It’s been a week since the day I cleaned out Shelby’s studio and we spent the night together in the tack room, and we’d spent every night since then doing it again and again. We never made plans to meet, we just kept showing up at the same time, long after the workers had all gone home. Sometimes I’d get there first and have the music playing when she got there, and sometimes she got there first and I was able to spend a few minutes standing in the back of the room, silently watching her stretch out her muscles. When she’d catch my eyes in the mirror, she’d apologize for not giving me much to look at like she did six years ago, and I’d reassure her it didn’t matter. Just knowing she was trying and actually looked happy doing it was all that mattered to me. I didn’t know much about her injury other than what Meredith had told me the night she took me to the high school and I didn’t want to upset Shelby by asking about it before she was ready. The only thing that kept echoing through my mind was the night she broke down right in that studio, so lost and hurting when she told me she couldn’t hear the music anymore. I just wanted to give that back to her, any way I could. I wanted her to remember what it was like to have hope and know she could do anything she put her mind to.
Every night for a week, we’d dance together in that studio until the temptation of holding each other and touching each other became too much and we’d wordlessly move to the tack room and spend the night making up for all the time we lost. We could have come back here, we could have gone to her guest house, and we could have gone a hundred different places to be alone, but always wound up back in that damn tack room. There was something familiar about being there, like we were reliving the past, and I don’t think either of us wanted to break the spell just yet and join the real world. Waking up each morning with Shelby in my arms, the two of us laughing while we scrambled around for our clothes so we could sneak out of the barn without anyone seeing us, felt just like old times. I know it should make me happy that we’d so easily fallen back into our old habits, but it didn’t. We weren’t the same people we’d been six years ago and we couldn’t turn back time and make everything that had happened during that time disappear. There was nothing better than touching her again, being inside her again, and kissing her again when I’d done nothing but dream of those things for so long, but we couldn’t keep doing this forever. We needed to talk. I needed to know what she wanted and I needed to make damn sure she knew where I stood and what I wanted.
I couldn’t keep ignoring the fact that every night we were together, her cell phone would ping with several incoming texts and she’d shrug them off and tell me they were nothing important. I saw who they were from when she’d glance at her phone before quickly shoving it away. I knew she had someone else in her life, and I knew we needed to talk about it, as pissed off as that made me.
“So, you’re finally going to bring her here instead of slinking out every night to meet her at the stables?” Rylan asks, giving me a knowing look when I glare at him. “I see all and I know all. Also, you’re not the quietest guy in the world when you’re trying to sneak out of the house late at night.”
He laughs with a cocky smile as he pushes himself up from the couch and walks into the kitchen.
“You need a job. Or a hobby,” I tell him irritably as he flops down on one of the bar stools lining the island in the middle of the kitchen.
“Why do I need a job when I have you for a sugar daddy? he asks with a wink. “And my hobby is watching you try not to fuck this shit up with Shelby. Again. It brings me great joy to see you bumbling around like an idiot without a plan.”
“I have a plan,” I tell him through clenched teeth.
“You had one plan—to clean up her studio and get her to dance again. Mission accomplished and it got you laid. Repeatedly. Nice work, by the way, but I think you’re going to have to work a little harder than that to get what you want. You might have to, dare I say, talk to each other. About important shit,” he reminds me.
“Which is exactly why she’s coming here tonight instead of us meeting at the studio, where it’s too easy for us to fall back into old habits,” I inform him, even though I don’t know why I continue confiding in him when he takes entirely too much joy out of making fun of me and riding my ass.
“And you’re seriously letting all that shit go about your parents’ accident? You’re okay with forgetting about what happened and not getting the truth after all these years?” he questions.
I shrug as I grab my keys from the bowl on the counter.
“Paul was right. It was a long time ago. As much as I want justice and as much as it kills me knowing someone else was responsible and will never pay the price, some things are better left alone and some things are worth more than retaliation,” I explain to him as I head to the front door, Rylan sliding off the bar stool to follow behind me. “The only good thing that came from the hell we lived through is that I know we’re not always guaranteed to live another day. I’m not going to waste the time I was given back focusing on something that isn’t worth it. Being pissed all the time and hating someone for what they did to my family…it’s not worth it. It’s not going to make me happy and it sure as hell isn’t going to make Shelby happy. She deserves to finally be happy again and I’m not going to fuck that up by ruining her life a second time.”
With my hand on the doorknob, I glance at Rylan over my shoulder. “I sound like a pussy, don’t I?”
He laughs, leaning his shoulder against the wall and crossing his arms in front of him.
“Of course you sound like a pussy, but it’s better than you sounding like a selfish asshole. You can’t say talking to a shrink isn’t working for you. You’re like the poster child for Therapy worked for me and it can work for you, too!” he cheers, throwing a fist up in the air.
“Seriously, when are you going to get a job and move out?” I grumble as I open the door and head outside to run to the grocery store so I can grab what I need to make dinner for Shelby.
“I’ll leave when you don’t need me anymore!” he shouts with a laugh.
Chapter 22
Shelby
December 12, 2010
Shelby,
I know you think one of my favorite things was to watch you dance, but actually, one of my favorite things to do was just be with you. Any way I could. I miss being able to talk to you. About anything. About everything. I even miss how whenever one of us wanted to talk about something heavy and deep, we could easily make it lighter, easily distract each other so the time we spent together wasn’t wasted with worries and what-ifs. And even though I know we have a lot of heavy and deep to talk about when I get home, I still can’t wait to be distracted by you again. I love you, Shelby. Only you. Always you.
You and I had been inseparable for weeks. Whatever free time either of us had, we spent it together and I didn’t even care how much sleep I was losing or how exhausted I was every day at my two jobs. You finally realized I wasn’t going anywhere and you finally stopped fighting me every step of the way, opening up to me and letting me see the strong, amazing woman you’d become.
“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” you asked, quickly switching to a new topic.
I tried to hide the scowl on my face when you told me about some douche bag your mother had been trying to set you up with for years. I did my best to not let my jealousy show when you told me your mother invited him over for dinner that night and demanded you be there, but obviously I hadn’t done a great job.
We were lying in the grass a few acres away from the stables, me on my back and you on your stomach by my side, your chin resting on top of your hands as you looked over at me.
“Wherever you are,” I told you with a smile.
You laughed and shook your head at me.
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” I told you with an easy shrug.
“We barely know each other,” you countered.