Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(86)

She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid she’d lose the rodeo and lose her chance to be loved.

She wasn’t afraid she could only matter if she did certain things.

Moments were more than holding your breath in the chute.

More than eight-second blocks of time.

There were moments all around. In every piece of life.

And she was more than success.

She was diamond dust.

As unique as the stars and just as fast.

And she felt it. Deep.

“My parents do love me,” she said. “I just had to quit being a coward. I had to tell them what I wanted, not just...stubbornly do things without ever explaining myself. I had to stop being so shut down and small and focused only on what I wanted. It doesn’t mean they weren’t wrong, too, but those things aren’t insurmountable. If you don’t deal with the molehills they become mountains you’ll never be able to climb. But I climbed them, and they met me there. And now I’m more at home in my own skin than I’ve ever been, and don’t you see your part in that?”

“What? So I’m your new saddle bronc? The thing that’s going to make you feel complete? It’s not any different, then, is it?”

He was trying to push her away. She could feel it. Desperately scrabbling to try to put distance between them as she continued to talk, but she wasn’t going to let him. It could hurt her if she let it. Because it was scratching at that very worst fear of hers. That rejection of who she really was. Of what she really wanted.

Of her deepest heart.

But he was wounded, the same as she’d been. And she knew that wounds didn’t heal overnight, and they didn’t heal easily. You had to fight, and you had to be honest with yourself. You had to be willing to change. To look at yourself and understand where you might be wrong. And she knew that it wasn’t easy, but it was what had to happen.

She’d had difficult conversations with her mom, and she’d had to have difficult conversations with herself. About why she needed the rodeo so much, and why she clung to those ideas of who she had to be.

And then she had to let herself change. And metamorphosis wasn’t painless. A shift in who you were wasn’t painless.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I matter because I’m me, and I get that now. Along with...understanding that me doesn’t begin and end with a rodeo event. It’s just that when you open yourself up, and when you quit trying to make yourself into something and just let yourself be, things change. I don’t need you to make me feel any kind of way about myself. I feel a whole lot more than I ever have. And I’m not hiding.” She looked him full in the face, there in the brightly lit barn, standing underneath fluorescent lights. The smell of the hay, and the sound of the horses in their stalls providing a backdrop to the moment. Perfect, really. Because this was what they were grounded in. Even if it wasn’t who they were.

“I’m willing to give up something I care a whole lot about to stay here and be with you, because while I care about the rodeo, Jake, I... I love you, Jake.”

The words left her mouth and she felt like she had grabbed hold of her heart, pulled it out of her chest and showed it to him. That she was naked and vulnerable and on the verge of death, standing there with the most integral part of what she was on display. For him to accept or crush. For him to embrace or push away.

And while she had never felt more terrified in all her life, she had also never felt stronger. Not on the back of a bucking bronco, not asking him to marry her, not at any point in time. Not ever.

In her terror, in her vulnerability, there was a strength that she had never imagined existed in her.

This whole journey had led her here. Peeling off her protective layers, one by one. Dealing with her family relationships. It had brought her here. Changed her, broke her open. So she could feel it all.

So she could risk it all.

“I love you,” she repeated. “With everything that I have. You are the future that I want, Jake Daniels. And if I can ride in the rodeo right along with that, then I will. But if it doesn’t fit in, then I know which one of those things I can leave behind. And it’s not you.”

She felt free. Weightless. This deep, unending revelation that washed over her was like light. Like the key to chains she’d put on herself.

It wasn’t about what she could do to prove herself.

It was just about love.

About loving what she did. Loving those around her.

Believing they loved her.

It was about loving Jake.

“Please don’t say that,” he said. “I can’t... I can’t do anything with that.”

“Why not?”

“Dammit,” he said, his word echoing in the barn. “You know why. I’ve explained why to you. I told you. I’m not going to do marriage or family or anything like that. I don’t do it.”

“You’re a liar,” she said. “Because this isn’t friendship on one side and sex on the other. It’s both together, and I am pretty damn sure that’s just love.”

“Callie Carson,” he said. “You are without a doubt the best woman that I have ever known. The most talented, the brightest, the best, and you can’t love me.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is... Domesticity might as well be dying. My parents were miserable and then they died. What is the point of that? That’s what I learned. You can do all these things and make a life that looks a certain way and just have it all fall apart. You can die, anyway. Your husband can be ready to leave, anyway. Your wife can hate you, anyway. And if there’s a higher power out there, then it’s bullshit. I don’t believe in anything. And you... Look at you. You are strong, and you have dreams, and you believe in the beauty of things that I can’t. That’s not a love that you can survive, Cal. Believe me.”