Page 2 of The Rough Rider

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I was.

And he’d looked so smug about it that it had made her feel like she mattered at least a little.

When they were done he’d gotten a text from the friend that had come with them.

Better head back to the bar.

But she hadn’t wanted to. She didn’t want to go face people.

I’ll...be in soon.

But instead she’d sat in the parking lot feeling upset and miserable. A big knot in her throat, tears that she couldn’t cry.

Thenhe’dshown up.

You look in need of a ride home, mite.

It had been the lifeline she’d needed.

Yeah, sure.

So she’d texted Travis she was leaving, then taken the ride back home.

She’d had a hard time connecting with Travis after that. He’d been busy working, and then he’d taken another job at a sheep farm in Salem. And Alaina had felt...

She didn’t love Travis.

Heartbreak wasn’t the problem. But she hadn’t expected to have sex for the first time and have it be just one fifteen-minute escapade that hadn’t even resulted in an orgasm.

She’d been under the impression losing her virginity would be transformative in some way and instead she’d felt weird and depressed and not at all more enlightened.

And still very lonely.

Four weeks after her impulsive act, it had become clear to her that if she was bummed about the lack of transformation she’d experienced, her body had a big old consolation prize for her.

And she’d panicked.

She’d texted Travis about it.

Fuck, honey, can’t someone give you a ride to a clinic?

She hadn’t texted him back after that.

The thing was, it was her mess. Her consequence.

She had jumped into...the truck with Travis because she was so desperate to make her hard feelings go away, but this...

This had felt different.

She’d decided to shelve it all until she had to deal with it. She’d hidden her sickness, her listlessness, from her sisters. She’d hidden it from Elsie. She’d plastered a smile on her face and hand waved Travis’s defection.

I didn’t love him anyway, she told Elsie, her tone light,he was just a roll in the hay.

And so now here she was, eight weeks in and her morning sickness was actually worse and she needed a doctor and she...

She had no clue what landing on her feet looked like here.

Alaina Sullivan had reached the end of her certainty and it was a terror she had no idea how to confront.

---