Page 41 of Broken Player

She laughed. “Lucky bastard. Maybe someday I’ll get to see where the other half lives, huh?” Her eyes lit up when she talked about my home, and I had to admit I liked it a whole fucking lot. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost after all.

“I’ll take you home whenever you’re ready,” I promised, aware that there was more than one way she could interpret my words, and I meant every one of them.

“I’ll keep that in mind, cowboy.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously. Her face sobered before she continued. “After college, I actually got hired with the LAPD and had just started the academy when the accident happened.”

“What about your sisters? Why aren’t they here?” I wondered where Charlie and Justice were, but I hadn’t felt right asking until now.

“Charlie was in medical school, and Justice was in the middle of college. I’d just started, and so it was easiest for me to walk away and come back,” she said simply as if it weren’t a huge fucking deal for her to give up on her dream to come back here.

We rode up to the fence, and both hopped down. I tied Daisy’s reins around the post before turning to Ryan. “You’re fucking incredible. I hope you know that. There aren’t many people who’d put their dreams on hold the way you have.” I stepped closer to her, wanting to pull her into my arms and feel her against my body, to wrap myself around her and never let go.

She brushed me off, waving her hand in the air as if she weren’t the most selfless and extraordinary woman I’d ever met. If I hadn’t been convinced before, I was now that there was no one equal to her, no one who deserved her. But she made me want to try to be worthy.

“All the boys who want to get in my pants say that,” she flirted, trying to lighten the mood. I could tell my praise made her uncomfortable, but she deserved it all and more. She was the one who deserved everything.

Raising my eyebrow, I stepped closer to her until there were only a couple inches between our bodies. “And how often does it work?” I didn’t want to come off like an asshole, but I was possessive when it came to Ryan. The thought of another man inside of her made me crazy. I wanted to kill anyone who dared to touch her. I was her first kiss, and now I was struck with aburning inside my chest as I clenched my jaw, fighting not to let the jealousy out.

“What? Boys getting in my pants?” She looked like she wanted to laugh at me, but I scowled right back, nodding once. “Uh, never? I was waiting for you, remember? But then you never came back, and I got tired of waiting. So, I met Yates, and here we are, getting married in a couple of weeks.”

My heart soared and then crashed. She saved herself for me? Fuck, I hadn’t been expecting that. And now what had always been made for me was going to be some other man’s. A quiet rage started to build inside of me. Wait. “Yates? That’s his name?” I questioned.

I swear Ryan winced before nodding. “That’s his name. Yates Rutherford.” Damn, I could just picture the kind of guy he must be with a name like that. I committed his name to memory for later.

I clenched my teeth. “Let’s change the subject. What are we doing out here?” I asked, hoping for a distraction and a way to let my anger out without letting Ryan know how bad it was.

She pointed at the grass and brush that had died and taken over a lot of the pasture. “Clearing all this brush out of here so the cattle can start grazing here again. We’ll start over there,” she pointed to the far end of the field, “And work our way back here. Tomorrow Quinn and I will gather it up and burn it.”

I turned back to Daisy and dug into the bag I’d attached to her saddle, pulling out the tools I’d need. “Lead the way, boss,” I said, turning back to Ryan and following her across the pasture.

We started working next to each other, side by side, hacking at the overgrowth. Sweat poured down my back, and I lifted my hat, swiping at my forehead. Ryan’s breathing was heavy as she took a break, too, grabbing a bottle of water and tossing one to me. “Now that you know what I’ve been up to, how about you?I’ve seen a lot in the headlines, but I know a lot of that can’t be true.”

Unfortunately, more of what they wrote about me was true than not, which wasn’t the case with the other guys. But I didn’t mind the fame. I embraced the paparazzi and liked making headlines. Or at least I had early on. Now not so much.

“What do you want to know?” I asked hesitantly, not sure how much I should share about the past decade for me. I lived the rockstar lifestyle to the fullest, enjoying every single perk that came along with being a celebrity. The girls, the booze, the drugs, the money. I loved it all and embraced it wholeheartedly.

She shrugged. “Whatever you want to tell me.”

“When I left here after that night,” I started, not wanting to remind her of that night. “I ran straight to True’s house. We met online on a message board for musicians and chatted for months. His parents offered to take me in, and I finished high school with him. Not long after I showed up, we started messing around musically. He played guitar, and I played bass so we’d jam together. Junior year we met Zen. Jericho went to school with us, but we weren’t friends with him until I decided to take band as an elective.”

She giggled. “Oh my god, you were a band geek.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. You haven’t met Jericho yet, but when I saw what he could do with a set of drums, I convinced True we needed him. It wasn’t even a conscious thing that we were making a band. We just had fun playing together. Once we had Jericho, we needed a singer, and that’s where Zen came in. He and True had a couple of classes together and instantly became friends when he moved to our school.”

“Yeah, I could see that. True seems pretty friendly and outgoing, at least from what I saw the other night,” she agreed.

“He is. But once we realized what we had, we got more serious. We’d practice every free minute we had. Zen wrote ourmusic, and Jericho arranged it. True and I helped, too, but mostly it was them. Once we graduated, we decided to really pursue music as a career, and things happened pretty fast after that. By the time I was twenty, we’d headlined a world tour, had a multi-platinum record and won our first Grammy.”

“Damn,” she said, pulling her cowboy hat off her head and brushing the sweat-soaked strands off her forehead before tightening her ponytail.

“Yeah. The next couple of years were a blur that I don’t really want to get into. I wasn’t exactly someone I was proud of those years. There were a lot of drugs and a lot of women, both of which I regret. But the guys dragged me into rehab about four years ago, and I’ve never looked back.”

She looked a little lost in thought, and I held my breath and waited for her reaction to all the worst parts of my new life. Finally, she looked up at me with nothing but kindness and understanding in her eyes, neither of which I deserved after how I’d treated her. “How about the last four years?” she asked.

I chuckled. “Things have gotten a lot more… domestic, I guess. Not for me, but Zen and True both got married in the last couple of years and either have kids on the way or have kids already. I have a feeling our next tour is going to be wild for a whole new reason.”

She laughed. “Better invest in earplugs. Crying babies are no joke.”

“I don’t mind. I’m the fun uncle, so I’ll get them all hopped up on sugar and then hand them back over,” I explained.

---