Reckless vow, p.9
Reckless Vow, page 9
Some hours later, headphones in and volume way up as I groomed Luci, I kept replaying the conversation. Moving around her in the way Bailey had shown me, I used the stiff-bristle brush to clear the dirt and hairs from her coat, slowing for the more sensitive areas around her shoulder and back and carefully avoiding her healing wounds.
Just as the track I was listening to became extra heavy, the drums and guitar dropping to a ribcage-shaking depth, someone tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Fuck,’ I said, jumping in tandem with Luci, who promptly bared her teeth for a moment towards Bailey, standing at the stall door, grinning. Next to her was . . . ‘Dee! Hey!’
I pulled my headphones around my neck and came out of the stall.
‘Thought I’d bring Dee up to see why you’ve been too busy to come into town,’ Bailey began, as Dee gave me a brief hug. ‘We’ve been friends since high school, don’t get to see each other too much these days, so two birds with one stone and all that.’
‘Ah, okay – yeah, it’s been a bit intense,’ I admitted, dusting the dirt and hairs off my hands as Jesse entered the back of the barn, leading Domino back in. He tipped his hat to us, his face shaded by the brim.
‘Don’t apologize,’ Dee replied, her eyes following him for a moment before turning back to me, raising her eyebrows suggestively. ‘I always forget how good the, um, views are up here.’ I bit my lip as she fought back a giggle, Bailey shaking her head. ‘Besides, I have a gift for you!’
She grinned at me, the liberal highlighter across her freckled cheekbones shimmering in the shafts of sunlight. I realized how similar our look was – one part country, regulation cowboy boots and black denim, one part alt girl. The beginnings of a sleeve tattoo up her right arm caught my eye as she pulled out a small tissue-paper-wrapped parcel from her bag and handed it to me.
‘But what –’ I began, stopping when she rolled her eyes.
‘Just open it,’ she replied, eyes lifting as I heard Luci shuffle to the door behind us, the velvety touch of her muzzle on my arm as she tried to smell the parcel.
‘Well, look at that,’ Bailey mused, shaking her head at Luci as I ripped the tissue open to reveal a T-shirt, a faded charcoal grey. ‘Gentle as a goddamn lamb with you now. She likes you, Hes.’
‘She likes the hand that feeds her,’ I murmured, but reached back to give Luci a gentle scratch on the neck as I unfurled the T-shirt. On the other side, printed in shades of white, pink and green, was the skull design I’d created by the lake a couple of weeks ago. ‘Oh my God, I love it,’ I breathed, barely noticing as Jesse’s shadow fell across us.
‘New line?’ he asked, glancing at me as Dee answered, his eyes quickly assessing my face. We’d fallen back into what seemed to be our pattern since the visit to his mum’s place – withdrawing from each other after moments of intensity, both retreating into our own shadows.
‘Actually, Hestia,’ Dee continued, turning to me, ‘I also wanted to ask you something, now Bailey tells me you’re staying awhile.’ She gestured towards her sleeve tattoo. ‘I’ve been getting this done by a few different artists, people I really admire, each of them adding a different element.’ Her glance up at me was a little sheepish. ‘And I kinda looked your work up after we met, found your studio in London . . . I love your stuff, kinda obsessed with the indigo blossom designs.’
‘You want me to add to the sleeve?’ I guessed as she nodded, biting her lip. I felt Bailey and Jesse’s eyes on me as I reached out for her arm to take a closer look. The existing work was incredible, definitely a mix of styles and techniques, but all together, it worked. I felt the sudden urge to do it, a creative itch in my fingers that I realized hadn’t been there for a while. ‘I’d be honoured,’ I said, smiling as she gave a small squeal of excitement. ‘Did you have something in—’
‘Yes! You really will? I mean, name your price, of course . . . Oh man, this is so cool . . . yeah – your skull, the one on the T-shirt, maybe combined with the blossom?’ Jesse shifted to my right, as though preparing to leave. I caught his soft smile as he turned. ‘We’ve got an open day at the Jackson Collective, it’s a whole bunch of artists and creatives here, in a couple of weeks – maybe we could do it then? We’ve got some spare kit, if you didn’t bring your own.’
