“Rose,” he breathed, free hand pressing to my stomach to slow me. “Move with me. Feel the stride of the horse, and stop fighting the rhythm.”
My initial instinct was to sayfuck you, asshole.I didn’t ask to ride on the horse with him, and he knew I had no experience with them. But arguing was not going to help the situation, so I decided to just pause a moment and listen.
Jace picked up the pace again by gently kicking his heels into the horse’s side, and we moved together, slower at first, until eventually I was sliding with him and not against. Sliding and grinding, and biting my tongue, because there was a sensuality to horse riding that I really hadn’t expected.
Especially not with Jace, but as the weak sun beat down on us, the cool wind whipping over our faces, a peace settled between us. It lasted until we entered a thicker patch of forest, following a small river that must have been part of Rhett’s directions. Once the canopy covered us, the light faded a touch, and I caught sight of a glint of silver on the horizon. That shiny exterior of the RV returned Jace and me to reality. Reality and our near decade-long feud.
“Why won’t you tell me why you really left?” he asked as we slowed once more, the brush around us too dense for a faster gait. “I mean, we can’t go back in time to change anything, so what does it hurt?”
It hurt me. That’s what it hurt.
“I don’t talk about that year,” I said, clenching my teeth so hard that I almost bit my tongue off. “I can’t relive it. I won’t.”
I waited for him to curse and demand the information from me, but he didn’t. He dropped his head against my shoulder, and my heart lurched in my chest. “Whatever it was, Rose,” he rasped, “it broke us. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get past that.”
Whatever pain I’d been experiencing in my lower half was forgotten as my throat tightened to the point I couldn’t breathe. His words, indicating that at some point we’d permanently part ways, never to be Jace and Billie again, broke me. Fuck, I hadn’t even realized there was still enough of us left to break, but apparently, I’d been holding on in ways I’d refused to acknowledge.
Jace’s raw honesty today forced me to.
“I don’t know either,” I managed to choke out, the burn of tears clouding my vision, even as the silver Airstream grew closer. Rhett was already there, so we had these few seconds of privacy, and it appeared I was going to use them to bawl my eyes out.
Jace lifted his head, cleared his throat behind me, and the angst that had been holding us vanished. He pulled himself together so quickly that it was as if a magic wand had been waved over the top of him, bringing forth the rock star bad boy once more. When we came to a halt, he slid off, and I wondered if he was just going to stride away and leave me stranded on the big beast, but thankfully, enough of his decency remained that he reached up and slowly dragged me off and down his body.
When I landed on the ground, my legs were weak, and he held me steady. “Take a second,” he said flatly before he released his hold. “You need to get the blood pumping through your legs again.”
I nodded, my eyes burning so badly from holding back tears that it was growing quite painful. Jace didn’t bother to hang around to see my breakdown though, as he turned to help Rhett, who was attempting to find the key to the trailer. When I was alone, just the untethered horse behind me, I gulped in some air, but it didn’t help.
The tears were too hot, too painful, too explosive to stop. I had to let them free, or I’d choke on the sorrow. I’d learned that the hard way when I’d tried not to fall apart eight years ago.
Losing a baby was an agony like nothing I’d ever experienced, but losing Jace and Angelo had been a close second. Losing all three… it was half a miracle I was still even in this world, walking around and breathing. I’d had to be hospitalized back then, and if I didn’t deal with my sorrow today, I’d likely find myself right back in that bed. Sedated. A shadow of myself.
The first tear felt like acid against my skin, hot and painful, burning a path until it hit my lip and rested there. I could taste the saltiness, and I closed my eyes against the memories. The next tear fell faster, and the rest followed in a relentless assault that would be stemmed by nothing but time.
Time to release the pain, time to breathe deeply, time to mourn another loss.
When gentle hands wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me against a hard chest, I expected that it would be Rhett.
“Rose,” Jace rumbled, and I choked on a sob as he pulled me tight against him. “Fuck. Don’t cry.”
I’d cried fucking oceans over this guy, and here he was, alldon’t cry.
The intensity and sound of my sobs increased, partly to spite this asshole and partly because the pain in my chest kept growing stronger. Had I let this go on too long?
His hands tangled roughly in my hair as he closed his fist and jerked my head back. Firm lips crashed against mine, and the salt of my tears mixing with that familiar taste of Jace jolted me from my state of painful brokenness.
A moaning sob escaped, and I opened my lips further, needing more. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured in that sexy-as-sin voice. “I promise. Just… don’t leave again. Give this time to heal.”
Jace’s continued anger toward me made a lot of sense when I looked at it through his eyes. I was the chick who kept leaving, and in doing so, I’d damaged his ability to trust or believe in us.
His damage was on me, and it was up to me to fix it. Only there was no way I could when he clearly thought we were past the point of repair. That’s what he’d said on the horse, and yet here he was, asking me not to leave again so we had time to heal. Dude was giving me whiplash.
When he pulled away, that coldly blank expression was back on his face, but he did stroke a thumb across my cheek to remove the last of my tears. “We’re in survival mode,” he reminded me, straightening. “There’s nothing else to deal with until that passes. No more truth and dare. No more revisiting the past.”
Two statements I could agree with, since I wasn’t sure I could handle more dredged up feelings. Not after the emotional turmoil of the last few days. Fuck, who was I kidding. The last few months and years.
He left me again, but this time it was to deal with the horses, as he found a small dry trough that he filled from a tap. I guessed they had a tank somewhere or maybe a well had been dug, but thankfully, there was enough water for the horses to drink and enough grass for them to graze on the spot. As I moved closer to Jace, Rhett returned from the RV, having figured out how to open the door. “Will you tie the horses up?” I asked when Rhett stopped by my side.
“I can’t really keep them tied up for days,” Jace answered, patting one on the side of the neck. “I think I’ll just leave them to graze and hope they come back for water. Chances are that we won’t need them again, since Brenda should be here in a few days as planned.”
