Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(84)

And that was how it went for the next few days.

She did her best to ignore the fact that the time was ticking on their marriage. Tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. They busied themselves with chores around the ranch, and he kept to his end of the bargain. Instructing her on the minutia of riding saddle bronc, and not overprotecting her. Instead, he gave her solid advice, and good training. And when it was done, they would eat dinner together. Sometimes she would cook, sometimes they would get food at a restaurant. And they always ended up back in bed together. They didn’t talk about it, though, and that bothered her a little bit. Because they were friends, and it was a strange thing that the deeper they got into this physical relationship, the harder it was for the two of them to talk.

He had also not eaten the cookies that she had made him five days earlier, and they hadn’t discussed it all.

The Christmas cheer of December faded into a gray January, but it was all just fine as far as Callie was concerned, because she was with Jake.

And it was beginning to become obvious that the words she was avoiding thinking in her mind were there whether she gave them voice or not. But they filled her, invaded her limbs, soaked down to her bones, flowed through her blood.

That it just was. In everything she did. And in the shifting tide of what she thought about. What she wanted.

It was an odd thing, because a few months ago she would’ve seen it as a failure. To want something—anything—more than success in the rodeo would be heresy. But now, she felt like she could see it clearly for what it all was. She had used the rodeo to avoid dealing with certain issues that she had. Certain things in her family. And once she had begun to break those things apart, once she had stopped erecting barriers inside of herself, limiting herself when it came to certain things, telling herself stories about what she could be, who she was and what she was allowed to be good at, the scope of what she wanted began to get broader.

The scope of who she was was widening, and her dreams along with it.

It was easier to love a sport than to love a person. Easier to pin all of your goals on something like that. Because it was just the luck of the draw with horses. A rodeo ride just went the way that it did. Caring about a human... Well, you weren’t going to be able to strap on a saddle and try to subdue another person. They had to be willing to meet you where you were. And the risk in that was... The risk in that felt terrifying.

Still, it was becoming more and more difficult to deny it.

They had just finished another ride out in the arena when she’d let herself think it for the first time. When she’d looked at his profile and realized that she loved him in ways that went so deep it was terrifying.

She loved him.

She loved him so much she was nearly sick with it.

Not just friendship love, no, she had known that she loved him for a long time. But she had tried to tell herself it was like a friend. Like a brother. Like anything other than what it was. Which wasn’t just one thing, but everything.

A lover, a man, a friend. A piece of her.

Woven into the fabric of all that she was. That was Jake. Jake Daniels was a part of her. She would never be able to lift him away. He was part of why she loved the rodeo. Part of why she learned. He had introduced her to passion, and given her his physical presence when she needed it. Had legally married her when she had asked.

He was... There wasn’t a single person on this earth that understood her the way that he did. Not a single person who supported her quite so unconditionally.

What she’d asked of him was insane. And he had gone along with it. And when he let her care back... Oh, it was hard for him. But when he let her cook for him. When he shared his bed with her. When he let her lavish his body with attention, she could feel it coming from him, too. That rightness. The sense of completion.

She loved it more than anything. Just like she loved him. All of him, even the difficult pieces.

She also knew, down to her soul, that it wasn’t something he would want to hear. Wasn’t something he would want to deal with. He would consider it a betrayal. A change.

She didn’t know how she knew it, only that she did.

The man was utterly and completely walled off to admissions of feelings, but he felt them. He went to his family’s house for dinner every Sunday night. The way that he showed up in their friendship was yet more evidence of it. He was just...

There was a brokenness to him that she couldn’t quite get a grasp on. That she couldn’t quite nail down. The last little fragments of what he wouldn’t share with her. The things that made him who he was. The things that would give her that full picture of Jake, everything he was in, everything he resisted.

They were in the barn, putting the horses away, when she let it come right out.

“Jake,” she said. “I don’t think I want to get divorced.”

He turned sharply. “What?”

“I don’t want to get divorced. I want to stay with you. I want to stay like this.”

He was frozen for a moment. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

She had known that it would go like this. So she just had to be strong and push through. He was like a stubborn horse. And no, she couldn’t quite rest on that old confidence that she’d felt before starting a relationship with him—because that’s what this was, whether he wanted to admit it or not—couldn’t pretend that just because she understood how to bait a dog with snacks she understood men.