We made arrangements while Jesse and Bailey prepped some of the horses. My mind was already buzzing with ideas, ways of integrating my design with her sleeve. As I voiced a couple and was met with wild enthusiasm, I felt a strange sense of cohesion; a tangible snap as this element of my home life slotted right in next to the ranch and to Luci, who was now resting her head against my back.
‘You’re gonna be one busy woman,’ Bailey winked, returning from the tack room with a saddle over her arm. ‘I’m gonna ride out on Buckeye with Dee – do you wanna come? We can take it slow? Penny could do with some exercise. She’s getting mighty lazy since Lil’s been gone. She’s as gentle as they come, though, perfect for a greenhorn like you.’
I considered it for a moment, Dee clocking my hesitation.
‘It’s not as hard as it looks,’ she offered. ‘I know it’s easy for us to say when we’ve done it our whole lives, but you just need to hold on really. Penny’s a sweetheart like Bailey said, she’ll take care of you.’
I turned back to Luci, who was now beginning to nudge me. Smiling, I took a small apple from my pocket and offered it up to her, realizing how much of my initial wariness around horses, around her, had begun to evaporate. If a creature like Luci, previously beaten and broken by people, could learn to trust again, couldn’t I try it?
But as Bailey led Buckeye out of the stall and past us, prancing sideways a little as he checked out Luci and received shit-eye with a side of flattened ears in return, I chickened out.
‘Another time,’ I said, not missing the calculating stare from Jesse, now across the stalls with Penny. ‘If I fall off and fuck up my hand,’ I gestured to her sleeve, ‘I promise you don’t want to try my first left-handed tattoo.’
Dee grimaced.
‘Yeah, okay – deal. But maybe afterwards? Surely one of these guys might give you a lesson or two, start off in the corral, get the hang of it before riding out?’
I shrugged.
‘Sure, maybe.’
I waved them off from the entrance of the barn, laughing as Domino and Buckeye seemed determined to race each other despite Dee and Bailey’s efforts. Eventually, beyond the main gate, as the vast meadow field opened up, the women let them fly. In seconds, they were no more than blurs of colour shrouded in a fine dust.
‘It’s freedom,’ Jesse said, making me jump as I wandered back to Luci’s stall. He came out of the stall, hanging up Penny’s head collar on a hook. She was fully tacked up for riding.
‘What is?’ I asked, forcing myself to keep my distance.
He gestured out towards the meadow.
‘That’s why we love to ride,’ he clarified. ‘The feeling of freedom. Just you and your horse, nothing else to complicate shit.’ I didn’t try to speak into the pause between us, just took him in, steadying myself as my heart threatened to ratchet up a notch. ‘You can be alone but not lonely, if that makes sense.’
He knew it did, after our last conversation in the truck. I had a sense this was his way of reaching out, of making a bridge back between us.
I nodded, not wanting to shut him down.
‘It looks easy, but I’m sure that’s just years of practice,’ I started, stopping as he shook his head, turning back to Penny’s stall and opening the door.
‘You don’t need years,’ he added, disappearing for a moment and then leading her out, approaching me slowly and ignoring the downright satanic expression Luci pulled to my right. ‘How’s about one more favour?’
I raised my eyebrows, unsure where this was going.
‘I know Lottie’s asked you to help with the cookout this weekend, and thing is, the easiest way to get down to the spot we use is to ride. I’m taking some guests out in half an hour, but we could do just five, ten minutes now, in the corral. I’ll show you how to get on, hold on, just walk around a little. What do you think? I swear I won’t let anything happen to your hands.’ He smirked a little, sneaking the quickest glance over the rest of me. ‘Or anything else. Penny is our very best beginner’s horse, not a mean bone in her body.’
My gut reaction was to refuse. It wasn’t just the thought of sitting on top of a massive animal with a tiny brain, sweet and unassuming though Penny looked. It was knowing that Jesse would touch me again, that the fires he would light across my skin would threaten to merge into one and burn me from the inside out.
But . . . as I looked between his open expression, the clarity in his stormy eyes, and Penny’s calm, stoic vibe . . . I couldn’t refuse him.
