21

Hannah sauntered on into the rodeo like it was runway.

Her own, personal runway, to be more precise.

She’d outdone herself. Her dress boots were vintage and gleamed from beneath the perfect hem of her jeans. Her blinged-out western style shirt was tucked into a simple belt with a buckle that could blind a man at ten paces. Her earrings matched the bling on her neckline. She hadn’t kitted herself out like she was heading into a competition with the rest of the girls in the queen’s program. Hannah had dressed herself like she’d already won.

Because, of course, she had.

This particular rodeo’s crown, in fact. Twice.

When she’d run off from the rodeo instead of waiting to be kicked out, she’d naturally taken her crowns with her. It was possible there were girls who would find it tacky to walk into a job arena they’d already left, wearing the uniform of their disgrace, but it turned out, Hannah wasn’t one of them. She’d attached her glorious Miss Rodeo Forever crown to her black felt hat, bobby pinned her hat to her hair, and was prepared to fight anyone who tried to come for it.

Well. A rodeo queen didn’t fight. Not with her hands, anyway.

Hannah smiled wider and adjusted Jack on her hip.

Not content to merely outdo herself, from crown to curls and all the way down to her favorite pair of boots, Hannah had made certain that Jack was all dolled up like a miniature cowboy. Just like his daddy.

And like every other rodeo she’d ever walked into, Hannah’s nerves took her over while she was still outside. Her stomach twisted. Her heart rate soared. But the moment she walked toward the private competitors’ entrance, she felt her usual cool settle down over her.

The wider she smiled, the calmer she got.

Tonight, she couldn’t help but call that a blessing.

Because Ty might have come here to reclaim a slice of his former glory. But she was here to claim him. And her family. And while she was at it, the happy life she felt certain they both deserved.

She moved through the back corridors of the rodeo complex, smiling and waving at all the familiar faces, but not stopping. Members of the rodeo committee who did double takes. The stock contractors who still loved it when she called them sugar. The barrel-racing girls who always stuck together the same way the rodeo queens did, but actually smiled at her tonight. The bronc riders she knew by name and statistics, the steer wrestling partners, the flustered local livestock people … It was as if she were walking some kind of gauntlet.

But unlike when she’d been pregnant, alone, and afraid, Hannah was ready for this gauntlet tonight. She kept her head up high, the better to flash her crown. She kept her smile in place. And she defied anyone to look at the cute, chubby boy on her hip and not fall instantly and permanently in love.

“Why, Miss Hannah,” came the deep, Texan drawl Hannah knew well. “I didn’t expect we’d see you around here again.”

Hannah had almost made it to the corridor that ran back to where the competitors were getting ready. She’d timed her arrival for after the opening and the anthem, hoping she’d avoid something like this. She could hear the announcer out in the ring and the crowd cheering and stamping their feet.

But there was no shrugging off Buck Stapleton. He was the president of the Rodeo Forever Association and prided himself on his hands-on approach to the running of his national rodeo, from the dirt to the queens’ program to the bull riders’ rankings and back again. He was also the individual most likely to be personally offended by the personal life choices of the girls he crowned queen.

Unlike other national rodeo queen reigns that stretched over the course of a calendar year, Miss Rodeo Forever won her crown in May, then spent the summer sharing the spotlight with her predecessor, before assuming her full title in the fall and carrying it on through to the end of the following summer. Once a Miss Rodeo Forever, always a Miss Rodeo Forever, Buck liked to say. It’s right there in the name.

“I guess I’m nothing but a bad penny, Buck,” Hannah replied now, settling Jack—who was thankfully still half asleep from the car ride—more firmly on her hip.

Both of them stood there smiling at each other, ear to ear.

Hannah had sauntered straight into a battle. Good thing she’d prepared herself for a war.

“Now, Hannah, I know you haven’t been here in a while, and it looks like you have an excellent reason for that right there on your hip.” Buck stopped in the middle of his chummy, fatherly performance to chuck Jack under the chin. Jack, already no fool, recoiled into a pout. “Isn’t he a cutie? But you know that when you dropped all your commitments, we had to go ahead and crown another queen.”

“I had heard that.”

“The show must go on, darlin’. And it has. Now, what I can’t figure is what you’re doing backstage tonight, with that crown on your head.”

“I did win the darn thing,” Hannah replied, and the real contest, it turned out, was to see which one of them could get deeper into their drawl while simultaneously flashing a brighter smile. By her count, they were neck and neck. “In fact, as I recall, you put it right there on my head. Once a Miss Rodeo Forever, always a Miss Rodeo Forever, am I right?”

