Chey rolled her eyes. “Comforting. That sounds like the two of you are in a retirement home and happy to have companionship.”
Hannah laughed. “Fair point.” She snagged another forkful of hay and carried it to the stall. “Would it make you happier if I said it’s exciting and new and all of those heart-pounding, giddy kinds of things? Because it is all of that, too. I feel ridiculously happy all the time.” She stuck her head out of the stall and wiggled her eyebrows at Chey. “And I will admit that dusting off the old libido and taking her out for a regular spin has been pretty terrific, too.”
“Show-off,” Chey said, then gave her two thumbs-up and flashed Hannah one of her dazzling smiles. “And that’s more like it. Because if you can’t be giddy over a man who looks like that? And, more importantly, who looks at you the way he does?” She shook her head. “You might as well put that libido in cold storage, sister.”
Chey was usually a somewhat serious person, at least that was how she presented herself to the world most of the time. It had come in handy in her former occupation, and being somewhat guarded also came to her naturally. So, most folks didn’t know she had a wicked sense of humor, or a heart as big as the moon. And her smile, when truly unleashed, would knock your socks off with its completely transformative ability.
She wasn’t flashy and gave new meaning to being down to earth. Her idea of dressing up was to knock the mud off her boots and put on a clean pair of jeans. But Hannah saw Chey as a beautiful force to be reckoned with, which she most definitely was. When things got tough, there was no one Hannah would rather have in her corner.
Hannah laughed. “Agreed. But giddy heart palpitations aside, at the core of it, we’re very solid together. That’s the part that calms any nerves I get, wondering if this is all just too much of a good thing.”
“Darlin’,” Chey said, tipping down her chin and affecting her strongest, rodeo girl drawl, “there is no such thing as too much of a good thing. That’s just a myth the unlucky in love put out there to cover their mistakes.”
Hannah’s mouth dropped open on a choked little laugh. “A little harsh, don’t you think?”
Chey waved it off. “You know what I mean. Here’s what I’ve learned from all I’ve seen, and we both know that I’ve seen a lot. You find something good that makes you happy? I don’t care if it’s a job, a man, the perfect place to put down roots, or a really good horse. You get lucky enough to stumble into one of those? Grab on to it, sister, and hold on for dear life.”
Hannah nodded at that and gave Chey a little salute. “A valid observation.”
“Of course it is,” Chey said, taking the compliment in stride, then shooting Hannah a wink. “I’m one of those unlucky losers I spoke about, so I know whereof I speak.”
Hannah had been about to grab another forkful of straw but paused, surprised by the admission. Shocked, actually. Early on, the four of them had shared pretty much every raw detail about the loss each of them had suffered. As they’d become true close friends over the years since, they’d shared a lot more of their lives with each other. Vivi had regaled them with more stories from her time on Broadway than Hannah could recount, all of them colorful, memorable, and oftentimes hilarious.
Avery had shared the struggles she’d had being a smart kid in an adult world, her take surprisingly droll. She hadn’t wasted time feeling sorry for herself for being “the oddball in a room full of squares” as she called it. She’d been too busy absorbing everything she could get her hands and eyes on. Her stories had been refreshing and empowering, and Hannah had often found herself wishing she’d had a tenth of Avery’s moxie.
Chey regaled them with stories of life on the rodeo circuit, all of them pretty raucous. She’d been born into the life and, until a few years ago, hadn’t known any other kind. It was both a grueling and fascinating lifestyle that Hannah couldn’t begin to fathom, and the risks involved made her hair stand on end. But Chey, at least up until she’d lost her brother, had honestly loved every second of it.
For her part, Hannah had talked about her life as an artist and an illustrator. A random art class she’d taken in school for fun, when her focus had otherwise been on a future in finance, had taken her life on a completely different trajectory. Thanks to a college art professor with contacts in the world of marketing and graphic design, Hannah had been exceedingly fortunate to find a way to market her surprising skill set, and that, in turn, had eventually led her to becoming a book illustrator.
