I did it.
I actually... did it.
Even an hour later, as I sank down on to the bed of my motel with a gushing breath, it was still unbelievable. I laid down onto the musty sheets, ignoring the stagnant smell that had soaked into the room.
There was only one motel in the small rural town of Fellpeak and it wasn’t exactly five-star. There wasn’t much in the room but an old television mounted on the yellowed doily-decorated side table in the corner of the room, looking like it’d collapse under a single breath. The tiny bathroom wasn’t much more: rusty shower, toilet, sink, and cracked mirror. There wasn’t even a lamp or a complementary Bible.
Even so, poor accommodations meant little to me when I knew that this was where I was going to be until Max got better. Where I’d go after that was a different story that I didn’t have to face just yet.
I turned my head, breathing in the bitter lemon-wash scent of the sheets and found my eyes wandering beyond the crack in the floral curtains. Outside, I could see the pale blue of my truck beneath the layer of rust; the sight of it without the plain silver trailer was an eyesore. My heart was already aching at the thought of Max being so physically far away from me. Mentally, she hadn’t been there for a long time, the last two years had been hard on her after the attack, but my hope had carried me here, to this town, and back to Jackson.
He’d taken Max off my hands within moments of agreeing to my plea, and then he hadn’t even let me give him so much as a thank you before he kicked me out of his compound.
The sour taste still sat at the back of my throat at the thought of our confrontation. Coming to Jackson after so many years had been risky, but he was my final option after having bled America dry of every horse expert it had to offer. Everyone had taken one look at her and told me the best thing to do would be to put her down. Selfish as it may have seemed to drag a traumatized horse around the country, I couldn’t give her up so easily. After losing the one place I had belonged, Max had become my everything. She had been there when I was young and stubborn, and I thought she would be with me until I was much older. In the last few years, Max was my only comfort, galloping through the fields on her back like I was young again, wondering if maybe, just for a moment, I could ride back to those times when life was vibrant and bright. Back when I lived only for horses and the man I was determined to marry when I grew up.
The man that now hated me. I knew we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but when we inevitably reached our crossroads, he had chosen one way and I had chosen the other. Our lives turned out as different as night and day, coming across each other’s paths again to find ourselves looking at complete strangers.
I supposed that was how it was. It wasn’t like the old times. Not because of the time having passed, but the people having changed. I wasn’t little Ronnie looking at my young Jackson. I was the woman, Veronica, facing the man, Jax.
Jax, the biker, the outlaw, the man nobody messed with. I can’t say I was surprised. I wasn’t sure where I expected him to have run to, but seeing it all made sense. The thrill of the ride he had once sought out in horses was now replaced by a metal machine.
But that wasn’t the only thing he’d swapped. The warm bronze of his skin after hours under the sun on saddleback was now covered almost completely in soft black ink. His hair was longer, and his face had lost its boyish charm. It morphed into a sharper, more masculine handsomeness. He looked bigger too, in both muscles and height, though I hadn’t thought it possible for him to grow any more than his towering teenage height. It was hard to believe that the same boy managed to eclipse the powerfully free image he had once painted for himself.
I supposed I was no longer the same person either. From the young, stubborn, and wild teenage girl he had once known—always getting into trouble somehow or other—and the me now was a massive contrast. The woman I became had long since lost her childhood innocence and naivety and replaced it with a cold hard awareness of how dark the world really was.
The softness of a single tear shed from my eye fell down my cheek and was swallowed by the sheets. I pushed myself to sit, wiping my cheeks with the long sleeve of my shirt.
No more tears.
It was a promise to myself I wanted to keep.
Since I intended to keep it, letting myself wallow in “what-was-once” and “what-could-have-been” wouldn’t be a smart choice. If anything, I wanted to hold true to the fact that I wasn’t a doll. I had my own mind, my own brain. I was smart. I was myself.
I took a deep breath, using the inner strength in my chest to push down the swelling emotions wanting to escape.
Knowing I needed to take my mind off it, I leaned back as I outstretched my leg. My heel dug into the floor, my toes pointed at the ceiling as my lungs reached capacity. The ache was dull at first, the muscles twitching but not pulling as I relaxed the stretch and leaned forward, pushing myself down over my thighs and releasing a long, drawn-out breath.
It was on the third set that the throbbing and twinges started beneath my skin and the protesting burn followed them.
The attack was severe… You’ve lost a lot of blood… We need to operate.
“One…Two…Three….” I breathed through the voices. The endless repetition of doctors, and nurses and surgeons nagging on and on in my head.
The muscle is too badly damaged, and your body is resisting the antibiotics. We’ll have to remove part of it.
“One…Two…Three….”
You’ll only get about eighty-percent of movement back if you work hard at rehab. But the pain might never go away.
“One…Two….”
BEEP-BEEP!
I jerked hard, both in mind and body. The sharp noise from across the room had my hand slipping off my leg and my knee jerking into my ribs.
“Goddammit,” I gasped, lifting myself up and dropping back onto the sheets once more. I tried to breath as normally as I could until the throbbing in my leg subsided enough for me to look in the direction the beep had come from.
The screen of the black, cheap burner phone sitting on the pillow of the bed had already stopped flashing, but it didn’t matter. I already knew who it was. There was only one person who had the number.
I wiped the thin layer of sweat from my brow, grabbed the device, and looked up at the screen.
Fellpeak Organic Farm.
A farm?
It beeped again.
10 minutes.
Wait. He wants me to go?
When Jackson—I meant—Jax had taken Max out of my hands, I thought that was it. I wasn’t exactly surprised that he’d want as little involvement with me as possible. After seeing Max like she was, I knew it would take time to help her, and although I was expecting him to keep me notified, I didn’
t think he’d be demanding my presence so quickly. I reread the message to make sure I wasn’t reading it wrong, but after the sixth time, I knew Jackson couldn’t be clearer.
I stood from the bed and before I even got my boots on, another beep rang from the phone.
9 minutes.
Maybe Jackson hadn’t changed as much as I thought.
“You took in another one?” I mumbled, pushing back the strands of hair the wind was tugging out. My boots pushed against the dirt at the base of the fence, working a small groove the size of my shoe as I waited for Jackson to reply to me. Sometimes he never did—a kid’s opinion isn’t important after all—and I didn’t think he would.
“Stop scuffing your boots, Ronnie,” Jackson tutted, fiddling with the strand of mature golden grass between his teeth. He flicked it about like a cat’s tail and I glared at it with envy.
With one more kick in the dirt—just to annoy him—I climbed through the fence, taking his bored reply as invitation into the field. I took a seat next to him in the long grass, plucking my own piece of grass and placing it between my teeth—until it was suddenly gone.
“Hey!” I glared, watching Jackson toss it into the endless sea of its counterparts.
“Don’t put weird things in your mouth,” Jackson didn’t bother to look at me. His big brown eyes looked at the figure of the spotted stallion gnawing on a nearby tree branch.
“Hypocritter.”
He smirked. “It’s hypocrite.” It was small and fleeting, but I glared at his face anyway. His stupid, pretty face.
“So,” I grumbled, leaning closer to him. Not enough to touch him since I didn’t want him to move away. “What’s this one’s problem?”
“It’s not as simple as a problem, Ronnie.” Jax sighed, the piece of grass lowering toward the earth. “It’s a trial. A series of problems it’s got to overcome.”
“Like in the Bible?” I mused, thinking about the sermons momma had me attend every Sunday.