“Do you ever think about going back?” I knew I was breaching probably very sensitive territory, but it was something I had been curious about and hadn’t had the chance to ask her about until now.
She went eerily still. “To barrel racing?”
“Yeah.”
She took a long sip of champagne, nearly draining half the glass. “I’m too old for that.” Her voice was sad, distant. Full of regret.
I was the one snorting now. “The hell you are. There are racers in their fifties, and I know you know that, so what’s the real reason?”
“I won’t have time now with Cavendish.” The excuse came fast. Too fast. Like she had it ready just in case it ever came up.
“You’ll have Delilah and Emmett to help out. And me when I’m not doin’ Circle M shit.”
There was a long pause. I leaned down and found her staring out into the pastures. Her face was illuminated in the soft golden glow of the sunset. “What if I did go back and wasn’t any good? What if that was my one shot?” I could tell by the tone of her voice that the fear had been lingering for a while.
“Then you pull yourself back up by the bootstraps and try again. You probably won’t be any good at first, but you got good once, you could do it again if you really wanted to.” I kissed her temple. “Hell, you’re about to have the arena space to practice.”
“Yeah,” was all she said, and I knew she was done talking about it. She reached blindly next to us, grabbed a piece of chocolate, and popped it into her mouth. “I love Kit Kats, they’re my favorite.”
I grinned to myself. “I know.”
She sat up, looking at me over her shoulder. “How’d you know? You ask Savvy?” She grabbed another and ate that one.
For some reason, I was nervous to admit to her what I knew this conversation would lead to. I took a large sip of champagne. “I remembered.”
She stopped chewing, her brows furrowing. “You remembered.”
I nodded. “Mhm,” I hummed, draining my glass.
She faced me fully. “From when we were children?Seventeenyears ago?”
“Yes.”
“Wha—how?”
I let out a heavy breath. “Well, when I was thinking about what I could do for you today, I realized I actually knew…a lot about you from back then.” I reached out, brushing her hair behind her ear. “See, the thing is, I noticed you lookin’ at me so much because I was already lookin’ at you.”
Her lips parted, and she stared at me for a long, hard second, her eyes darting between mine. “Are you saying you had a crush on me?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I think so. I didn’t realize it then, but lookin’ back, that’s definitely what it was. I just thought you were my favorite of the girls, but it was more than that.”
“You asshole!” She shoved me back, both of us fully laughing now. “After giving me all that shit for checking you out, and you were doing the same damn thing!”
“So you finally admit that you were checking me out when we were naked? You weren’t just ‘fulfilling morbid curiosity’?”
Her face flushed pink. “When we were naked,” she mocked, making her voice as deep as she could. “You make it sound so scandalous.”
“Okay. WhenIwas naked, andyouheld my clothes hostage.”
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head at me. “You sure do like to exaggerate.”
“There’s no exaggerating how hard you looked when I came out of that clearing drippin’ wet and buck ass naked.”
“Oh my God, I’m leaving.” She tried to get up, cheeks now a glorious red.
I pulled her back down on top of me, wrapping my arms around her waist as she straddled me. “Like hell you are. You’re stuck with me now, baby.”
Claire smirked, humming contentedly. “That sounds nice.”
