Page 12 of Maverick
I can’t imagine that she’s going to make it to the championship this year. Knocking over barrels like that…
She’s still in the middle of the pack, but I’ve been on the circuit with her long enough to know that’s not good enough for her. Nor is it normal.
I have an awareness of her. I have for a while.
Well, awareness is an understatement. Three years ago, when I decided I had to get it together and get back into things, I saw her leading her horse across the lot, and it was like my body suddenly remembered what lust was.
I don’t know what it was. I can’t take the feeling and spin it into words. It’s like a gold thread that lassoed me then and there and hasn’t let up.
It wasunwelcome, then as it is now.
She’s unwelcome. Bottom line.
I ask myself right then what I would’ve done if Holt or Cade had won.
Well, I would’ve been in a fight. That’s all there is to it. And maybe that’s bullshit. Because I wasn’t going to take her either. But I wouldn’t have been able to stand one of them having her just because theywonher.
If Stella wanted another man, I’d let her go to him with my blessing and be grateful that little handful was tied up and out of my hair.
But knowing that she bet herself, that she didn’t especially want either of them, that’s what I wouldn’t be able to stand.
So I tell myself.
“Morning,” she says. “Coffee?”
“That is mighty nice of you,” I say.
She looks like she wants to punch me.
Fair enough. I’ve been told I’m punchable.
More than once.
True, I think. I was a little shit when I was a kid, running around my small town in Idaho, causing chaos, stealing bags of chips out of the grocery store, and eating them down by the river all by myself while my mom sank deeper and deeper into her drug-fueled haze.
Then I got into fights. Oh lord, I’d fight. With anyone and everyone who looked at me wrong. All that anger so spiky and untamed inside of me had to come out, or I’d explode.
I was completely wild until I got into the after-school rodeo program in high school. Adrenaline, risking life and limb, and a chance to make some money doing it gave me focus. I even almost made some friends. Almost.
What can I say? I’m a difficult bastard at the best of times, and these have not been the best of times.
As Stella is discovering.
And I intend to draw this out. Because this is a life lesson. I’m older than she is. I’ve done a lot more living. I can recognize a train wreck when I see one coming.
This girl needs to check herself before she wrecks herself.
I’m familiar.
And if she has to contend with me— and the irritation of the consequence of what she did last night, rather than a disappointing sexual encounter— she can count her blessings.
Of course, if we’d fucked, it would’ve been good.
My brain goes blank for a moment. Letting myself think about something like that is so foreign now that the thought short-circuits me for a second, honest to God.
The idea of taking Stella and laying her down on the bed and showing her what pleasure is…
Oh Lord.
