Watch Me Fall (Ross Siblings, #5)(62)
She might be surprised. He’d also witnessed someone he loved lying broken in a hospital bed. Macy, with her spine fractured. Those horrible moments when they didn’t know if… When they just didn’t know. Would she make it, would she be okay, would she come back from it, would she ride? Would she walk? The only time he could remember being truly terrified in his entire life was the moment he saw her horse throw her off during her championship barrel race, when he saw how hard and how brutally the ground twisted her back. Everything was muddled after that. He’d been there watching her race, cheering her on, and in an instant, life had constricted to a tiny black hole and exploded into a universe full of chaos. He’d been the first to reach her, but he couldn’t touch her. She lay limp as a rag doll, and all he’d wanted was to yank her into his arms, to fix her. And he couldn’t. Even later, after they knew everything would be okay, she wouldn’t let him near her. She’d told him to get out, and he had. She’d shed everything about her life like an old skin, him included.
Loving someone you couldn’t have; damn, he had a degree in it.
One thing he had absolutely no f*cking clue about was how it might feel knowing there was a monster out there hunting you. Waiting to pounce on you or someone else close to you. He couldn’t take away Starla’s pain over the guy she loved—he’d never had much luck treating that particular pain himself. But he could do something about the monster.
He’d texted Ghost his number earlier and gotten a thumbs-up emoji back in response. An unlikely partner, that one, but whether he liked it or not, Jared didn’t have much doubt that Ghost would do anything to keep Macy safe, and probably any of his other friends too. He really couldn’t ask for more than that.
“Are you hungry?” he finally asked Starla, sensing her shift in her seat and look over at him in the darkness.
“I haven’t really thought about food since this morning,” she admitted quietly. Then, sighing, she pulled the elastic band from her high ponytail and let her hair fall in voluptuous waves around her shoulders. “I have such a headache.”
“Probably because you haven’t eaten all day,” he said lightly. “Do you feel like going anywhere, or throwing something together at home?”
“Are your cabinets stocked?”
“Pretty well.”
“I’d rather throw something together, if it’s all the same to you.”
“I didn’t mean you had to. Obviously I’m not much in the kitchen, but I can, like, boil water and throw some macaroni in it or something.”
She laughed. “Cooking calms me. It’s okay.”
“You won’t hear me complaining.”
“I’m so…f*cking furious.”
He clamped his jaw shut, feeling her gaze fully on him now. Let it out, he thought. Now the brooding was over, she needed the outlet. Giving her all the space she might want so that she could gather her emotions into words, he only looked over at her and nodded.
“I don’t know how I can even express it. Usually I lash out at people who piss me off, but this is such a deep, deep hatred that it might destroy me to talk about it. I’ve never hated anyone this much. I f*cking want to f*cking explode and take that sonofabitch out with me by his f*cking throat.”
Jared wanted to say he got it. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Only if another person had physically put Macy in the hospital all those years ago would he even begin to understand Starla’s anguish. Only the idea of Max somehow getting his hands on Starla came close.
“Yesterday, before he was attacked,” she began, “I told Brian everything. I told him I had to quit, and when he kept pushing me for a reason, I had to tell him why.”
Wow. He sat in amazed silence at that confession. She went on. “I took the step. I’m letting it go. Cutting it loose. I should’ve done it a long time ago. Hell, I shouldn’t ever have gone to work for Brian in the first place. It’s really the safest thing I can do. When he comes back…when he comes back, I have to be gone. I’m getting out entirely. It won’t hurt anymore then because I won’t have to see it.”
How could he argue? Except… “I think you’re fooling yourself if you think it won’t hurt anymore.”
Starla mulled that over in silence. “Well,” she finally said as he turned onto their dirt road, “it has to help a little. It can’t be any worse.”
“To leave a job and people you love? It might be.”
“I can still see them whenever I want. On my terms. I’ll have control.”
“Yeah. How did Brian take it?”
“Like Brian always takes things he doesn’t want to hear. He ranted a little, he told me the thought of us had crossed his mind a long time ago, but it wasn’t to be. Something we both know.”
“How did that make you feel? Better? Worse?”
She was a long time answering. “I don’t know. Neither, I guess. It is what it is. God, I hate that saying. And you know what else? I told my roommate I’m moving out. So I can start that search while I’m staying with you.”
He was proud of her. But he didn’t know how to say it without being patronizing. He also stopped short of telling her she could stay with him as long as she needed to, even though the words were crowding in his throat. Too many complications there. Then she said something that broke his heart. “My life isn’t much, but it’s mine. It’s time I start taking control of it.”