‘Five minutes,’ I murmured, unable to help matching his smile.
I followed him out into the corral, half blinded by the sunlight after the peaceful gloom of the barn. My heart was pounding as we walked across the soft dirt.
‘All right,’ he said, giving Penny a pat on the neck as I stood next to her, suddenly conscious of the enormous gap between the ground and the stirrup Jesse had just pulled down. ‘If you put your left boot in the stirrup and your left hand on the pommel –’ He waited for me to do so, stretching as high as I could reach while she stayed mercifully still. ‘Then on three, you push up, and I’ll lift you the rest of the way.’
Swallowing, I nodded, waiting for his countdown – and on three, as I pushed off the ground, his strong hands gripped either side of my waist, lifting me as easily as . . .
Flashes of our hook-ups thundered into my mind, but almost before I realized it, I’d swung my leg over Penny’s back and was sitting astride her. The imprint of his hands remained as he stood back, grinning. Penny all but dozed next to his arm, utterly unperturbed.
‘Holy shit,’ I murmured, registering just how far away the ground was.
He chuckled.
‘Right foot into the other stirrup,’ he said, adjusting the reins and hooking them over the pommel. I nudged the toe of my boot in and tried to adjust myself in the saddle, surprised at how comfortable it actually was, the way the raised back and tall pommel held me in place. ‘Now, sit back a little, keep your back straight – that’s it, that’s perfect,’ he instructed, clicking his tongue and holding the reins at Penny’s head to ask her to walk forward. The motion was strange, a gentle rolling from side to side, but as I sat back, trying to move with it as I’d seen Lottie do before, it wasn’t as terrifying as I’d imagined.
‘This is . . . okay,’ I said, smiling as he beamed at me, walking backwards to check my position as Penny walked slowly on. ‘Do I need to hold the reins?’
‘Sure,’ he replied, before explaining how they worked, his fingers brushing against mine as he lifted the soft leather into my right hand. ‘Try a stop with her, just a gentle pull towards you.’
He let go of her head, her small ears pricking towards him. I did as he’d instructed, pulling back for a moment and staring at him in astonishment as she came to an easy stop.
‘I did it!’ I said stupidly, before leaning down as much as I dared to pat her neck.
‘You look good up there,’ he said, taking me in as he adjusted his hat. ‘Natural cowgirl.’
As I opened my mouth to protest, he moved closer, gently taking my boot in his hand and sliding it out from the stirrup, keeping his hand on my leg.
‘Were you nervous?’ he asked, looking straight up into my face.
For a second we were back in his truck, hands clasped, moments from a kiss that felt as though it might change it all.
In a whisper, he added, ‘No dancing, Jessica.’
Everything around us blurred into nothing; even the fact that I was sitting astride a horse faded away.
‘Not of riding,’ I murmured, my pulse beginning to pound as his eyes flared.
‘Unhook your other boot,’ he ordered, a new, raw quality entering his voice. ‘Then swing your right leg over the front and slide down. I’ll catch you.’
I hesitated, feeling the ground being pulled from beneath me, slowly. But I did it anyway, his hands clasping my waist in the same place as I dismounted. This time, they didn’t let go.
‘Why do I make you nervous?’ he asked, waiting for me to look up, not knowing what to do with my hands, our bodies just inches apart. I met his eyes again, every feeling and emotion rushing in together and meeting with a crash.
‘I don’t trust myself around you,’ I whispered. ‘Every time you touch me . . .’
He clenched his jaw, leaning down.
‘I don’t know how much longer I can go without having you touch me, Jessica,’ he said, running one finger up from my chest, slowing at the nape of my neck. ‘No matter how much I imagine it, or how many times I fuck my own hand in the shower. I want it to be you. I want you.’
I held my breath, vaguely aware that Penny had wandered off in the corral, of the sounds of distant voices, that we weren’t alone.
Reaching between us, I ran my fingers over his belt buckle, increasing the pressure as I moved down. His grip on my waist hardened, his finger trailing up to my jaw, hooking it under my chin to bring me closer.
‘You coming out on the ride today, Hestia?’
Cole’s voice was distant enough that Jesse and I didn’t spring apart, still held in each other’s stare.
