Page 79 of Roped

“I…” My throat is drying out. “I c-can’t.”

He squeezes my belly as he asks, his voice quiet, “Why not?”

I push at his arm, trying to get free. “Please. Please don’t… don’t m-make me.”

Surprisingly, he lets me go and I’m both devastated and relieved by it. I can’t go on a ride with him. I can’t. I did it once and it was horrible, but I somehow got through it. I have no intention of ever, ever, ever doing it again. Also, I don’t want him to find out how much of a chicken I am when it comes to horses and horse riding, so without turning around, I take off. I’m heading back to the stairs when I hear a thud, the kind that seems to shake the ground, and despite not wanting to, I turn around.

Only to find he’s jumped down from the horse, his eyes homed in on me.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I GO STILL at the intention I read in them.

I know what he means to do. I know. So I already start shaking my head, I already start backing away from him as he grabs the fence, heaves himself up and over it. All in one graceful, athletic, holy shit impossible motion. After that, there’s nothing between him and me, not that the fence was any obstacle whatsoever. His steps are purposeful and his jaw is set. His eyes are telling me he won’t let me escape, but even so, I keep backing away from him.

As soon as he reaches me, he grabs my arm and pulls me toward him. I collide with his hard torso, and leaning down, he growls, “If you don’t want me to chase you down, don’t run from me.”

“I’m not—”

“And now you’ll tell me exactly why,” he continues, his eyes flashing. “You look like I’ve asked you to jump from a fuckin’ cliff instead of go for a ride.”

I fist his shirt. “I-I don’t… I, uh… I can’t… It’s just—”

“Why?”

I swallow and then I swallow again. I try to catch my breath and then I try to breathe. But he doesn’t stop staring down at me. He doesn’t stop holding me to him.

“This ’cause of what I did,” he asks, his jaw pulsing, “at the cliff that night?”

“No,” I say quickly, loudly. “No, what you did sort of… distracted me from it.”

Anger flashes through his features then and his grip tightens. He pulls me toward him even more, as if I’m a hundred feet away instead of being plastered to him already. “What is it?”

I twist and twist his shirt in my grip as my lips tremble, and I don’t think I’ll be able to say anything at all, let alone tell him what he wants me to. That is, until he lets my elbow go and puts both his arms around me. Until he presses me into his body and starts stroking my back. He tucks my head into his chest and I go up on my tiptoes as I close my eyes and put my arms around his neck, hanging on to him like a lifeline.

He whispers in my ear, “Tell me, darlin’.”

My breaths are still choppy, but somehow I manage to whisper back, “I-I’m… scared.”

His arms tighten around me and he asks, “Of what?”

I lick my dried lips and hug him back tighter. “Of f-falling.”

He squeezes his arms around me again, telling me he’s listening. He’s here.

And tears pricks my eyes as I continue, “And dying.”

At this, he squeezes me so hard that it should be suffocating and it is, but it’s the good kind of suffocating where I get to smell his scent and be surrounded by his heat.

“It’s like… it’s like a ph-phobia. I-I think. I’ve never… got it tested, but…” I burrow my face in his chest even more. “It’s not like the fear of heights or fear of falling per se. But like, f-fear of falling from a horse. And I don’t think”—I shake my head, tears squeezing out of my closed eyes—“I can ride with you. I-I want to. God, I want to so badly, Radisson. I want… But I can’t… can’t go, and…”

“Shh,” he says softly, gently in my ear as he rubs circles on my back.

I silently cry against his chest, spoiling his new shirt, but I don’t care. I’ll wash it for him. Just like cooking, I’ve never done laundry either, not with my own two hands, except if you count dropping off and picking up laundry from the laundromat, but I’ll learn. I’ll learn everything and anything for him, just as long as he keeps holding me like this.

“Want you to trust me,” he says after a while. “Yeah? For this.”

I stiffen in his arms.