Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

“You have to understand how fucking broken I am!” She throws her arms out, features strained and red with frustration.

“I do understand!” I yell at her. “I’ve understood from the day I first saw you. The day I decided I was going to protect you no matter what. That I was going to be there for you no matter what. And I know that maybe my love isn’t enough to fix all the horrible shit that was done to you and I know I tried in my own way and I just made things worse and I get that being here is hard and it’s not just about me. Okay, I know. But why can’t I be there for you in the here and now? Why can’t we work through this together? You don’t have to repair yourself on your own.”

“Maybe I do,” she says, rubbing her lips together. “It’s what I’ve been doing so far. Six years is a long time.”

“But it’s not as long as the rest of your life.” I study her, my chest feeling like I’ve got a jackhammer inside, all my nerves on fire. I’m high as the fucking sun one minute and the next I’m slipping in a raven’s grave. “Rachel. Everything you feel you need to do, you don’t need to do it alone anymore. I’m here for you whether you like it or not.”

She watches me for a moment and I can’t tell if she’s just weighing her options or letting anything sink in. Then she just nods at me. “I’m going to go pee.” She goes behind the pines just a few feet away and I turn, giving her privacy, feeling like my heart has been trodden on by a million hooves.

When she returns, I’ve got mostly everything packed up.

Since Sybil didn’t make an appearance during the night, she gets on Polly, I stay on foot and lead the way, Fletcher on the other side of me until I’ve decided he’s had enough and put him up on the horse with Rachel. He’s a pro at this, a dog that can ride.

We do this for hours, until my feet are screaming with pain inside my boots from walking for so long, but I want to give Rachel her distance. She needs it, even if it’s just her up on a horse and me in front of her.

We’re a kilometer from the ranch when I spot the ghostly form of Sybil grazing on the dry grass to the right of us.

“And there she is,” I say, mainly to myself.

Sybil raises her head, eyeing us and I pretend to ignore her, hoping it will spur on her interest. If I go after her and push her, she’ll just back up and run. Usually this tactic doesn’t work as well with horses as it does with humans but after a few moments she slowly starts walking behind us, not wanting to be left behind.

It’s then that Rachel finally says something. Guess it works on her too.

“Shane.”

“Yeah?” I look over my shoulder at her.

She stares at me, her expression open, almost…hopeful. “No matter what happens, I don’t want to leave it like this. We owe each other more than that. After all this time. Can we keep being with each other like this?” She licks her lips, nervous. “Do you think we can just try and make every second count?”

I know what she’s asking. Let’s be together until she leaves. But if my heart is barely holding on now, what’s going to happen to it when she’s gone?

How the fuck can I go through that all over again?

But I’m a fool.

And I’m in love.

So I say yes.

We’ll make every damn second count.





18





Rachel





The next few days crawl past.

The worker’s cottage is thick with dust and heat and all the angry words I’d exchanged with my mother before I left on the ride with Shane.

It’s laden with guilt and hurt and the two of us are too stubborn to break it down, to deal with it, to face it head on.

I faced a bear and lived to tell about it and yet facing truths with my own mother seems scarier than anything else.

We avoid each other. My mother spends a lot of time in the main house with Hank and Dick. I spend my days with Shane, including going to the vet with Fletcher. The lucky dog only needed a dose of antibiotics for the small wound and some time off his sprained leg. The rest of the time, it’s like the old days, me helping Shane around the ranch with whatever he needs.

And then there’s the sex.

Oh yes.

I knew that when we had come back to the ranch after being out on the range that things would be different between the two of us. I knew that as good as the sex was, as needed as it was, it was something we should probably avoid doing again. It made us intimate and through intimacy we fought.

And made up.

Again and again.

Making every second count.

Even though I know being with him is just going to make things harder in the end, I can’t stay away from Shane any more than he can stay away from me. My hands yearn to touch him, my lips burn to kiss him. As swift and helpless as a raft on the river, I am drawn to him repeatedly, ignoring where the current is leading us. It’s in his arms where I feel myself becoming more alive, where I transform.

I grew up feeling like a weed in the garden, unwanted, cowering, left to die. Bit by bit, year by year, I worked through it and tried to grow, to blossom, and it came, slowly, but surely. I learned to let myself bloom. But when I’m with Shane, it’s more than letting myself take up space and shine. He makes me want to grow wild, to run rampant, to unapologetically thrive.

I just wish it didn’t scare me so damn much.

Because even if this is for a short time, how on earth is my heart going to survive when I leave? He told me he still loved me, something I’d slowly come to realize out here at Ravenswood Ranch. He told me he never stopped and I felt it in the marrow of my bones, a truth that I can’t shake, that I can’t escape from. He loves me fiercely, with abandon, the kind of love that sets fire to things until we’re standing in the ashes.

And in those seconds we have together, I’m trying so fucking hard to keep myself together, to not let his love consume me.

Because, god, how easy that would be.

Then, good news comes in. My mother has a surgery scheduled.

I decide to drive her. I know it’s not ideal but like hell I wouldn’t be there for her. That’s the thing about family, about loved ones, is even when you’re at odds with each other, even when there are more negative emotions rolling out of you than good, you won’t abandon them. You’ll be there for them.

At least that’s what I’m learning.

I’ve been learning a lot these days.

The drive to Vancouver is long and awkward. Painfully so. We barely talk. She’s lost in her own thoughts and I’m lost in mine.