Buck let out his trademark booming laugh. Then he sobered. “Please don’t tell me that you’re here to cause trouble.”

Hannah reached up with her free hand and expertly adjusted her crown, though it needed no adjustment. “That all depends on your definition of trouble.”

“Now, Hannah,” he began.

“I sure have enjoyed this chance to catch up with you,” she replied, sweet enough to make her own teeth ache.

“You know the rules,” he said apologetically. As if he didn’t make all the rules himself.

“I’m not here to get into a catfight about a crown,” Hannah said, with the rodeo queen laugh she’d perfected. Sparkly and airy. “But you are currently standing between a married woman and her husband. Is that where you want to be, Buck?”

“Married woman?” He sputtered. “When did you get married? Who did you marry?”

“That’s the funny thing about rumors. They’re so rarely true. Why don’t you and I start one right now.” She leaned in while Jack sucked on his fingers, his eyes big and dubious on Buck. “What would people say if they found out that you’d suddenly taken to barring family members from seeing each other before a show? When you have so long prided yourself on upholding the kind of family values that our audience holds dear?”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled sweetly. Buck, his own smile welded to his face to cover his shock, smiled right on back.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said after a moment. He waved a hand to one side, giving her permission to pass him.

“Thank you so much,” she drawled and carried on down the hallway.

“But Hannah,” Buck called after her. “While I’m an understanding man, you did break your contract with me.”

“I did,” she replied, and then looked back over her shoulder. “But you didn’t actually fire me from my position based on the rumors going around. What you did do was fill it without taking the appropriate steps, which I believe are laid out in that contract. A glance at the contract terms might make a girl ask herself, who really broke it?”

“I’d hate for this to get legal,” Buck said sorrowfully, which was maybe the funniest thing he’d ever said to her, given he was a lawyer himself.

“Why would we go and bring lawyers into this?” Hannah sighed. Theatrically. “I would love to have a private, personal chat with you about the damage that malicious rumors cause and how I felt I had no recourse than to do what was necessary to protect my family. And how brokenhearted I was that I couldn’t ride out my reign. My personal feeling is that we should let bygones be bygones. But it’s up to you.”

They stood there a moment, smiling at each other, before Hannah swung around again and kept going. Battle down, war still to go.

She had every intention of winning that too.

A lot of the guys hung around in the same stretch of corridor as they got ready, out of view of the crowd. There was a lot of retaping of injuries. Shaking out aching muscles. Some men prayed. Others cursed.

But either way, Ty had always kept himself apart from the rest. Hannah sauntered on by the general dressing room, nodding at the men as she passed. She wasn’t at all surprised to hear the chatter stop as she approached, then pick up as she passed, but she didn’t care about that anymore.

She kept going, peeking into each room on her way. And then, as she knew she would, she found him.

Hannah stopped in the doorway, taking in a bare room with a fluorescent light, one shelf of boxes against the back wall. Ty stood in the middle, doing the stretches he always did before he pitted himself against a bull.

It was the same as every time she saw him. That jolt in her belly. The sense of the whole world screeching to a halt.

It never got old. If anything, her reaction to him was stronger now than it had been way back when.

She could have stood there for hours watching him move, lost in his own world, focused and determined. But Jack made a cooing noise, and the spell was broken.

Ty turned, and Hannah wasn’t the least surprised when he scowled at her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. In that hard, rough voice that made her heart jump around in her chest.

“Oh, you know,” she said airily. “Righting wrongs. Saving my marriage. Even reclaiming some glory, as that appears to be the order of the night.”

“Did my brothers send you?” he demanded, in a way that would have had her denying it even if they had. “Because I don’t really care if any of you understand why I’m going to do this. I’m still going to do it.”

“I have absolutely no doubt you will.” She moved closer to him, and then, when Jack batted at her in excitement, she held him out. “Go on, take him. He’s your son.”

Ty looked as if he would rather cuddle up to the bull that was about to try to shake him to pieces. But he held out his hands and took his child, then tucked him into the crook of his strong, tough arm.

She couldn’t help it. It made her feel giddy, looking at sweet, perfect Jack cuddled there in his daddy’s arms. Especially since Ty was dressed to ride, in those black chaps, black vest, and his cowboy hat low. He looked like every girl’s dream of a cowboy come to life. He had always been hers.

The sight of him with the baby they’d made was almost more than Hannah could take.

“I need to apologize to you,” she said, with too much emotion in her voice. Already. “I’m the one who can remember what sex was like between us. I should have anticipated that it would be intense.”

His gaze was so dark it burned.

“I don’t need you to apologize to me, Hannah.”

