Kissing her once more, I leaned back just enough to stare at her. I wanted to look into her eyes, and I wanted her to look into mine. She wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t with Jesse, and it wasn’t strictly a moment of reckless abandon. I wanted to look into her eyes when I took her so I could see exactly what it felt like to know she was making love to me just like I was making love to her .
It would be a first, and one I knew I’d never forget.
Then, almost like a spotlight, a beam of moonlight broke through the window and illuminated Josie’s face. Where the bruise taking up one whole cheek was darkening. My stomach twisted right after it clenched. I remembered what happened and why we couldn’t do it. Now. Or ever. I might not have directly caused it, but Josie wore that bruise because of me. I moved to roll off of her, but her legs wound around me and didn’t let me go.
“What? What is it?” she asked.
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see what my shit-poor luck had done to Josie, but then I forced them open and made myself look so I’d never forget. So if I ever got the tiniest inclination to throw myself back into Josie’s life, I’d remember the image of her bruised face below me then. “It’s just . . . what happened . . .” The skin between her eyebrows wrinkled. I lifted my thumb to the wrinkle, trying to erase it. “Mason. I can’t stop thinking about what—”
“Colt and me?” she interjected. “Is that what you’re worried about? Colt and me and what happened between us?”
I took a moment to figure out what she meant. “Well, shit . . . No, that wasn’t what I was thinking, but now I am.” I’d never asked Josie about her and Colt’s relationship for two reasons. One, because it was none of my goddamned business. And two, because I didn’t want to know a goddamned detail. Even thinking about Colt Mason’s hands running down the same areas mine just had or about his . . . inside of her . . . I punched the mattress beside her head, trying to get the image out of my mind.
“Garth, stop. There’s no need to get all worked up.” Her hands formed around my face, and she waited for my eyes to shift back to hers.
“No need to get worked up? Another man being with you . . . Another man being . . . intimate with you . . . It’s a lot for me to process, okay? Let’s just leave it at that and forget about it. Forget forget about it.” Truly, if I never had to experience the image of Colt naked and braced over Josie the way I was, that was just fine by me.
“There’s nothing to get worked up about and nothing to forget”—she shook her head when I raised an eyebrow—“or forget forget because nothing ever happened.”
I know I was one flex and slide away from being buried inside of Josie, but I liked to think my brain didn’t strictly run off whatever my dick was doing—or almost doing. But what had Josie just said? Surely she couldn’t have meant . . . “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I don’t know. Are you asking me what I think you’re asking?”
“Okay, I was confused before, but now I’m positively dumbfounded.” I slid Josie’s hair back from her forehead and waited.
“Colt and I never . . .” Biting her lip, she shrugged.
“You and Colt never slept together?” Because I needed it spelled out—especially when it came to the topic at hand.
Josie shook her head. “No.”
If my body hadn’t been beaten to a pulp earlier, I would have attempted a back handspring. “Then who was the last guy you slept with?” I skimmed through my memory banks. Other than Jesse and Colt, I couldn’t recall Josie being with anyone else. I couldn’t remember her being with anyone but . . . I arrived at my conclusion the instant before she replied.
“Well . . . you were.”
That had been two years ago. The last guy she’d been with was me, and that was forever ago. I felt two emotions: pure and utter elation that I was the last man inside Josie and . . . pity. “I was the last guy you slept with? Damn, that sucks for you.” It certainly didn’t suck for me, but it did for her. “At least the first guy you slept with was Jesse fucking Walker. That has to even it out somewhat. Jesse, first. Me, last. Think you could call it even and we cancel each other out?” Damn. I’d slept with so many women over the course of two years I didn’t even want to consider tallying up that number. Especially realizing Josie’s tally was a big fat zero.
“Jesse and I never slept together either.” Josie’s hands stayed planted on my face, and her thumbs stroked my cheeks. It was a soothing gesture, but I should have been soothing her. She hadn’t slept with Jesse, the guy she’d been with for two years, the guy she’d started dating when a teenager’s libido is in full force . . . Which meant . . .
