Ride: A Bad Boy Romance (8 page)

Fuck, I’m hard again. It’s getting to be a permanent condition these days, an itch that nothing else is gonna scratch.

There’s your problem
, I think.
You’ve got to be forthright.
Tell her you remember
.

Start over from the beginning.

It’s an idea, but I don’t know if it’s a good one. Maybe Mae doesn’t want to remember and I should just pretend that we met yesterday.

I don’t know how much longer I can pussyfoot around this, though.

Take the bull by the horns, Jackson
.

Ain’t that what you do?

I pull out my truck keys. Then I drive to the nearest liquor store to see if I can’t find some peach-flavored Boone’s Farm.

O
peration
stop wanting
to sleep with Jackson
is not going well.

When I woke up this morning, between finally getting enough sleep and giving myself a pep talk, I thought I was almost there. Just because he’s hot and has
that
smile doesn’t mean I have to actually want to sleep with him.

I started my day with a new goal: appreciate Jackson Cody from afar. Yes, he’s very pleasing to look at, so why ruin it by torturing myself with something I can’t have?

It lasted about two hours. Then he apologized and took the bull by the horns — literally — and I failed miserably at appreciating from afar, because there’s something raw and primitive about a man who’s
that
confident, that unafraid of a challenge.

The worst part of all might be that I broke my vibrator a month ago, and I still don’t have a new one.

After the stables, he stands across the arena and watches the ropers while I shoot them, and then after the rodeo he disappears.

That’s a good thing
, I tell myself.
He’s probably off drinking with his buddies again, getting some buckle bunny tail
.

I force myself to remember the night before, that girl on his lap, making out with him sloppily.

See?
I think.
Ew.

Bruce and I have dinner, and then I head back to my room and load the day’s pictures onto my laptop and dive in.

Just as I get to the series of Jackson and the bull, shot in the low light of the stables, there’s a knock on my door, even though it’s almost nine at night. Probably Bruce. I rub my eyes, getting sore from a whole day of looking at things, and walk to my door.

Jackson Cody is standing there, smiling down at me. My heart bangs against my ribcage, because no man has a right to look this good in just a work shirt, jeans, and boots.

“Evenin’,” he says, and holds up a bottle of wine wrapped in a paper bag, the two flimsy plastic cups from his own motel room balanced upside-down on top of it.

“I don’t even drink,” I say, looking at the bottle. It’s the first thing I think of.

As much as that deep, needy part of me wants to invite him in, I can’t. Nobody can see Jackson Cody going into my motel room. It’s
extraordinarily
bad form to sleep with the people you’re hired to shoot, especially when the whole article is focused on them.

He looks down at the bottle.

“Whoops,” he says, and pulls the bag off, crumpling it in his other hand.

It’s a bottle of peach-flavored Boone’s Farm Wine Drink. They changed the packaging, but as soon as I read it, my heart lurches.

I look from the bottle to Jackson, then back at the bottle.

“What the hell?” I finally ask, my voice a whisper.

“I want to start over,” he says.

I cross my arms and glare.

“Not like that,” he says. “I just want to talk. Clear the air, get both of us on the same page.”

I’m just staring at the bottle of wine.

“When did you remember?” I ask, my voice low.

“The moment you opened your mouth,” he says.

“You remembered this
whole time
?” I hiss.

A car pulls into the parking lot behind him, its headlights washing over us for a quick moment.

“Lula-Mae, I just want to talk. I swear,” he says.

“You can’t come in,” I say. “Everyone will know, and then they’ll talk. And don’t call me that.”

“Can we talk somewhere else?” he asks.

I take a deep breath. He’s probably right. We’ll just get everything out in the open, and then I can go back to pretending I don’t want to sleep with him.

“Okay,” I say.

“You know the west gate to the arena?” he asks.

I nod.

“Meet me there in five minutes,” he says. “Give me a head start.”

He walks away and I close the door to my motel room, and then I just stand there for a minute, reevaluating everything that’s happened in the last two days.

When he shook my hand at the breakfast table, he knew who I was. When he hit on me afterward, when he rescued my camera, when he invited me out drinking.

He remembered me, drunk and horny in the back of his pickup, the
whole
time.

