Leaping Hearts(83)

In a much softer tone, he asked, “Why is this so important to you?”

Devlin could hear the thread of desperation in his voice. It was a cadence he didn’t recognize as his own and he might have even been ashamed of it at other junctures in his life. The weakness was of no consequence to him now. All that mattered was the woman he loved and the purple scars of exhaustion under her dull blue eyes.

When she didn’t answer him, he thought she was going to shut him out. Then, in a somber voice, she began talking.

“When I was younger, people used to tell me I looked like my mother. That I was her little shadow. As I got older, I became my father’s daughter, the rich girl who rode horses. Now I’m known for being trained by you and buying that horse.” She looked him in the eye. “When the hell am I going to be described by my own adjectives?

“Ever since I left home, I’ve been looking back and thinking that my life has been one long freight train of other people’s definitions. And part of it is my fault because I lived on the fringes of my father’s life for too long. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I picked Sabbath. I picked the Qualifier. I’m doing the work.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be Garrett Sutherland’s society princess. I don’t want to be just another marginal rider. And I’m willing to sacrifice to get what I want.”

Devlin got up from the table with a sharp motion.

“Are you walking out on me?” she asked.

He shook his head and offered her his hand.

When she wound her fingers through his, he took her up the stairs to the top landing and paused in front of the door that had been shut the entire time she’d been at the farmhouse. When he opened it, the hinges creaked from lack of use.

A.J. let out a gasp as she looked past him.

The room was filled with competition trophies, ribbons, photographs. There were large silver plates and event cups, two Olympic gold medals, honorary jackets and horse blankets, pictures of Devlin and Mercy on countless magazine covers. She stepped inside, struggling to take it all in.

Most of the objects had been mounted on the walls, hung lovingly and in order. But not all of them. There was a saddle in one corner that seemed to have been discarded. It lay dying on the floor, distorting under its own weight as it splayed out. Across the pummel was a tangled bridle, and in front of the ruined tack, there were pairs of riding boots that fell across one another haphazardly, like a platoon of wounded soldiers.

All over this anarchy, and covering even those things that had been carefully tended to, there was a sheen of dust.

She turned to Devlin with wide eyes.

“I didn’t mean for this to become a shrine,” he said, glancing around. “I had to put all this stuff somewhere as it accumulated, and my need for order turned it into one. Now it’s more a mausoleum than anything else.”

“All these pictures,” A.J. marveled, focusing on one. It was of Devlin and Mercy at one of the Qualifiers. She remembered having watched them from the stands. “I was there for this one.”

He joined her. “That was a lot of years ago. A lifetime ago for me.”

“And I saw you win this,” she said, going over to one of the framed medals. It was like seeing part of her own history. “I was enthralled watching you and…”

A.J. stopped talking but kept looking.

When she’d surveyed the contents of the room, she said, “Thank you for showing me this. I’d always wondered where it had all gone.”

“This is the first time I’ve been in here in…God, it seems like forever. For a long time, I could barely stand walking by the door.” Devlin went over to the splayed saddle and picked it up off the floor. “I can’t tell you how much time I spent in this.”

He dusted it off and repositioned it carefully.

“This was my whole life,” he told her. “From daybreak until well into the night, the riding and competing was everything. Nothing else mattered.”

When he looked at her, his voice took on a strident tone. “Which is why I’m telling you to back off.”

A.J.’s brows crashed down over her eyes. “You didn’t get all these trophies and ribbons because you gave up. You worked hard. You made sacrifices.”

His laugh was harsh. “I sure as hell did. I sacrificed my goddamn partner.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth. That morning when the accident happened, I took Mercy out for a warm-up I knew damn well she wasn’t fit for. She’d cracked a rail the day before and landed funny but I told myself she was fine.” His voice thinned. “I made the choice to press her because all I wanted was to win that goddamn cup again. I killed her for a goddamn silver cup.”

Devlin’s eyes shot over to the four sterling-silver Qualifier trophies that were mounted on the wall. A cold emotion, something close to hatred, settled into the lines of his face as self-blame washed over him in a wave.

A.J. went to him, stroking his arm.

He told her, “I can tell you it wasn’t worth it but I know you won’t believe me.”

“Of course I do!”

“Then you’re lying to yourself. Every day, when you get in that ring with Sabbath on the verge of exhaustion, you’re taking a dangerous sport and making it worse.”

She took his hands and brought them to her lips. “I don’t want you to worry. I can handle it.”