He frowned. “I don’t follow.”
She felt... She didn’t want to talk about Sophie. Because then he would know about Sophie. And part of her felt like by just knowing about her would make him wonder...what she’d been like. What another girl in her family would have been like.
Maybe he would find her lacking, too.
She cleared her throat. That was silly and it wasn’t important now. “They had a little girl before me. Sophie. She was just a couple years younger than Kit. She was sick. From the time she was born.” She swallowed hard. “They tried to keep her safe but she was very fragile. She died when she was five.”
“Shit.”
“I know. I just... I know. My dad thought the answer was to take me and make me tough. I mean, I wasn’t born with a genetic disorder. But he begged my mom, begged her to let me be his. To let him make me tough. And she agreed because she was so broken up about Sophie, too.” She swallowed hard. “But I don’t know what my family was like before... I don’t know how things were between my parents. It all happened before I was born, or even a thought. But I know it changed things. I know the boys remember it. And I know they were affected by it. It was one thing and now it’s not. It hasn’t been since before I was born.”
“How is it that no one knows about this in the rodeo?”
“It just happened too long ago. Twenty-five years ago. It’s not something that comes up and I think...after she died was when my dad took the position as commissioner. It’s when the family got more involved. He was a rider first and my mom was the rodeo queen for a season and...they retired for a while and had kids but it was losing Sophie that brought them back. And I think they wanted it to be free of sadness even though their lives really couldn’t be.”
“That’s a whole lot, Cal. I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “It is. It’s just...there. And there’s no way to fix it.”
“Things always change, that’s the problem. I just had to deal with it a little sooner than other people do. Losing your parents is nothing special. Most everybody goes through it at one time or another.”
“Sure. But most people aren’t as young as you.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s just part of life, like I said. Nothing to get precious about. But I don’t feel that kind of reverence toward marriage or anything like that. I’m sure it’s a direct result of my experience. Even when things look like they might be going well...everything can fall apart. The plane can go down. You can’t control it. Everything’s just twists of fate here and there. You can’t make yourself safer.”
“And you ride bulls.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I ride bulls.”
She couldn’t quite put all those pieces together, but it was a strange thing, to have been friends with this man for as long as she was, and feel like she had just learned something singular about him. To feel like she had just made a discovery about what put him together, what made him click.
But they were here, sharing old grief together, and it made her ache. Hers and his. But it felt good, too. To say it out loud.
“Let’s get some lunch,” he said.
She walked behind him, and into a diner called the Mustard Seed. It had glimmering, coppery pennies glued down for a floor, and whimsical little animals made from forks and beads set up on the tables and windowsills. There were red diner seats, and clear Christmas lights strung around the perimeter.
“I guess Thanksgiving is over,” she said.
“Sure is.”
“Thanks for agreeing to marry me.”
He smiled. “Sure. No problem.”
They took a seat at the bar, and the owner of the diner, who introduced herself cheerfully, came and took their order a few moments later. They both got cheeseburgers and fries. Callie got a milkshake. She dipped one of her French fries down in the chocolate shake when it came, and took a bite off the end, chewing thoughtfully.
“We need to start the training as soon as possible. I really want to get in this season.”
He stared at her, his blue eyes unreadable.
She felt pinned to the spot. And for some reason, the breath was coming a little bit faster into her lungs. “What? It’s really important to me. It’s why I’m doing this in the first place, so I need to get ready. And you seem to think I’m not ready, so you better have something interesting to show me.”
“Yeah, there’s some things that I’m going to show you. Fundamentally, you’ve been around it your whole life. It’s not like you don’t understand, but you need to make sure that you’re not overconfident. You need to make sure that you’re safe, and I would feel better if we ran through the routines as often as possible.”
“Every ride is different, and you know it. You can’t practice for it. Animals don’t do any one thing. They do what they’re going to do. And the horses are going to do what they’re going to do, regardless if I practice or not.”
“You know what you’re gonna do? You’re going to practice being strong. You’re going to build up your leg muscles. You’re not going to be caught off guard. You’re not going to panic when you fall, you’re going to relax. And you’re going to let them fling you around like a ragdoll, and if you fall, you’re going to figure out how to hit the ground and move your body as quickly as possible. Do you understand me?”
He stole one of her French fries, which was just patently unnecessary, because he had his own.
“I understand.”
He reached his hand back into her fries at the same time she did, and their fingertips brushed. And for some reason, it made her heart jump up and hit the bottom of her throat.
Maybe it was just because this whole situation was weird, and it was taking her friend and shoving him into a role that she wasn’t entirely familiar with.
But this, she was familiar with. His instruction, his guidance. He was good at that. He had been coaching her for a long time in other skills, and this was nothing new.
Yeah, the marriage thing was new, but that was it. And it wasn’t real.
She needed to practice thinking of it the way that he did. She needed to practice thinking of it as something that didn’t matter at all. It was just a function. A function to get her money.
To get her freedom.
Ultimately, the trust fund itself, and the amount of what it had in it, didn’t matter. She didn’t care about riches. She didn’t care about fancy things. And she loved her family more than anything in the world, so tricking them wasn’t something she relished. But she really, really needed this freedom, and that was what she required. Beginning and end of story. This was all in aid of that. It was all helping her get there. And that was what mattered. That was really the only thing that mattered.