“We just said you’re a really private person,” Tarr said. “And we left it at that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Did I get it wrong?”
“No,” Briar said, because he could’ve said so many other things.
He nodded to her phone. “Please just text Bobbie Jo back so she can stop worrying.”
Briar lifted her phone to do that, and with the task done, she shoved her device in her back pocket and repeated her truth for the day:
I want Tarr Olson in my life.
It was the same as yesterday, and at this point, she didn’t know how many times she would have to repeat it to herself, and how many days it would be her truth before she finally accepted it. But she wanted the strength and comfort of his arms around her, so she rushed toward him, taking the two steps and practically barreling into his chest.
He grunted but wrapped his arms around her at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I haven’t looked anything up online,” he said. “But it has taken every ounce of willpower I have not to do that.”
Briar swallowed and stepped back, her hands sliding along the top ridge of his belt and up his chest. “Don’t look online,” she said. “Please. Well—I mean, I guess you can look at my channel.”
His eyebrows went up, every other feature about him so dark and stormy beneath the shadow of his cowboy hat. “You have your own channel?”
She nodded, her throat so raw. It felt like someone had wrapped it in rubber bands and was continuing to twist and twist andtwistuntil she wouldn’t be able to get a breath or speak at all. “I have a trick-riding channel,” she said. “And it’s positive. Some of the commentary that other people do is not complimentary.”
“I can’t imagine anyone not being complimentary of you,” he said, his voice soft and yet so dry, and somehow it made Briar smile.
Tears filled her eyes. “I want you in my life, Tarr Olson. I’m really sorry I hadn’t found a way to tell you about the stunt riding yet.”
“You had a bad accident?” he asked. Everything about him remained unyielding, his mouth barely moving as he spoke. He kept his hands solidly on her back, holding her in place against him, so she had to lean her head back to see him.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It was terrible. I broke both of my legs and a hip and shredded everything up my left side.”
“So that’s where you got those scars.”
She nodded. “That’s where I got the scars.”
“Rosie seemed surprised that you could walk.”
“There was a while there where they said I wouldn’t be able to,” she said. “I went through a couple of years of extremely difficult physical therapy and exercises—having to call perfect strangers to get rides to the doctor because my own family wouldn’t take me, and all of my friends had abandoned me.”
“Because you fell?”
“It was more than a fall.” She pressed her eyes closed, and tears slithered out of the corners of them and down her cheeks. “I caused a huge accident, Tarr. One horse had to be put down, and another stunt rider was in a coma for a month before she woke up. Everyone blamed me—as they should have.”
“I don’t believe that,” Tarr said.
“Well, people aren’t perfect,” she said. “And accidents happen.”
“Yeah, so how could they blame you?”
“Like I said—some of the comments out there aren’t very complimentary. There were people who analyzed the accidentvideos over and over and over, calling into question whether I’d caused the accident on purpose or not.”
Briar had never felt so alone and so out of touch with her own body. “I couldn’t believe it, because I had a pretty decent reputation of being kind, of volunteering for things I didn’t have to, of leading little children around on their Stampede tours, of taking gigs no one else wanted.”
She sighed and opened her eyes again.
Tarr reached up and brushed her tears away in one of the sweetest, most tender gestures anyone had ever done for her.
“But it doesn’t really matter what’s true or not, as long as they get likes and clicks and comments online, right?”
