never taken her to see him.
She was confused at first and then a little sad, but who could blame her? That was a lot of information for a ten-year-old to take in and make sense of, but somehow, like she always did, Ryley surprised me. All she wanted was to know more about him. There was so much to tell her and so many photos I’d brought home from Mom’s to show her. We spent hours that evening going through all of them.
She found one of Todd sitting on the rail in the bucking chute, laughing. “I have his eyes,” she said, looking at me and I cried when I told her she was right, she did have his eyes. That photo had been taken a little over a month before the accident. He’d just scored the highest at the rodeo in Medicine Hat. He was so happy.
Ryley took that photo of Todd to her bedroom. She propped it up on her dresser against the lamp and for a while, every time I saw it there, my heart would seize and it would become harder to breathe. Grief was like that. It was hard to allow the memory of Todd to become a part of our lives, but I was trying.
Finally, on my way home from work one Monday in December, I stopped to pick up a frame for the photo. When I gave it to her, I asked if she wanted to see Todd in the hospital. I explained that she would be able to talk to him, but her Dad wouldn’t be able to talk back. That he was still sleeping, and the doctors said he wouldn’t ever wake up.
To the surprise of even me, Ryley said no.
I think a part of her liked remembering the young boy in the pictures better than the man in the hospital man. For that reason, I didn’t push her and I didn’t blame her either.
She was entitled to hold onto the memory of Todd however she saw fit, just as I had done.
The phone on my desk started ringing and Nora reached for it until she realized it was my cellphone. Sadie’s name came up on the call display.
I hit the green button to answer and put the iPhone to my ear. “Hey, Sadie.”
“Rayne, I’m so sorry. I was watching them. I only looked away for a second. She was…” Sadie’s panicked voice was rambling so fast I could barely understand her.
“Sadie, slow down.” I used the calmest voice I could as I spoke into the receiver. “What happened?”
The sound of her taking deep breaths made my pulse spike.
“It’s Ryley. She…” Her voice was cut off by the sound of sirens in the background. “She was hit by a car backing out of the driveway.”
My blood ran cold, and my grip on the phone became so tight my knuckles turned white. “Is she?” My mind couldn’t even find the words to say it.
“She’s okay. They’re taking her to the hospital now. I’m following behind with Mason.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes. She’s okay. My girl is okay.
“We’ll be right there.”
I hung up the phone, and Nora was already on the move. She’s obviously heard what had happened and was passing me my purse. “I’ll drive, baby. Give me your keys.”
“I can—” I started to speak, but she cut me off.
“No, you can’t, not in this state of mind. Now give me your keys and let’s get goin’.” She’d shifted from her happy go lucky self into the woman I knew had as much love for me as my own mother did.
I fished the keys from the top drawer of my desk and passed them to her. My mind was in a daze as she pushed me through the office, shutting off lights, setting the voicemail and locking the front door behind us.
“What about our appointments?” I asked as she settled me into the passenger seat.
I couldn’t tell you why I cared or why that seemed of importance to me at that moment, but it did. For some reason, my brain had shifted into safety mode, and safety mode cared about stupid things.
“I’ll cancel them from the hospital,” Nora said, shutting the door and rounding the hood of my car. “Now buckle up, baby. Let’s go see our girl.”
She drove fast in the snow. Like only a woman who loved cheetah print and was raised in the prairies could. But even then, it took us longer than average to get to the hospital and awhile later, she threw my bug into park half on a snow bank in the hospital parking lot.
The last time I’d been here was under much happier circumstances.
We shuffled in through the emergency doors, and my eyes flew around the waiting room until they landed on Sadie and Mason.
“Ray.” Sadie jumped up when she saw me. “I’m so sorry.”
I took her hug and hugged her back just as fiercely. “Where is she?” I asked, impatient and frantic to see that my daughter was all right with my own two eyes.
“They’ve admitted her and taken her to X-ray.” Sadie was crying as she spoke. “They think she might have a broken wrist.”
Broken bones would heal, I told myself.
“She was riding her bike, like she always does, but it was icy and the by the time the neighbour saw her and hit the brakes, the car was already moving and it didn’t stop before it hit her.” Sadie choked out her words.
“It’s not your fault, Sadie.” I used my thumbs to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Will they let me see her?”
Nora appeared at my side, I hadn’t even noticed she hadn’t been there the entire time. “Already asked, baby. They’re bringin’ her into a room now, just go follow that nurse there.” She pointed to a blonde nurse waiting patiently a few feet away.
“Thank you,” I said and fought my own tears as I followed the nurse through the ho
spital.
She took me up one floor and down two halls into the children’s area, stopping outside a room.
“Ryley is doing fine. The doctor will be in to check on the setting of her wrist and explain everything to you,” she said.
“But she’s okay?” I asked her, my eyes scanning her face for any indication of unease.
The nurse squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “She was lucky but she is going to be just fine.”
I nodded and walked into the room.
Tucked into the sheets with her hair everywhere was my girl.
“Hey, honey,” I whispered, and her big eyes got brighter.
She smiled but it wasn’t hard to miss that she was still in pain. “It wasn’t Sadie’s fault.” Ryley shook her head and tried to sit up.
“I know.” I smiled. “But you need to stay laying down, okay my sweet girl?”
Her hand, the one that wasn’t encased in a green cast found its way to my cheek. “I’m okay, Mom. Don’t cry.”
My daughter was so beyond her years in so many ways, and I hadn’t even noticed I was crying.
“I just got scared,” I whispered, leaning down to kiss her forehead.
She blinked a few times looking groggy from whatever pain medication they’d given her.
“I love you,” I said, wiping away my tears that had fallen on her cheeks.
Ryley was starting to fall asleep but she was still smiling. “I love you, too, Mom,” she hummed as her eyelashes fanned over her cheeks. “And Owen, I love Owen, too.”
My heart slammed against my ribcage, and I reached out to steady myself on the edge of her bed.
Lying in the hospital with bruises on her face and cuts on her arms, Ryley was still stronger than me. She was all the very best parts of Todd, she had his fearlessness and she had his passion. I loved that about both of them.
The doctor arrived a few minutes later to fill me in on Ryley’s condition. Apparently, Ryley had been lucky in the sense that her bike took the brunt of the impact from the slow moving vehicle. Due to that, most of her injuries were from the fall off her bike as opposed to the car itself. She had a broken wrist that would take some time to heal, a few stitches in her forehead and a mild concussion. For that he expressed his concern that they keep her through the night but otherwise discharging her tomorrow seemed like a very likely possibility.