Page 50 of Riding Jamie

The words hit me like a physical blow, and I stagger a step back. The snow beneath my feet crunches, breaking the silence around us, and both of us flinch. The thought of the world continuing on around me without Jamie at my side is enough to make me sick on its own. Seeing the agony of that same thought on his face makes me want to pass out.

“Okay.” I don’t even know if I’m speaking loud enough for him to hear, but the agreement breaks my heart into pieces. “I’ll be here. I’ll always be here, okay? Figure it out and come back to me.”

That’s all I can ask for. If he comes back to me, I can always keep moving forward. If he comes back to me, I can make it through anything.

The first step I take away from him feels like I’m tearing myself in half. I ignore the tears that drench my cheeks and the way I’m shaking. All I can do now is turn and walk back to the woods, back to the safe shroud of trees where I can collapse away from prying eyes.

I hear Jamie’s breath come out on a bitten off sob as I walk away, and it stalls my own breath in my chest.

Please don’t let this be the last time I walk away from him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

JAMIE

“Dad.”

He’s sitting in front of the TV with a can of beer in his hand, feet propped up on the ottoman. If he wasn’t so goddamn stiff, I might believe he was actually relaxing.

He looks over at me, his eyes lingering on the bright green of my cast before he raises them to meet mine. All I get in response is an arched brow as he sips at his beer. I have to take a deep breath before walking forward, doing my best not to crumple the papers in my fist. They’re already wrinkled and half ruined from Oakley dropping them in the snow as she left and from how many times I’ve looked through them, but they’re still legible for the most part.

“Tell me about Peter Wallace and Chuckles,” I say, holding the papers out to him in a trembling hand.

Thatfinally gets his attention.

He stares at me in shock, almost dropping his beer on the rug. His face shifts to a mask of cool indifference, but his nostrils flare wide in anger. Part of me is surprised that he doesn’t startshouting at me right off the bat, but it looks like he’s so surprised that he can’t find words.

“Oakley gave me these,” I say, tossing the papers in his lap. “Peter Wallace’s nephew is trying to fuck with her family. The paperwork makes it look like you were blackmailing David Montgomery, but she said you two made a bet about Chuckles and he lost. I need to know the truth. I need to hear it from you.”

He looks down at the papers in his lap, but makes no move to touch them. He still has his beer in one hand and the remote in the other. The silence stretches on for so long that I almost expect him to ignore me entirely, but he lifts the remote and turns the TV off.

His hand is shaking when he lifts his beer to his mouth and finishes off the can.

“The Montgomery girl gave you these?” he finally asks.

“Oakley,” I say firmly. “Oakley gave them to me. She talked to her dad about all of it. It’s our turn now. Tell me what happened between you and David Montgomery.”

I’ve never been this blunt with my dad before, never flat outtoldhim what to do. It feels like the right thing to do right now.

“Exactly what she said,” he says. “David and I were friends. We’d make stupid bets on the circuit, low stakes. He won a scratch off for five grand one night, and we made a bet about Chuckles. I picked what I thought was going to be the losing option. It was supposed to be harmless fun.”

My dad looks like a completely different person. He’s usually frowning, or flat out glaring at someone or something. Right now, he looks contemplative and almost soft, like he’s going back to a time in his life when he was less weathered, less weary.

“So what happened?” I ask.

“I won,” he says simply, shrugging. “Chuckles didn’t drink that night, and he made it out before getting trampled half to death for once. David was pissed he lost, got his ass up on hisshoulders about it. We argued, and it just snowballed. Never managed to be friends again, and it’s just been too long to fix it now.”

I bite back the argument that immediately springs to my tongue. My dad has been lonely and angry since my mom died, and if his beef with David is as childish as he’s making it out to be, I see no reason that they couldn’t fix it. Sure, they’re both stubborn, crotchety old men, but if they actually gave it a shot, they could make it work.

“What about Peter Wallace?”

His face twists up into the scowl I’m so used to, and he finally picks up the papers in his lap, rifling through them.

“These from him?” he asks. “They’re conversations between David and I, but they’re all cocked up. Half of this isn’t even from our emails.”

“Oakley is—was—friends with his nephew. She doesn’t know if he’s being used by his family or if he’s in on the whole thing, but he’s the one who gave them to her,” I say. “I don’t trust the asshole, but we can’t do anything if we don’t know the whole story.”

He sighs, rubbing a tired hand over his face, and nods.

---