Page 2 of Rescued By the Alien Bull Rider

Haven’t even been riding her.

Guilt plunged into me, grabbing onto my grief and twisting it.

He was right.

“Well, there’s a reason for that!” I cried. I pulled the ultrasound pictures from my pocket and threw them angrily down on the ground between us. “I’m fucking pregnant!”

Pa’s eyes went to the images strewn about in the dirt. The colour rushed from his face, as if all his body’s blood was suddenly required in his boots.

Maybe I was a bitch for bringing it up this way. To announce my pregnancy on the heels of him mentioning my riding – or lack thereof.

Mama was thrown from a horse late in her pregnancy with me. She laboured – then hemorrhaged – alone in the fields until Pa found her and she was rushed into an emergency C-section that came just in time for me but too late for her.

I should have ridden Glory more.

Glory had always been a docile, gentle, obedient horse. Whenever tourists showed up, looking for a little slice of that authentic New Alberta experience, she was the one I trotted out to let the nervous kids ride on. She wouldn’t have thrown me. Would never have hurt me.

And now I’d fucking lost her. I’d gotten scared, and that fear took her away from me as surely as the rich Elora Station buyer.

As surely as Pa did.

“Who’s the father?” Pa sounded like he just took a hoof to the windpipe.

“One of the tourists who came through last year,” I said flatly. I barely remembered Paul’s face at this point. All I remembered was blond hair, a loud laugh, breath that smelled like beer. “I contacted him after he left Terratribe II to let him know the news, but he blocked me.”

Pa breathed out and dragged his hand through his greying hair.

“Impulsive,” he said. “Reckless. You always have been, Jolene. You never fucking think!”

“I thought my pulse treatment was effective for another few weeks! And-”

“If you’re keeping that baby,” he cut me off with a voice like a blade of ice, “then you’re not doing it here.”

The nausea was back. I reached out shakily, grasping onto a wooden post framing an empty stall for support.

“What?” I gasped. Why was it so suddenly hard to breathe? Baby Girl wiggled. But I barely registered it.

“You heard me,” Pa said. He wrenched his gaze away from the ultrasound images, away from me, away from everything. He stared out the open stable doors, glaring into the setting sun. “You’re twenty-three years old. You want to make grown-ass decisions, raise this baby on your own? Then you can do it in your own damn house. Not under my roof.”

“Raise this baby on my own?” Tears stung my eyes and heated my cheeks. I violently slapped them away. “I didn’t think I’d be doing it on my own! I thought I’d be doing it with you!”

When Pa spoke again next, he didn’t sound angry. He just sounded fucking empty.

“I already raised one baby that wasn’t mine,” he said in a hollow voice. “I’m not doing it again.”

His reply hit me as hard as a punch. I couldn’t speak. There were no words and too many all at once. I almost walked right out of the stables then, but I couldn’t bear to leave the pictures of Baby Girl lying there abandoned in the dirt. Because even though she wasn’t planned, even though she’d changed everything, she was mine. My quietly, constantly growing little secret over the past months. My tiny kicking horse. My daughter.

I already loved her. And if Pa wouldn’t, then there was nothing else for it. I refused to raise her where she wasn’t wanted. Where she would be a burden instead of a blessing. I’d already had more than twenty years of that and I was fucking through.

A cooling resolve worked its way through my limbs, numbing the tears. I could be strong for her even if I couldn’t be strong formyself. Unfortunately, some of the dignity in that new emotion was erased by the truly heinous measures I had to engage in simply to get myself down to the ground with my big belly and loosey-goosey hip joints. Grunting, down on one knee, I clutched the pictures of Baby Girl, now dusty, in my hands. I took a moment to breathe before I steeled myself to begin the laborious process of getting back up.

In the end, Pa was the one who left the stables first.

Later that evening, once the Terratribe II sun had set, I found myself with one packed bag and very little money at Sal’s. Sal’s was a bar technically calledOl’ Bison, as proclaimed by the hanging wooden sign with the big horns outside the front door. But only the tourists called it that. To locals, it was always just Sal’s, a drinking joint with lots of wood accents and photos of Old-Earth Alberta – Banff, ranches, and the Calgary Stampede – framed on all the walls.

“Jesus, Jolene,” Sal said from behind the bar as I sat my sorry butt down on one of the stools. “I haven’t seen you in…”

“Nine months?” I grumbled.

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