Page 41 of Freeing the Wild
I keep my eyes ahead, avoiding her gaze.“I had a football scholarship to UK.”
“So youwerea celebrity?”she muses with a small smile.
“Everyone else seemed to think so—’specially my dad.”
“And?”
“It’s a lackluster story.I don’t talk about it much,” I deflect, determined to keep this conversation surface-level.Until I see her face drop out of the corner of my eye.Fuck.Maybe sheneedsto hear someone else has been in her shoes.I sigh and bite the bullet.
“I played football in high school, and my first year of college,” I admit with a gruff sigh.
“The town’s golden-boy quarterback?Just as I thought.”Cassie straightens her hat.We’ve slowed to a walk now and her cheeks are even more flushed than when we left.I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a frustratingly beautiful woman.
“Tight end.And you’re wrong.I was never a golden boy.I had to bust my ass at two jobs in order to pay for my gear and for camps.We never had much.My dad has worked as a landscaper for years and, after my mom left, we moved to the less desirable side of town.My dad hated it there.He said he worked too hard for us to live on the ‘wrong side of the tracks.’But without my mom’s pay, it was all we could afford.I spent every summer in camp, every fall and part of winter totally immersed in training.Six days a week, I was a machine.My dad gave me what he could to help, but he was never the same after my mother left us.He pinned everything on me, and that’s the only reason he supported me.He wanted me to make it to the NFL.I guess he figured it would benefit him in the long run.”
“Drinker?”Cassie asks, and I see the hollow ghosts of a past life in her eyes.I know Glenda used to drink.There’s probably a lot Cassie’s got buried.
“Yeah, he drank some.But gambled more,” I say.
“How old were you?When she left?”
“Ten,” I tell her.“My dad wasn’t very nice to her.He never hit her.But he manipulated her and cheated on her.I can’t blame her for leaving.Though that didn’t stop me staring out of our front window for hours on end, waiting for her to come back.”
Hell, Cassie probably didn’t need to know that part.But she doesn’t pry, just nods.
“Well, that’s something we have in common.I was around the same age when my daddy died.After that my mom went off the rails.Ivy was more like my mom for a while.”
I watch her turn her face to the late-afternoon sun that floods the pasture.The trees are still, and the sky is bright blue, the morning snow all but gone.Some of the horses are out in the field as we reach the barns.
“What was your dad like?”I ask, unable to stop myself.
“He was the best man I’ve ever known.He used to listen to me and Ivy make music for hours at a time.She would play the guitar and I would sing.Then I learned to play …” Her eyes shine with the memory.“Even when I was practicing the same verses over and over, learning the chords until my fingers were blistered, he loved it.Was your dad ever supportive like that?”
I bark out a deep laugh.
“No, he was a selfish prick mostly.He pushed me so much that I knew by tenth grade I didn’t have a passion for football anymore.All I wanted was to be normal; to hang out with friends, to be irresponsible.I couldn’t even drink a beer or stay out late.I always had practice of some kind.”
“Why did you keep doing it?”
I shrug as Ivy and our resident jockey, Rowan McCoy, leave the office and head toward us.
“I just didn’t know any different.Training, playing, being better, getting better.Football was everything to me.”
Fuck.I give my head a shake.This wasn’t supposed to be a “Haden tells all” trail ride.
“I loved horses growing up.Riding was when I felt the most at peace.When my dad died, I continued to take the horses out until we lost our land.Ivy made her life out of it—I think to feel closer to my dad—and I made mine with music.”She pats Aspen as her blue eyes turn to mine.“But I always missed this.What about you?Was this how you envisioned your life?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.“I was always around horses when I was a kid too.My cousin had a ranch out near Colfax.I was there every chance I got, and spent most of the summers there until my mom left, and even a little time after with my aunt.”
I tell her about my cousins as we cool our horses down, and I make a mash of alfalfa and electrolytes for them.“But once I started playing ball, I never went back,” I finish as we take it to our horses in their stalls.“Being on their ranch, it felt like I was making a difference to the horses’ lives.That’s when I knew I wanted to work with animals.But to do that, I had to go to college, and football was the only way I could get there.I had a free ride.I started undergrad hoping to major in Equine Management but I only made it part of the first year.I blew my knee out in the quarterfinals.”
“They made you leave?”she asks as she takes her hat off and sets it on the bench behind us.The same place she sat the day I met her.I remember the woman she was then – as I study the one here now – and I can’t help but wonder again what else is hiding behind those icy eyes.
“They let me finish the semester,” I tell her.“I couldn’t afford it after that, and I couldn’t get a loan for it either.My dad’s credit was shit and I had none.”
I clear my throat, willing myself to stop telling her my life’s story, but somehow she’s easy to talk to.Even if I don’t want her to be.
I watch her groom Aspen from the aisle of the barn.She looks incredible in those faded light blue jeans that should be fucking illegal, hugging every single curve.For the first time since I laid eyes on her in September, I want a woman again.Her.And I hate it because Ishouldn’t; not after the memory she left me with.I almost feel the warm air between us when we kissed, when my hands ran over her—
