Page 52 of Maverick
“I’ll fix it.”
I try not to be wounded by that. There’s no point being wounded by it. He doesn’t want to share a bed with me. I already know that. And there’s no point to us doing that anyway. Burning off sexual energy and having orgasms is one thing. A very fun thing, in point of fact.
But cohabitating is another, and neither of us wants the intimacy of that.
I don’t need to ask to know that.
“So, when did you start riding?” he asks as he whips the truck out of his driveway and heads down the dirt road toward the barn.
“I don’t even remember when I didn’t. My parents had us on horses almost before we could walk. We were learning everything we could from a young age. I won State when I was eleven.”
“In your… Your age group?”
“No. Not in my age group. I won at my level. That included adults. It was Medium, it’s not that impressive.”
“It seems impressive to me,” he says.
“It was enough for a while, you know? Pleasing them. I could be the best at what I was doing, and I got so much out of their praise. But the problem is, it got old after a while. Winning felt a little bit too easy, I started to look for other things to use to please myself, and that’s when I got into dying my hair, piercing my nose. I wanted to learn other things, and they simply didn’t want me to. They wanted me to be focused on the things they thought mattered.”
“And to them, the only thing that mattered was dressage?”
“Exactly. Well, they would’ve allowed me to do jumping. But it wasn’t their forte, and it wasn’t as easy to get me involved in that. They had some of the equipment for that, and I did experiment with it. Without permission, which got me in trouble. But it’s okay, honestly. I probably deserved it. Getting in trouble, I mean. Getting on a horse that you don’t know and doing something that you haven’t been trained to do is a bad idea.”
“Well, I can’t really say much, because I don’t know from having a decent childhood, but it sounds to me like they were a little bit hard on you.”
I blink. “Yes. They were. They were hard on Harmony and me. But that’s what makes people great. Success doesn’t come from nothing. And it doesn’t happen spontaneously. You have to be pushed. Because you can’t push yourself as hard as you need to.”
“Not going to lie, that sounds like the kind of propaganda extremely strict parents spread.”
“I mean, I don’t have a great relationship with them. I’m not going to say that they were perfect. But I don’t know what the alternative is. I don’t know, because I don’t know anyone whose parents work like that. We went to a school where academics were important, where everyone was getting pushed. I was also terrible at school. Sometimes I wonder what I did to make myself the undesirable child, but if I’m honest, I do know the answer to that. I couldn’t pay attention in school. I got bored of doing the one thing. And it is doing the one thing over and over again that makes you great. I know that it is. It’s doing the one thing over and over again that makes you exceptional, and if you can’t do that, then you can’t excel. And I wanted to excel. I still do. Anyway, I want to get back into this. On my own terms. I don’t want all those years that I spent learning it to be wasted. I let it get lost in my own bad feelings.”
“I don’t think we waste time in this life.”
“You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t. I mean, I think you can. If you’re stoned out of your mind, not dealing with the things around you, then yeah, I think you’re wasting the experiences that come your way. But as far as what you’re talking about, learning something, pursuing it, it’s not wasted just because you don’t get all the way to the end.”
“Is that how you feel about the rodeo?”
I feel a little bit mean asking that question. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her I was going to do it. So God damn, I’m going to do it.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then I just keep trying until I can’t walk anymore.”
I snort. “That sounds super reasonable, Maverick.”
“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to. I’m a very reasonable guy.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while as we keep on driving. The trip to the barn is short, but it’s lovely. I can understand why he chose this place. Though I do have questions. If he’s from here, this area, if he met Sadie here. How he met Sadie. I think that he doesn’t especially want to talk about her with me. Or maybe it isn’t me specifically. Maybe it’s anyone.
But I hold the conversation until we get out of the truck. After which I’m immediately distracted by the excitement of getting to ride Frank. “That was mean,” I say as we head into the barn. “Giving that beautiful animal a nickname like Frank.”
“I’m mean,” he says, looking at me with a smile on his face that makes my stomach flip. Maybe he is mean. But he’s sexy as hell. Also, he’s not that mean. He has a beautiful house that he was creating a beautiful life in. He’s loved someone before. Hegrieves that person. He makes sure that I have three orgasms before he even has one.