“Fuck,” I muttered as my head became too heavy to hold up. Even with her hands braced around it, the weight was too much. “Are you saying I was your first? That that night was your”—I swallowed and hung my head farther—“that was your first time?”
“You were my first. And you were my last.”
I’d had some heavy bombs dropped on me in my lifetime. Being parentless, penniless, and living out of a truck confirmed that. But Josie admitting I’d been the one to take her virginity in a night of drunken haze and recklessness . . . Not only that, but it had been the first and last time she’d had sex . . . Well, that was the fucking atom bomb of mind-fucks right there.
“Please, Joze, please, please, please, don’t tell me that’s true. I can’t even . . . I don’t even know . . .” That was the truth—I didn’t even know. How I felt, what that meant, how to proceed, and what to do next. I don’t even know became my newest marching beat, and I felt certain it was there to stay.
“There’s one more thing, Black. Since you seem to be taking this so well.” Josie peered up at me with confusion before continuing, “I don’t just want you to be my last right now. I want you to be my last forever. I want to live my last day with you being the last man I’ve been with.”
I muttered one more curse before shoving off the bed hard. I was able to break free of her legs and put the distance between us I needed to think somewhat straight again. After buttoning my jeans back up, I turned to the side in an attempt to stop staring at her naked body still spread out on the bed. “I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this.”
“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, sitting up. “And are you referring to having sex with me or having a relationship with me?”
“Those two things are one and the same for me.”
She huffed. “Says no one you’ve ever fucked, and since you’ve never had a relationship with anyone but yourself, no one’s able to offer their opinions on that.”
“Excuse me for not clarifying. What I meant was that having sex and having a relationship are one and the same when it comes to you, Josie. You.”
“Says the guy with his bag packed and tugging on his boots like he can’t get out of here fast enough.”
I pulled on the other boot before grabbing my shirt. I’d been clouded by Josie’s words and her body, but I’d remembered what I needed to do and why I needed to do it. I couldn’t get away from there quickly enough. I couldn’t linger with her for long enough either. One. Giant. Mind. Fuck. “I need to leave. You know it, and I know it. It’s going to happen one day, and a day sooner is better for both of us than a day later.”
“I know that? I know that?” she huffed again, then tossed a pillow at me. “Stop telling me what I know and don’t know and give me a straight answer. Why are you leaving, Black?”
Minutes ago, she’d been kissing me and making me feel things I didn’t know could be felt. Then we were throwing pillows and words and breaking each other’s hearts. I hated myself, somehow, even more than I ever had. “There are a million reasons I’m leaving. All of them a reason for why we can’t or shouldn’t be together and why it never could or would work out if we tried.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and was either issuing the glare to end all glares or was trying her damnedest to keep from crying. “You know what you need to do? Stop
focusing on all of the reasons we shouldn’t be together and start accepting the reasons we should be.” Josie slid her hands through her hair, shaking her head. “You could take the most perfect couple God ever had the audacity of creating, and if they only focused on the small handful of reasons they shouldn’t be together, I guarantee you they wouldn’t make it. And we’re a long, long shot away from being a perfect couple, so why don’t you cut the glass-half-empty routine and give us a fucking chance. Give us the chance we’ve both been waiting for.”
A chance. That was all I could ask for with Josie. But to give someone a chance, there had to be a probability—small as it might have been—of things turning out okay. We didn’t have even a minuscule probability of turning out all right if we gave us a try. I couldn’t give her a chance because I didn’t have one to give. “It’s too late.”