“And you might be the experienced one, but the only experience I have is you. I should have expected it would all be … too much.”

“You really don’t need to apologize to me for sex,” he said from between his teeth. “Or anything else.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out the thick envelope Brady had delivered to her. “I also thought, since I planned to be in the neighborhood anyway, that I might as well return this to you.”

“Good.” He didn’t look like it was good at all. She watched him swallow, long and hard. “It will be good to move forward.”

“I agree completely.” She tilted her head to one side. “I’m not signing it, Ty.”

He stared at the envelope, then at her. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to divorce you,” she told him. “I’m in love with you, and nothing seems to change that. I don’t think it’s going to change. I think this is the deal. You and me. And Jack.”

He scowled at her, but he was holding Jack in the crook of his arm, and adjusted his hold every time the little boy squirmed. It was hard to quail properly before the scowl when he was making her heart melt.

“Hannah. You can’t be serious.”

“Brace yourself, sugar, because I have more to apologize for.”

She took advantage of the fact he was holding the baby and stepped forward to put her hands on him. There was a part of her that worried he might push her away. But he didn’t.

“I should never have left you in that hospital,” she told him fiercely, one hand over his heart. “Just like I should never have let you walk off into the night two weeks ago.”

“I told you to leave me in the hospital.” He looked like he was in pain. “And I told you to leave two weeks ago.”

“You think I don’t know what nonsense your father put in your head?” she asked, just as fiercely. “Because I do. You’re not a monster, Ty. You never were.”

“The stories you told me yourself suggest otherwise.”

“You can’t remember those stories.”

“But you do.”

“Ty. I understand. I was freaked out when I found out I was pregnant too.” She shook her head, but kept her eyes locked to his. “You did the best you could, but I’m not at all surprised, now, that you reacted the way you did. I forgive you. And you know that’s true because I hunted you down. I came and found you. When I could so easily have stayed away.”

Something moved over his face, dark and terrible. It tore Hannah up inside. She wanted to take it away from him with her own hands, dig it out with her fingers and take it on herself if that would make it better.

But all Ty did was hand Jack to her. Carefully. As if the child he claimed he didn’t want was more precious to him than anything else in the world.

“You’re not going to change my mind by showing up here like this.” But he sounded a lot like he was talking to himself, not her.

“Are you sure?” Hannah asked softly. “Because I’m in love with you. I’m not going to change my mind on that. The very least we can do is try being a family.”

“That word,” Ty said, his voice rough and raw. “Family. Do you know what that word means to me? Drunken rampages. A black eye for my eighteenth birthday present. The nasty, bitter old man who stood by my hospital bed and told me that he always knew I’d end up crawling back and letting the ranch support me, because that’s the useless piece of crap I was.”

Hannah wished Amos Everett were still alive, so she could go ahead and kill him herself.

“Family is also your brother Brady, who took me to task for my potential gold-digging ways. And then came all the way to Georgia to remind me that of the two of us, I remember how to love.”

“Hannah…”

“Family is your brother Gray,” she continued, as if she didn’t hear him. “What would have happened to him and Becca if Gray never decided take a chance on the one thing he didn’t believe in?”

“I can’t do this.” Ty’s voice was so dark. She could see that darkness in him, and it made her want to cry. “You were right to be upset. I may never remember what happened between us. And something tells me that’s a gift. Because as much as I might have loved you, it didn’t prevent me from turning into my father at the first roadblock. You say you forgive that, but what happens when I do it to Jack? What happens when I treat him the way my father treated me?”

“You won’t do that.”

“I already did.”

“You were upset,” Hannah argued. “You’re the one who’s decided that you became the bogeyman, not me.”

“Your reaction suggests pretty strongly that I did.”

“My reaction tells you that you’re not the only one standing in this marriage imperfect and flawed straight through.”

“Some flaws and imperfections are worse than others. More dangerous.”

“I was raised by my mother, who was never given any reason on earth to trust a man. And didn’t. And still doesn’t. And sure enough, she handed that right on down. I walked away from you at the first roadblock because I hoped that would save me from heartache. But it didn’t.” Hannah adjusted Jack on her hip. “Yes, you got angry. Upset. You raised your voice, yelled some. Said some things you probably would have regretted if you’d had time. All that makes you is a man.”

“What that makes me is a man who can’t control himself. A man like my father. A man who—”

“You weren’t drunk. You weren’t out of control. You were emotional,” Hannah told him. “And I was yelling right back at you. I don’t know when you decided I’m a shy, retiring, will-o’-the-wisp of a girl. But I’m not. We yelled at each other. It was not a high point in our marriage. But it shouldn’t have been the end point either. And that’s on me.”