I put on shoes and grab a jacket. I close my laptop and put my camera in its case, even though it feels weird not to take it with me.

After exactly five minutes, I walk toward the arena. I try to look like I’m on official photography business, but I don’t know if anyone cares or not. Probably not. It’s dark out there except for the occasional street light. The sky is full of stars even though the carnival is in the lot next door.

I round a corner and see a shape standing up against the gate. The shape’s holding a bottle of wine.

“Ready to break some rules?” Jackson asks, a smile in his voice.

I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

“If we get caught, I’ll say it was my idea to show you some good angles of the arena,” he says. “I’ll take all the blame.”

I exhale and shrug, suddenly nervous. Jackson walks to the right and disappears behind the bleachers, walking to a gate locked with a combination lock. He enters three numbers and the lock clicks open.

“They don’t change the locks too often,” he says, and opens the gate, letting me through first.

I’m still on high alert, and I’m a thousand percent aware that I shouldn’t be here, doing this,
alone
with Jackson Cody. But I’m also not about to back out now.

Just don’t get caught
, I think.
That’s all
.

It’s dark under the bleachers, and I follow his silhouette out, around the grandstands. We climb to the very top of the metal bleachers, in front of the press box, and then sit down and lean against the structure. Jackson sets the plastic cups on the metal bench in front of it and twists the top off the wine drink.

“You want any?” he asks, pouring himself a few fingers.

I sigh.

Why the hell not? You’re already here.

“Just a sip,” I say.

He pours me half an inch, and we raise our glasses, touch them together, and I take a drink.

It tastes like a Jolly Rancher, but worse and alcoholic.

“Oh
god
,” I say, covering my mouth with one hand. “Wow.”

Jackson’s also making a face and shaking his head.

“Lord have mercy, this is bad,” he says.

“How did I ever drink a whole bottle of that stuff?” I ask, scrutinizing the tiny bit in my glass. “It’s awful.”

“You’re not the first eighteen year old to get tanked on this,” he says. “That’s more or less what they make it for.”

I laugh, even as my chest tightens. I take a deep breath and steady myself.

“So six years ago I got really drunk at a party and we... met,” I say.

“That’s a fair summary,” he says. “We were teenagers then and we’re older and wiser now.”

“We snuck into the grandstands and we’re drinking
this
,” I say. “I think we’re just older.”

I turn the plastic cup in my fingers, nervous about what I’m going to ask next.

“Did you tell anyone?” I ask quietly. I can’t look at him, only at the sandy arena below.

“Not anybody here,” he says. “I bragged some back then. But I didn’t think you wanted anyone here knowing that about you.”

“I didn’t,” I say, and I sigh with relief. “Thanks.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“I didn’t tell anyone either, for the record,” I say.

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Jackson says. He’s leaning back against the wooden press box, and he turns his head toward me. “It’d make everyone else jealous as hell if they knew I’d gotten with the hot photographer.”

I blush, glad he can’t see it in the dark.

“It’s not like any of you are wanting for company,” I say.

“Men like a challenge,” he says. “After a little while, girls who fall into your lap are a little too easy. Most of the time. Present company excepted.”

I laugh.

“I was really drunk,” I say. The scent of the wine is making me feel like I’m back there again, breathless and horny and completely inexperienced.

“I did notice that,” he says.

“I’d just graduated high school,” I say, and I lean back against the press box, feet on the metal bench in front of me as I look down the dark stands into the even darker arena.

“Would you believe that was the first real party I went to?”

“I would absolutely believe that,” he says, keeping his face straight.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Was it that obvious?”

“You didn’t seem like you’d had a lot of experience,” he says, a little more tactfully this time. “You got a little excited when the police showed up.”

I cover my face with my hands, mortified.

“I’d forgotten that part in my embarrassment about all the rest,” I say, my voice slightly muffled. “God, I was not very cool about that.”

“Nope,” Jackson says.

I take my hands off my face and lean forward, my plastic cup on the bench next to me. I look past the arena and out to the parking lot, cars shining in the mercury vapor lights.

“I really thought I’d almost ruined my life,” I say, my voice low.