“You’re a fucking liar.” Another pillow flew at me. “You’re taking the coward’s way out, and if you do this, if you walk away because you’re afraid of hurting me, or messing things up, or whatever it is you’re so terrified of, I’ll never forgive you. You leave me again, and I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”
I grimaced as pain flooded me. I wanted nothing more than to gather her up in my arms and fall asleep together like we had the past few weeks together. That was all I wanted. “That’s okay, Joze. I understand. Hate’s a good thing. It will help you heal quicker. It’ll keep the wound from going too deep and the scar from being too obvious. If hating me’ll make this easier for you, you’ve got my permission to hate me for all of eternity.” Damn, I needed some whiskey. Bottle after bottle after bottle until I’d had enough I forgot her name, and the red cowgirl boots she’d been wearing the first day I met her, and the way hair lightened every summer, and every one of the billion fucking memories I had of Josie Gibson. She wanted to hate me, but I wanted to forget her. Forgetting her was the only way I could survive without her. It wouldn’t be much of a life, nothing more than survival, but I wouldn’t even be able to manage that if I couldn’t find some way to erase her from my mind.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” she snapped. A moment later, her face fell as she slid off the edge of the bed. Josie looked as broken as I felt, and the worst part was not being able to comfort her. “I don’t want to hate you. But there’s no other place to put this love I have for you. It doesn’t just go away, you know? I can’t just flick a switch, and Poof! it’s gone. I can’t just build it one day and dump it the next. It’s always going to be a part of me. If I can’t love you, those intense feelings will morph into something just as intense, but the total opposite. My love for you will have nowhere to go but hate. I’m going to hate you . . . and that breaks my heart.” She started crying, and if I wasn’t so resolved, that would have been my tipping point.
I took one last look at her—curled into herself and crying on the floor. That would be my last memory of my Josie. The girl I’d made a silent vow to always protect, always take care of . . . and she was destroyed thanks to me. The ball in my throat was close to suffocating me. I grabbed my bag and opened that door realizing one thing—Josie would move on to live a happy and full life. Maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not next month, but eventually. She’d find love and protection and consistency in the arms of another man.
“But at least you’ve still got a heart left to break, Joze,” I whispered before leaving the room, the house, and the girl all behind.
DAYS TURNED INTO weeks, and weeks turned into months. I could finally look in a mirror without wanting to slam my fist through it. That first month after leaving Josie, I couldn’t count how many shattered mirrors I left in my wake. Looking in a mirror and hating the person staring back at me wasn’t new, but what had changed was that the eyes staring back were the same ones Josie had looked into as she admitted her love for me. She’d looked into those eyes and said it again and again and again before they had turned away and betrayed her.
I’d hated myself for so long it didn’t feel like hate anymore, but that . . . ? I didn’t have a word extreme or intense enough for how I felt about myself. Utter self-loathing was the closest I could get, but that seemed way too cute for how I really felt.
After leaving the Gibsons’ that night, I’d headed east. I didn’t have any plans. I just went until my gas tank was empty and I felt as physically exhausted as my mind did. I was in Billings. Even though it was my first time there and I didn’t know a thing about it, I moved into a motel room I could rent by the month or the hour and made it home. I didn’t know a single person in or around Billings. It was perfect. I didn’t want to know anybody, and I didn’t want anybody to know me. I found work at an old man’s ranch just outside of town, a place to practice bull riding, and tried to purge my mind of all things Josie. I watched the sunrise that morning after I left her, knowing she would wake up hating me. She was right—that kind of love didn’t just shrivel up and die. It ran too deep and had weaved too far inside of us to just fade away. It was imprinted on our very cores. That kind of love couldn’t be weeded out, so it changed and darkened and morphed into what Josie said—hate. I felt it, too. In my case, it was extreme hate for myself, not for her. So the good thing we had—the best thing I’d ever experienced—I’d managed to twist and break and transform until it turned into thick and heavy hate. I really was a virus.
A month had passed when I recognized one of Willow Springs’s seasonal ranch hands walking into the feed store in downtown Billings. I headed straight back to the motel, packed my duffle, got in my truck, and didn’t stop driving until it was empty again. I wound up in Baker, about as far east as a person could go and still be in Montana. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to stay in the same state I’d grown up in. The same one my mom had fled from, my dad’s charred ashes were blowing through, and where the girl I’d loved and destroyed was. Nothing was behind me but a mountain of bad memories, so if I hadn’t been about empty on gas and money, I would have kept going until I’d crossed into North Dakota.
