No doubt about it, he’d been a doll then and he still was now, just…a little scarier-looking doll.
The next photo to the right was obviously his parents. He looked like them both, and their big happy smiles almost brought tears to her eyes. Every little kid’s nightmare. She had the sudden urge to call her parents right then…though of course they would ask what she was smoking to call them at nearly five in the morning if she wasn’t dying.
Sweeping her gaze across some of the other pictures—more of him, his sister’s family and an older woman who could only have been his nana—she realized his brother must be absent from them all. No guy resembling him or near his age was to be seen anywhere.
“What are you up to in there?” he called from the kitchen.
“Just looking at your pictures.”
“Ugh. Don’t get too acquainted with that guy.”
“Who, you? I like that guy. Then and now.”
He chuckled and came into the living room bearing chips and a couple sandwiches on a plate. “I eat out a lot,” he told her apologetically. “It’s just me, so…”
“This is fine. Thanks.”
He put the stuff on the coffee table. “I forgot drinks. Hang on.”
She continued her perusal as he trotted back to the kitchen, moving to his massive CD collection. It took up an entire bookshelf. He’d even begun stacking rows on top of rows. Some of the band names…they made her cringe. “Oh my God.”
“What?” he asked, coming back in behind her.
“This stuff…” She started laughing. “You have it alphabetized.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I don’t know, I just find something funny about having your death metal in alphabetical order. Bringing order to chaos, I guess? I mean, God forbid you get Cannibal Corpse and…Cattle Decapitation out of order or something.” She turned to him, her eyes wide. “Cattle Decapitation? Seriously?”
“Don’t hate. There’s a lot I could say about that twangy yee-haw shit you listen to.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah but nothing.”
“Fine.”
“If it makes you feel any better, that’s just stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. I don’t necessarily listen to it all the time…or even like all of it.”
“Oh. Good.”
“But Corpse is f**king awesome.”
“Great. So how do you ‘accumulate’ this many CDs?”
“By finding them littered around someone’s house after a night of drunken carousing.”
Since she was slowly but surely learning to take everything he said with a grain of salt, she shrugged that one off. “Who’s your favorite band? Not that I’ll have heard of them or anything.”
“In Flames.”
“Hmm.”
“And it’s not chaos.”
She moved to sit by him on the couch and popped the top on her drink. “It sounds like it to me. I just don’t see the appeal. It gives me a headache.”
“It’s raw power. It’s brokenhearted and pissed off about it. The music itself brings order to chaos. Listening to it, playing it, for me helps me work out all the ugliness. It lets me vent. It helps me control my emotions—I can step back and view them from a distance, look at them and explore them without doing something I’ll regret. It’s like…a controlled burn.”
He spoke so passionately, so earnestly about it, she couldn’t help but be transfixed. “That’s…interesting, I guess. It’s therapeutic for you.”
“Exactly. But not just that. I enjoy the hell out of it. I’m sure I would no matter what hand I’d been dealt.” He bit into his sandwich, and she stared across at his collection, a little jealous that he’d found an outlet. She had none. Her emotions had been bottled up for so long she didn’t know what would happen if she pulled the cork. But given her unbidden tears and her lashing out at him earlier tonight, she had an idea now.
“I would listen to some of it.”
“You don’t have to. I was just explaining my reasons, not trying to push them off on you.”
“But if it means so much to you, if it’s such a big part of you…” It would help me know you. “You could play me your favorite song; how about that?”
“I could never pick only one.”
“A few, then. And tell me about your band. Do I dare ask the name?”
“In the Slaughter.”
“Cheerful. But not so bad, considering.”
He laughed. “Well, the guys rejected my proposal of Misanthropic Motherfuckers. I can’t imagine why.”
“Me either.”
He jumped up. “Let me get my laptop, and I’ll play you some Flames. There’s this one song of theirs we cover a lot. It’s called ‘The Jester Race’. You’ll get an idea of what you’d hear if you ever came to a show.” He reached down and flicked her nose. “Which you should do. We’re playing next month in Austin.”
“Oh, ah…I don’t think I could do that.”
“Why not? Brian and Candace come out and see us when they can. Maybe they could come too. You wouldn’t be on your own.”
“It’s not my thing. Really. It is so not my thing. I’d listen to it but having it live in my face is another matter.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, but…it’s a little different. I’m asking you to watch me perform. You’d probably never get me on a horse, but I’d still watch you race.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, do you?”