Hannah didn’t have the colorful stories Vivi did or face anything like the challenges Avery had, much less anything in the universe of the risks that Chey had taken on a daily basis. In fact, for all that Hannah’s career was unique, she’d had, by far, the most average life of the lot. The classic yuppie, she’d married young to her college sweetheart, started a family, had a nice house in the suburbs of the nation’s capital. The other three had often told her how sorry they were for her that she was so boring. She smiled, thinking about that, and where she was now. Not so boring anymore.
One thing Chey hadn’t ever shared with any of them were stories about her love life. She’d had plenty to say about some of the men on the circuit, but nothing about any man who might have claimed even a part of Chey’s big heart.
“The only loser in that equation would be the guy in question,” Hannah told her. “Not you.” Hannah said it partly out of loyalty, but mostly because she thought it was true. It would definitely take a certain kind of man to be enough for Chey, but if she deemed him worthy, he would be getting one hell of a return on his investment.
Chey jokingly sketched a bow, gesturing with a flourish using the grooming brush she happened to be holding. “Very kind, very kind.” She straightened and shot Hannah a wry grin. “And oh, so very, very wrong.” She tucked the brush into the tool bin she was sorting through, her back to Hannah as she continued to speak. “I did some really stupid things when I was young—younger,” she added with a wink over her shoulder, “and trying to impress all the wrong guys. If it hadn’t been for Cody, Lord only knows where I’d be now or who I’d be stuck with.”
“Well, I’m glad you had him to fend off the bad apples,” Hannah said, knowing that Cheyenne and her brother had been closer than most siblings, largely due to their lifestyle, but also because they’d genuinely loved and looked out for each other. “But something tells me you’d have never been stuck with anyone you didn’t want to be with, not for the long haul.”
“Fair point,” she conceded dryly. “What I was referring to, actually, was the one I let get away.”
Hannah forked another batch of straw into the stall, surprised by that piece of information, too. “I’m truly sorry for that, Chey,” she told her. “We all make bad decisions in our lives, but that doesn’t make living with the regret any easier to deal with.”
Chey nodded. “True enough. In this case, I was sixteen and so full of myself. I’d spent the previous half dozen years trying to straight-out scare every boy I knew, so hell-bent on proving to myself and them that I’d earned my place on the circuit. But, boy, sixteen hit, and those hormones surged on up and suddenly all those obnoxious boys of my youth were the sexy-as-hell bad boys I wanted to be with in my future.”
Hannah laughed. “I think we can all identify with that, but given the kind of testosterone they must have had to do what they did for a living?” She fanned herself and fluttered her lashes. “My, my.”
“And then some,” Chey said with a laugh. “Lucky for me and probably them as well, Cody beat most of them off with a stick despite my lovesick protestations.”
Hannah grinned. “So, who was the one who got away? Did Cody chase him off, too?”
Chey shook her head. “No, not at all. I had a really good friend in those days, who happened to be a guy. To me he was like another brother, only one I didn’t feel like punching every other minute. I mean, I loved my brother and God help anyone who tried to step in between us or so much as look at him sideways. We had each ot
her’s back at all times. But that didn’t mean we didn’t squabble like squirrels caught in a blender.”
“Ew,” Hannah said, making a face even as she laughed.
Chey smiled. “You can thank my dad for that visual. That was his favorite line. And it was true—we could be pretty rough on each other, when we were adolescents, anyway. But me and Wyatt Reed? We never fought. He was tall, and brawny, with the kind of blue eyes that made you shut up and listen when he talked.”
“Hubba-hubba,” Hannah said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Oh, most definitely,” Chey agreed. “And then some. But stupid me, I didn’t see it. Not then, not like that anyway. To me, he was just good ol’ Wyatt. For all his looks, he was definitely not like other guys on the circuit. He was quiet, and sweet, so smart, and so damn funny. He had no business being out there and no heart for it, but his old man . . .” She trailed off, shook her head and turned away, back to her gear. “To this day I wish there was some way I could have put a plug in that man’s ass and a bullet through his shriveled heart.”