I worked at another ranch, I rode bulls at another arena, and another month passed. I knew, in theory, my life was going on, but it felt like it had stagnated. Most of it I’d left hundreds of miles west. I’d even left behind two of my favorite pastimes: whiskey and women. I hadn’t had a single sip or felt a single woman beneath me since I left the only home I’d ever known. I knew part of the reason for my newfound abstinence was because I just felt numb. I didn’t need a drink or a woman to help me get there because that was my steady state anymore. The other part, the main part, was doing it for her. She’d never know, but I couldn’t let the love she’d given me and all that she’d sacrificed to be with me be for nothing. I wanted to stay changed, even if we couldn’t be together. I wanted her sacrifice to be matched by one of mine. I wanted her love to leave me changed forever so, somehow, I’d always carry it with me. Saying no to the Jack and the girls was the only way I could honor the love she’d given me. It was all that was left of it because her love had turned to hate.
So I cut off all ties with my old life. Since I didn’t have a cell phone, no one from my old life could reach me. It would only be a matter of time before I ran into someone or someone tracked me down, but I was too busy living in the moment to think about the future. Even five minutes into it.
It was a Friday night, and I was competing in a small-time rodeo just outside of Baker. I didn’t know why I bothered to enter. I still hadn’t managed a single eight-second ride in practice, so I had no reason to think riding in an actual competition would be any different. I suppose, as time had proven again and again, I was a glutton for punishment.
I was up next, and when the guy before me flew out of the gates, I crouched down to scoop up a handful of dirt. Cupping it, I shook my hand and let the dirt sift between my fingers. It was the first time I’d done it, but I’d seen it done plenty of times. When Clay made it to my rodeos, he could always be found staggering around, sifting a handful of dirt between his fingers. I guess it was something he’d
picked up from his dad and used to do as a bull rider himself. I asked him once why he did it, and he’d answered—well, he’d slurred—how could a man expect to stay on top when he didn’t know what was below him? It hadn’t made sense to me then, and it still didn’t make sense to me. But back in his day, Clay Black had been a bull riding legend, so I figured if shaking some arena dirt through his fingers had worked for Clay, I wasn’t above trying it. I’d tried everything else—might as well.
The guy ahead of me managed to stay on a full eight and earned a decent score. Lucky bastard. When my name was called, I dusted off my hands, climbed the chute, and got into position. I didn’t know anything about the bull I’d drawn. I didn’t know anything about the rodeo, or the people competing, or the people in attendance. The only thing I knew was that I had to stay on the back of that damn thing because that was all I had left in life. Bull riding and eight seconds. Those were the last things I had to look forward to, the only things left to aspire to. Sad and pathetic, but the truth. So I weaved my hand through the rope, lifted my other, and emptied my head.
I should have known better. As soon as it was empty, she leapt into it. Josie always had a way of doing that—sneaking up on me when I least expected it. The image of her below me, holding my face and telling me she loved me, rushed into my head. It wasn’t in a hurry to rush out. It stayed until I didn’t see or hear the arena. All I heard and saw was her and those three words. The image was so painful, I winced . . . and the chute flew open. I remembered where I was a moment too late. That bull bucked before hurling into a spin, and I caught so much air I might have been suspended for eight seconds.
But I’d barely made it one on that back of that bull. When I hit the ground, I landed on my chest. My face hit next. I knew what the dirt felt like, and I knew what it tasted like: cow shit and failure. Shoving to a stand, I spit out a mouthful of dirt and chucked my hat across the arena. I didn’t notice the crowd, and I didn’t turn around to make sure the clowns were doing their jobs. I stomped out of that arena swearing if I never saw another one or another bull, I’d be just fine.