She dropped her gaze when his face darkened, staring down at her hands while her fingers fidgeted anxiously with one another.
“I wish to f**k I did,” he said with such sharpness it snapped her head back up. “I wish I’d known you back then, Macy, because you wouldn’t have given up shit. The doctors cleared you to ride, didn’t they?”
“You don’t know—”
“I’m asking. They cleared you to ride, didn’t they?”
She glared at him, her pulse pounding in her temples. “Yes.”
“You said yourself it was your identity; it’s who you are. Who let you throw in the f**king towel on yourself?”
“No one! It was my decision, and everyone around me respected it.” Everyone she’d let stay around her, that was.
“And you made that decision out of fear, didn’t you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Are you going to tell me there’s nothing you’re afraid of?”
“There’s plenty I’m afraid of. But there’s nothing that would stop me from doing what I love to do. Nothing.”
“Then I guess that’s where we’re different,” she said. “I don’t even know why this is an issue. It was years ago. It’s done. I still ride, it’s not like I’m phobic. But no one’s going to make me do what I don’t want to do.”
“Only, you want to do it. You have to want to do it.”
“If I wanted it that bad, I’d do it!” But the betraying tears were filling her eyes. Shit! She didn’t want to call his attention to them by scrubbing them away, but neither did she want to let them spill. She dropped her chin to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut. Go back, go back…
“How different are you from the way you were before your accident?”
“Ask Candace,” she snapped. “She can tell you.”
“I’m asking you. Because the girl I saw in those pictures at your place…she looked fearless. And proud.”
“That girl still wouldn’t have gone to a death metal concert.”
“That may be, but she never thought she’d be running from herself either, did she?”
She gave a humorless laugh and shook her head. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. What the hell are you trying to prove?”
Sighing, he dropped down beside her. The warm comfort of his hand stroked up her back, under her hair, and his fingers kneaded her gently. “I didn’t mean to blow up at you. It’s just something that’s been on my mind, and the opportunity came up to get it out there.”
“What exactly has been on your mind? Clue me in a little.”
“Nothing about you was adding up. I don’t have to ask Candace how awesome you were at your rodeo-queen stuff. I could see it. But what I saw there that night at your place, in those pictures, it wasn’t what I was seeing in you. This shouldn’t be a woman who needed anyone to ‘shut her up’ because she’s so cautious. This should be a woman who kicked ass and took names. Who tells other people when to shut up.” He gently brushed the hair back from her ear. “I still see her, you know. I think you should let her out to play more often.”
Macy sniffled, suddenly unafraid to let him see that tears were dripping one by one from her eyes, splattering onto his shirt she wore. “I can tell you the precise moment when I locked her up,” she said softly, voice quavering as much as her hands.
“Tell me.”
“When I woke up in that hospital bed, and…I couldn’t move.” He pulled her closer, putting his lips to the side of her forehead. She sucked in a strangled breath and faced the darkness of that moment for the first time since she’d shoved it into the furthest recesses of her mind. “I didn’t understand at first; I thought I was paralyzed. But I should’ve known I wasn’t, because, oh my God, the pain. I hurt all over. I broke bones other than my back, mainly ribs, because my horse fell over me. My entire body looked like it was in a cast. I had a concussion, and my head was wrapped up. I freaked out. My mom burst into tears. It was relief on her part, because I was awake and coherent, but it scared me even more, because I just knew she was crying because I’d never walk again.”
He was silent, just holding her, letting her go on in her own time. “You mount up knowing all the risks,” she said after a few moments. “I always knew them. I had friends who got hurt, and I’d even been thrown plenty of times myself. When you think you’re invincible, though, like I did, it’s easy to believe it’s all worth the risk. I only found out that it wasn’t. Not to me.”
She thought about Jared and how she’d told him to get away from her until he listened. She’d done the same thing to a lot of her friends. Hell, if her parents hadn’t been stuck with her, she’d have sent them packing too. They were all stark, painful reminders of what she could no longer have, what she could no longer do. Rather, what she wouldn’t let herself do.
Candace and Sam, they hadn’t left her. But they hadn’t been part of her rodeo life, and she’d clung to them, perhaps more than anyone else. It was no wonder any rift in those relationships threw her into a tizzy. Those two had been her lifeline. Still were in ways.
“I can understand,” Seth said after a long silence. “I don’t like it for you. I want to see you doing what you love. You deserve that. But I definitely understand.”