Still, it was becoming more and more difficult to deny it.
They had just finished another ride out in the arena when she’d let herself think it for the first time. When she’d looked at his profile and realized that she loved him in ways that went so deep it was terrifying.
She loved him.
She loved him so much she was nearly sick with it.
Not just friendship love, no, she had known that she loved him for a long time. But she had tried to tell herself it was like a friend. Like a brother. Like anything other than what it was. Which wasn’t just one thing, but everything.
A lover, a man, a friend. A piece of her.
Woven into the fabric of all that she was. That was Jake. Jake Daniels was a part of her. She would never be able to lift him away. He was part of why she loved the rodeo. Part of why she learned. He had introduced her to passion, and given her his physical presence when she needed it. Had legally married her when she had asked.
He was... There wasn’t a single person on this earth that understood her the way that he did. Not a single person who supported her quite so unconditionally.
What she’d asked of him was insane. And he had gone along with it. And when he let her care back... Oh, it was hard for him. But when he let her cook for him. When he shared his bed with her. When he let her lavish his body with attention, she could feel it coming from him, too. That rightness. The sense of completion.
She loved it more than anything. Just like she loved him. All of him, even the difficult pieces.
She also knew, down to her soul, that it wasn’t something he would want to hear. Wasn’t something he would want to deal with. He would consider it a betrayal. A change.
She didn’t know how she knew it, only that she did.
The man was utterly and completely walled off to admissions of feelings, but he felt them. He went to his family’s house for dinner every Sunday night. The way that he showed up in their friendship was yet more evidence of it. He was just...
There was a brokenness to him that she couldn’t quite get a grasp on. That she couldn’t quite nail down. The last little fragments of what he wouldn’t share with her. The things that made him who he was. The things that would give her that full picture of Jake, everything he was in, everything he resisted.
They were in the barn, putting the horses away, when she let it come right out.
“Jake,” she said. “I don’t think I want to get divorced.”
He turned sharply. “What?”
“I don’t want to get divorced. I want to stay with you. I want to stay like this.”
He was frozen for a moment. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
She had known that it would go like this. So she just had to be strong and push through. He was like a stubborn horse. And no, she couldn’t quite rest on that old confidence that she’d felt before starting a relationship with him—because that’s what this was, whether he wanted to admit it or not—couldn’t pretend that just because she understood how to bait a dog with snacks she understood men.
But she did know Jake.
And everything in her knew this wasn’t going to be anything other than a fight.
Because for all that she’d been broken, and hurting and protecting herself...she’d been slowly growing and changing, expanding the definition of what she could be as she cried out with pleasure in his arms. And Jake? Jake might just be as much of a rock face as he’d been at the beginning.
Just because she’d been on an emotional journey, while lying in his bed, didn’t mean he’d been walking the same path with her, not with his heart or his soul.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said. “You’re going to have to explain yourself. Why exactly don’t you think it’s a good idea, Jake?”
“Because...” His face went blank and she knew he was about to lie. “I’m not built for this. It’s... It’s been good. I like you a lot. We’re good friends. It’s convenient for me to have sex right here on my ranch, but I’m not the marrying kind. And you’re going to go back to the rodeo, as you should.”
She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff. About to offer something insane. Something that she realized she was now willing to sacrifice.
“I don’t need to go back.”
“What?”
“I don’t need to go back. I could stay here.” Her chest went tight, her throat constricting. This laying herself open like this...it was new to her. But it was right. It was what she needed. It was what they needed if they were going to not just survive but truly live. “I could work the ranch with you. Be a ranch hand and your wife. We could be together. And we could work on making this life. If that’s what you want, if that’s what would make things better for you, if that’s what would make them more, then I’m all about it. I’m all about the two of us making something out of this.”
“Callie, you can’t be serious. We literally got married so that you could get your trust fund, so that you could ride saddle bronc. It’s the most important thing in the world to you.”
The words washed over her like rain.
The most important thing in the world.
Being seen. Being the best at something. Not the second daughter who was a poor replacement for the first, but one who was singular. Unique. The first of her kind.
A girl who rode like a man and took no prisoners.
She didn’t know her anymore. That shield. That certainty.
Oh, sure, there was a safety to it. To being one thing. Honing herself into a sharpened blade that could only cut, rather than making herself into something who could cut, be cut. Hurt, be hurt. Want so many things deeply, desperately, that she might never have.
That was terrifying.
But she was on the edge of something beautiful. Like seeing a gilded ray beginning to crest a mountaintop. This time with him, that hope of winning against her family and getting a chance to ride in the rodeo was nothing more than a fraction of what could be.
That whisper of light wasn’t the entire story.
They were the whole sunrise.
One that could light up the whole world, and she couldn’t live on a sliver of gold anymore. Not when she knew just how much more they could have.
A whole life.
Not pieces of things. Friendship and trophies and applause. But all of it wrapped in love. Commitment, children, a home. Sickness, health and everything else.
“It was,” she whispered. “It was the most important thing in the world to me, Jake. And I thought it was what made me...me. I thought it was what was going to make my parents respect me. See me as my own person, a valuable person because of what I was doing, what I was achieving, and that if they did it would make me feel...fixed. But the problem is, I was wrong about myself. I’m not saying they were right—it’s just that I was immature. I probably still am. I’ve been growing and changing over these last couple of months, and it’s not a simple thing to admit or realize. But I went into all this like a rebellious teenager. Willing to defy anyone and everyone, willing to stamp my foot and say that no one understood me. That they all wanted these things for me that weren’t me. But... I didn’t know me. I didn’t know enough about life. Yes, I would still like to compete in the rodeo. But I can put it on hold. It’s not what defines me. And it’s not the most important thing to me. It isn’t what’s going to make or break my life and my happiness. Look at you, you’re done with the rodeo. You’re thirty-two, and you’re done.”