“Because you were at a party that got busted?”

I shake my head.

“Because I lost control,” I say. “I got plastered and nearly had unprotected sex with someone I didn’t even know.”

I swallow. Jackson’s quiet.

“You remember the girl I was there with? Christy?”

“She went off with Buck?” he asks.

I nod.

“She’s my age. Twenty-four. And she’s got three kids with three different dads. She works at Wal-Mart and lives with her parents.”

I take a deep breath.

“And there’s nothing
wrong
with all that. She loves her kids, but it’s not what I want. It’s never been what I wanted, but after that night, I realized how easy it could be to wind up like that and never get out of Lawton.”

Tears are pricking behind my eyeballs. I’ve never said this out loud to anyone before, because there’s no one else who knows what happened, or what almost happened.

Jackson leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and he looks at me as I desperately fight my tears.

“Lula-Mae, there’s not a person in this world who hasn’t screwed up a couple of times,” he says.

“I know,” I say, my voice nearly a whisper. “I just hate how I could have ruined everything.”

“You turned out just fine,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say.

He’s quiet for a long time as we both look forward, down the stands.

“If it helps, I probably wasn’t gonna let you ride bareback,” he says.

I flush bright red.

“Probably?” I ask.

“You made a pretty convincing case,” he says.

“I did?” I ask. I don’t remember making a case at all.

“Sure,” he says, then looks at me and grins. “You were hot and ready to go and I was nineteen and prone to bad decisions.”

“Oh,” I say.

He shrugs.

“But you seemed like a good girl who got a little crazy for one night. Hell, you’d never given a hand job before. I had the feeling you wouldn’t want to swipe your v-card on some guy in the back of a pickup truck.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Can I tell you something?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.

“That was the first time I saw a dick in person,” I say.

Jackson laughs, and after a moment, I do too.

“I had some suspicions,” he says.

“I made out with some guys in high school, but that was it,” I say. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

“Enthusiasm counts for a lot,” he says. “Especially with nineteen year olds.”

I pick up the peach wine and take the last swallow, then grimace.

“This is
really
bad,” I say.

“So you’re not getting drunk again?” he teases.

“I’ve had about two tablespoons and I think I might puke,” I say.

“Try to make it down to ground level first,” he says. “Don’t want anyone knowing we were up here.”

A thrill runs through me, as I’m reminded:
I’m sneaking around with Jackson.

We’re already here. If we get caught, whoever catches us will already assume the worst.

He’s right next to me, and we’re both leaning against the press box at the top of the stands, the whole arena spread before us. My pulse is pounding through my veins, and somehow, we’ve closed the distance between us from a foot to an inch, and we’re sitting here laughing about the past like old friends.

“I come up here the night before my first ride every year,” Jackson says.

“With girls?” I ask. Then I bite my tongue.

“Alone,” he says. “It helps me get my nerves under control if I can see the place empty and quiet. It seems smaller now than it does when there’s people in it. That way, when I get on that bull tomorrow inside the chute, in the second before he goes, I imagine it’s empty, just me and him, and I don’t have to worry about anything else.”

“You still get nervous?” I ask.

“Every single time,” he says. “I get nervous, and then I get on that bull, and I just ride.”

Even here, talking quietly in the stands, there’s a soft swagger in his voice, a cockiness that
does
something to me.

“I could never do it,” I say.

“I did offer to teach you,” he says.

“You were just hitting on me,” I say, teasing him. “Telling some wide-eyed girl that she ought to try rodeo.”

He pauses.

“I was kinda hoping you’d show up that weekend,” he says. “I didn’t think you would, but I kept on picking out blond heads in the crowd.”

“I think I stayed home and organized my report cards by letter grade,” I say.

“I won it, you know,” he says, and then he turns his head toward me.

My heartbeat speeds up, and I can feel the warmth rolling off of his body. I stare rigidly straight ahead, eyes locked on the arena below. My self-control is hanging on by a thread.

“You win a lot,” I say.

“I just pictured you in the stands,” he says.

My palms get sweaty.

“Lula-Mae,” he says.

I take a deep breath and turn to look up at him, his hazel eyes glimmering in the dark, serious and searching me.