Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(53)

At least for Jake.

“I’m not that great. My mom... It’s... I just didn’t know.” She tried to breathe deep, but it caught in her throat and shuddered. “For our sixteenth birthdays...well, for my brothers’ sixteenth birthdays, my dad got them this special hunting knife, and then they’d go away on a hunting trip. Well, you know that my sister... Sophie...she was sickly.”

He nodded slowly. “You said she wasn’t very strong.”

“No, she was born with a genetic heart defect. My mom...she tried so hard to protect her and it didn’t work. It didn’t...it didn’t work, so when I was born, and I was checked over head to toe and proclaimed healthy, my dad wanted me to experience everything. He wanted me outdoors. He wanted me to get tough, to be raised outdoors. To be treated like the boys, and I was.” She sighed. “And I thought I was really like them. But when I turned sixteen...my mom gave me a necklace. There was no knife. No hunting trip.” She still got angry. Because it was a small thing. Because she could have ignored it. Because it still hurt. “Well, I was... I was so mad. I realized it was fake. I wasn’t one of the boys. I wasn’t the same. I was an experiment. Kept outdoors till it was time for me to be domesticated.” Her lips twitched. And she didn’t go on.

“If they don’t see what I do, that’s their own problem.”

“But it’s why,” she said. “It’s why I have to win. And it feels like the only way to make myself strong enough is to...ignore everything about me that’s...female. That it’s the only way to become the thing that I have to. But I don’t... What if I don’t have to become anything? What if I can just be me? And that doesn’t mean I don’t have to work hard. I know that I do. Because you’re right—for all that I’d like to pretend that there’s nothing that’s going to make being a saddle bronc rider more difficult for me, I know there is. So yeah, of course I have to stay in shape. I get it. But it doesn’t have to be all that. And I thought that it did. I thought that I had to be all one thing. And I...”

She put her hand out, touched his chest. Worked her fingers beneath the collar of his shirt. “I just... I know that I can stay on the back of a bucking bronco for eight seconds. And I know that I can complete a great barrel racing run. But I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t know what else I can feel. I want... I want to feel...more.”

He kissed her again, and stole her breath. Kissed her until her knees were weak, until her heart was racing so hard she could scarcely breathe. Kissed her until she was lost to everything that was him. Everything to this.

And then she found herself being gathered up in strong arms and carried down the hallway.

It was an out-of-body experience... When Jake set her down in the center of the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

She never felt nervous around Jake. He was her friend. And suddenly the enormity of what was happening threatened to overwhelm her. He was her friend, and changing this, knowing this about him, was going to change that.

But she felt like she was changing.

The minute that she had decided to get married in order to get her trust fund, to achieve her dream no matter what, she had begun to change. It was no longer about making her parents proud, whatever she told herself. Because she was an honest person. Because she did care about doing what was right. The minute she had found something bigger than truth, she had begun her metamorphosis. She had prioritized her dreams. And it was more about that than making her parents proud of her in any way. And this was part and parcel to that. To the...growing.

And maybe she and Jake would never be able to be friends in the way they had been after this.

But right then and there, she thought that it might be a reasonable sacrifice.

No. It wasn’t even that.

It was just that it was too late. Because she could see now. That he was the epitome of masculine perfection. That all the reasons he was big and hard were the reasons she was smaller and softer. That everything in her responded to that masculinity at his core. That she was created for it.

She had put on blinders, and she had decided not to see it, but it was there all the same. And she couldn’t make it... She couldn’t make it not be.

And she didn’t want to. It was like going your whole life not knowing what chocolate was. Hearing that it was a bean and having a vague understanding of what that might be, based on previous experiences with beans.

And then getting served the most beautiful, decadent flourless chocolate torte imaginable.

You could never really just see it as a bean. Not after that. Even though it was true.

Because you’d seen the potential. You’d seen what it meant.

And it was a silly analogy, but it was true. Her best friend was a man, and she’d always known that.

But this, right now, was really knowing that her best friend was a man.

And that she was a woman.

She was going to start crying again, and she hated that. Because she didn’t really cry. And it wasn’t that she was afraid or sad. It was just that the feeling was so big that it needed somewhere to escape. Or it would overwhelm her. So it started leaking out of her eyes. And she didn’t particularly care for that at all.

So she took a deep breath, and she closed the distance between them, kissing him again. And then she took a step back, pushing her fingers beneath the hem of his shirt. He grabbed it from behind his head, finishing the job for her as he jerked it up over his head.