Hannah looked up, startled. “Chey, that’s awful.”
“He was mean as a snake, Hannah. He deserved far worse.”
Hannah walked over to the closed stall door and leaned on it. “What happened to him? To Wyatt. Do you know where he is today?”
Chey shook her head. “No idea. His daddy got in trouble with the local law pretty much every town we went to, and trouble tended to follow him as well. They left the circuit just before I turned eighteen.”
“You didn’t keep in touch?”
Chey shook her head, and her expression shuttered a bit then. “That’s the part where I was really, really stupid.”
Hannah didn’t say anything, just let Chey find her own words.
“Right before they were kicked out, Wyatt found me and told me he was in love with me.” She let out a deep, remorseful sigh, then shook her head. “I’d had my eye on one of Cody’s friends for a while. Just hadn’t figured out how to turn his head without Cody warning me off. They were friends, but Maverick was definitely a bad boy.”
“Maverick?” Hannah said, cocking one eyebrow. “Really?”
Chey laughed. “I know, right? Even at sixteen, how did I not get that? And, of course, I knew Cody would pitch a fit if he found out I’d set my sights on him.” She smiled. “Did eventually, too. And then some. But when Wyatt put it all out there, my head was still so turned about by Mav, and I was so surprised, stunned really, I didn’t see it, see him, see all that we had, for what it was.”
Hannah’s heart squeezed with empathy for her. Chey seemed so tough and bulletproof, but Hannah knew better. “What did you say to him?”
“I wasn’t mean or anything, but there is no good way to break a person’s heart, and I’d never had to do that before. It was godawful and I felt so awkward and horrible. I told him I loved him like family, but not in the way he loved me. It wasn’t just like kicking a puppy; it felt like shooting one.”
Hannah flinched at that, but she understood what Chey meant. “I know that had to be hard, but what you told him was the truth, Chey. And it doesn’t sound like you were thoughtless in the way you explained it to him. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for that. If that’s how you felt, then—”
“The thing is, I’d never even let myself consider that it could be anything else. It just . . . that lightbulb never went off for me, you know? He was my friend and that was that. It was like a line you didn’t cross, so I never even considered it.... I just didn’t know it was even a possibility.”
“And once you did . . . did you realize that maybe you could have loved him back? The same way?”
“I think I would have,” Chey said. “I mean, I did love him, in all the ways that matter, but I didn’t know that. And I didn’t deserve to know. He put himself out there, risked it all. He was two years older than me, but light-years more mature. I was a hot mess of hormones looking to get in trouble with exactly the worst kind of guy. I grew up, too, eventually, but . . .”
“You always wondered what-if, I’m sure,” Hannah said sympathetically. “But that seems like a pretty normal thing to do, Chey. To feel. Not that it makes it any easier, but you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself.”
Chey didn’t respond, just continued sorting through the tack bin. “I think about him from time to time. To this day. I still miss him. I missed him terribly when he left, and it was all the worse for how we parted. I knew I was his one safe place, and I blew it. I really, really blew it. I tried to get in touch, to say I was sorry, to see if we could salvage the friendship, but my few attempts were met with utter silence. And he was right to do that, to just move on and put me in his rearview mirror. I wasn’t trustworthy any longer. At least he had every right to believe that about me. I truly hope he’s happy somewhere, living his best life. And that he found a way to get far away from that sadistic son-of-a-bitch father of his sooner rather than later. If I had to guess, I’d say Old Man Reed is behind bars or six feet under, and I don’t feel bad for thinking it or hoping it’s true.”
“Understandable,” Hannah said sadly. “I hope Wyatt is doing well, too. On all fronts.”
Chey closed the lid on the bin, then turned around to rest her weight against it and looked directly at Hannah. “I don’t talk about Wyatt,” she said. “It’s like a bruise that will never heal. But I brought him up today for a reason. I see how happy you are, and I know how solid Will is. You two are good with each other and to each other, and for each other.” She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “But I’ve watched you with Jake, too. And you’re great with him, which is easy because he’s a pretty spectacular kid. But I know being around him is hard for you. I see it when Jake isn’t looking, when you think no one is.”