‘Not today,’ I called back, keeping my focus on Jesse, knowing he’d read between the lines. ‘Soon, though.’
‘Promise?’ he whispered, his thumb tracing my lower lip for a moment.
I almost lost it there and then, only just withstanding the violence of the urge to consume him, to let him consume me right there.
I nodded, not sure there was a choice any more. Knowing, with more certainty than I’d known anything before, that I wanted him right back.
CHAPTER 10
JESSE
‘So, you going to tell me why we’re going into town right now, in the middle of the working day?’ I asked Cole, trying to work out why his eyes were darting all over – up to the house, the cabins, the drive. ‘Or do I get some kinda prize if I guess? Maybe you’ll finally open that dusty-ass wallet and buy me that drink you owe me?’
Cole just side-eyed me as we shrugged our shirts back on, skin still warm and damp from working in the sun all morning. Truth was, I was just glad to have a break from my own thoughts, especially the ones that pulled up emotion so deep, they scared the shit out of me – like the memory of Hestia meshing so quickly and easily with my family. Not to mention the other thoughts that wove alongside them and hardly let me look at her, even from a distance, without wanting her.
‘I’ll buy you a drink if it means you shut the hell up,’ he offered, fastening buttons as the sleeves strained over his arms. He had the kind of definition gym bros trained for their whole lives and never achieved.
‘We going shirt shopping or something?’ I replied, ignoring him, ignoring my own head and enjoying the way he was fighting not to smile at me. There was something satisfying about cracking Cole, whose hardened, gruff exterior made most folks assume he had an attitude to match his physical dominance. But really, just below that grumpy mule layer was a guy to trust your life with – and one hell of a drinking buddy. ‘You sure that’s not one of Lottie’s shirts? It looks like—’
‘Jesse Bennington!’
We both spun round to see Bailey marching over, her face set as firmly as her words.
Now Cole smiled, shaking his head as he did up the last button. ‘What did I do –’ I began as he chuckled, taking a step to the side as if to let Bailey have a clear shot at me.
‘How long have we been friends?’ she asked, resting her hands on her hips as she reached us.
‘I . . . err . . . I don’t know? About ten years, maybe?’
My brain scrambled, flipping back through memories, landing on the rodeo season after graduating high school. She’d been in Clara’s year, the one above mine. Always a familiar face, but not one I knew well until we started meeting regularly on the circuit.
‘Ten goddamn years,’ she hissed, taking another step towards me. ‘And I have to find out second-hand from Clara that you finally took someone home to meet your mom? That Hestia, your oh so goddamn casual friend, was the one you introduced to them as the most beautiful woman you’ve ever met?’
I was gonna fucking scalp Clara.
‘I – well, look, it was actually Mom that suggested it,’ I retorted, knowing how lame it sounded. Cole’s raised eyebrows and Bailey’s glare confirmed it. ‘Ugh, okay, fine. Yeah, I wanted her to meet Hestia, and my nosy, big-mouth sisters. I just thought, well . . .’
Bailey shook her head, rolling her eyes.
‘I’m fucking with you, you dumbass,’ she crowed, her expression breaking out into a huge grin. She punched me on the arm. ‘I’m just happy about it, that’s all. I know what you’re like in keeping your family outta your love life. So, y’know, it’s good to see somethin’ change.’ I shrugged, smiling as Cole snorted. ‘Hestia’s a goddamn riot and I want her to stay around, so I’m glad she might just be finding a reason to.’
I looked up at her, holding tight to the thought that Hestia might just stay; the thought of what was slowly unfolding between us.
‘Anything else you need to know ahead of time?’ I asked, only just dodging another punch on the arm. I turned towards Cole’s truck as he beckoned me over, the trip into town clearly still at the forefront of his mind.
‘Enough of your sass, Bennington. But yeah, when you guys make it official, if I hear that through anyone other than you or her, you’ll be wishing you were facing down a bull and not me.’
I laughed, climbing into the cab and flipping her off with a grin as she did the same.
‘I fucking knew it,’ Cole murmured as we wound down the drive, his smile smug. ‘So, are you guys . . . together, or . . .?’