He slashed his hand through the air. “I can’t take the risk.”

“Life is risk, Ty. Love is risk. Everything that’s worth anything in this life is risk. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t make you feel something, why would you bother doing it in the first place?”

“I can’t be what you want,” he said, simple and brutal. “There’s a reason that my brain doesn’t want me to remember what happened. Not any part of it. I don’t know why you can’t see that I’m offering you a lucky escape.”

“I don’t want an escape.” She wanted to scream, but she was afraid it would tip over into the sob she could feel building inside of her. “What do you think marriage is? As far as I can tell, it’s a collection of mistakes, strung together by hope and stubbornness. I know I’ve walked away, but I keep coming back. Isn’t that the point? All we have to do is keep coming back.”

“Hannah—”

“I love you,” she said, and they weren’t having sex now. This was no heat of the moment declaration. She said it solemnly. Starkly.

The effect on him was like a shattering. She watched it roll through him, over his face, making that big, strong body of his shudder. It made her own eyes damp.

“I don’t believe you do,” he said.

As if the words were torn out of him.

“You can believe it or not believe it. It doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Hannah…” Ty shook himself. “You don’t know how much I wish I were another kind of man, but—”

“Then be another kind of man!” She threw that at him. “Let’s say you’re right and you’re exactly like your father. So what? You choose how you act. Every moment, every day. It’s your decision. Decide to be someone else, and you will be.”

There was the sound of feet outside, and then a head poked around the door.

“Ty,” the young man said, then stopped. He blinked at Hannah.

“Hi, Billy,” she murmured. And she couldn’t bring her smile online.

“They, uh, need you out there,” Billy said nervously, his gaze darting from Hannah to Jack and back to Ty.

“I’m on my way,” Ty growled.

Billy retreated.

“This is like déjà vu,” Hannah said, and had to wipe at her eyes because she couldn’t keep from leaking everywhere any longer. She didn’t know why she was bothering to try. “But this time, Ty, I don’t care if everybody in this building knows that we’re not only married, we had this beautiful boy, and we have a beautiful future too.”

“You have all those things,” Ty said shortly. “I have eight seconds to get my name back and go out on top.”

“And then what?” she demanded.

He was swiping his thick gloves off the floor, and he turned on her, then, his dark green eyes lit up with a kind of fire. “Why the hell does everybody keep asking me that?”

“You have eight seconds,” she threw at him. “And then you have your life. What life do you want, Ty?”

He came toward her, then, a dark storm. A fury.

But she wasn’t afraid.

And she knew he would never believe her, but she hadn’t been afraid back then either. She’d been hurt. Scared, maybe, but of the situation. Not of him.

She had never been afraid of him. She loved him.

He came close, reaching out a hand to grip her by the shoulder. Firmly, but not painfully. Because he was the only person alive who thought he was anything like his father.

Between them, Jack laughed, as if this were all a game they were playing.

“I understand my life perfectly,” he told her. “Half the men in my family are good seeds. Gray. My grandfather. Solid, dependable men. Decent, through and through. But the other half are like my father. Like me. And either way, whatever happens, the land swallows us up. Cattle don’t care what kind of man you are. Not as long as you feed them. That’s what I’m going to do with my life.”

“Rage, rage against the dying of the cow?” she demanded, and maybe she was trying to be funny. Lighten things up.

Or maybe she wanted to slap him.

But it didn’t matter either way.

“This can never happen,” Ty told her with grave finality. “This—us—” And his fingers gripped her harder, reminding her how it had felt in the bunkhouse when he’d surged inside her, making them one. Making her his all over again, like they were new. “This never should have happened. This is wrong. It’s all wrong.”

That would have killed her eighteen months ago.

But Hannah was a different woman now.

Jack fussed and she shushed him, but her eyes were on Ty. She lifted up her hand to cover his, holding him in place.

“I need you to remember this,” she told him, solemn like a vow. “This is us. This, right here. This is how we hurt each other. But then, this is also how we made this beautiful little boy. This is big and unwieldy, and it can feel terrible sometimes. It can also be magical. This is who we are. This is love, Ty. Life. And I don’t care what you say to me, I’m not giving up on you. Not again.”

“Ty!” came the voice in the hall. “You need to get out there!”

“I have to go.”

He bit the words out as if they didn’t make sense. As if they were too big.

“Eight seconds,” Hannah said to him, her voice catching. Just a little. Just enough. “Eight seconds of glory, Ty. And then, if you want it, this. Your whole life. Right here waiting.”

But he already looked broken as he swaggered away, off toward that destiny he wanted so badly.

No matter what he had to leave behind.