“Chey—” Hannah began, then stopped. Startled by the statement, the insight, she’d been about to tell Chey she had it all wrong, to duck confronting that truth, which she’d been doing for weeks now.
“I can’t imagine all the ways being around him must be challenging for you,” Chey said more gently. “I’m not so sure I could do it, if it were me. Even as awesome as Jake is, as his dad seems to be. I know it would be easier if Will was flying solo and this wasn’t a thing you had to face. But I also know a big part of the man you’re falling in love with is the father that he is. Painful or not, poignant for sure, it’s a connection you two share.”
Chey pushed off the box and walked over to lean by the stall door, resting her arms on the edge next to Hannah’s. Her voice was quieter when she went on, her heart clearly in every word. “I can’t tell you what choice to make, and I sure as hell can’t tell you what kind of suffering you should work through to be okay with this. What I can tell you, with everything I know, and everything I am, is that living with regret sucks. Hard. And I think that you’d regret this for the rest of your days if you didn’t find a way to make it all work out.”
Hannah’s eyes stung with gratitude even as her heart clutched with a sudden surge of panic, that her secret was out, that she’d have to confront it now. “Thank you,” she said. “For revisiting your own regret just to try and help me. I’m sorry you felt you had to. And . . .” She paused, then blew out a long, shaky breath and ducked her chin. She owed Chey the truth. Owed it to herself, too. “You’re not wrong.” Hannah looked up at her friend, her other sister of the heart. “I do want to figure it out. And I am trying. I don’t want to hurt Will, but I know he suspects things aren’t one-hundred-percent. He knows, and Jake knows, how much I care for both of them. You’re right, Jake is the best, in every way. I couldn’t ask for more, in terms of stepping into a ready-made family.”
“But?” Chey asked kindly.
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Is it that ready-made part?”
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, partly, it’s Jake I’m worried about. He doesn’t need me getting all entwined in their lives, only for me to discover
I just can’t find a way to manage this . . . whatever this is that I’m feeling. It’s not grief, or even sadness. It feels more like . . . I don’t know. Anxiety, maybe? But there’s nothing wrong with any part of the equation. Not in my head, not in my heart. I’m truly happy.”
“Maybe it is the idea of being part of a family again. Something tangled up in that. It would make sense, Han.”
Hannah lifted her shoulder. “Maybe so. Being around Jake is not wrenching. Quite the opposite. In the moment, we’re fine together. Just like Will and I are fine. But when I go home, when I’m alone . . .” She looked at Chey, her eyes clouding over. “I cry. A lot. Not about anything specifically, just . . . as a way to let it all out.”
“Let what out?” Chey asked. “I mean, specifically, what are you thinking about when you cry? Maybe if you could pinpoint that, it would give you some insight into what the trigger is.”
Hannah shook her head. “That’s just it, I don’t know. I just feel this overwhelming . . . pressure. Like my chest is too tight, and my heart is being squeezed. I cry, I get it out, and I feel better. And I think, okay, it will get better the more I’m around him, around them both. But . . . it’s not. Will wants us to spend more time together, the three of us, and I’ve been ducking him, because I can hide it from Jake when we’re together, but I know I won’t be able to with Will. And I don’t want to hurt him or insult him.”
“He wouldn’t be insulted, Han,” Chey said gently. “He knows you care about Jake, that you two are building a really good foundation. Anyone can see that. Will knows you would never wittingly do anything to hurt him.”
“But maybe I already am,” Hannah said, feeling the anxiety start to build. “Will and I spent so much time talking about his wife, his loss, and I shared a lot about how I’d handled mine. We talked about me and Jake, and how my loss might affect that relationship. We literally talk about everything under the sun. But we never really talked about the three of us. Together.” She shook her head. “I mean, I know that sounds silly. Like, if Will is good with me and I’m good with Jake, and Jake is happy with the whole situation, then what is there to talk about? You’d think I’d be looking forward to it. But then that . . . thing just rears up.”
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