Chapter Fourteen
Sierra didn’t see Gage until the events were finished and most of the riders and all of the fans had cleared out. She’d stayed until there wasn’t a soul left at the fan zone. He wasn’t coming. Her gut had told her that earlier as she’d stood there watching the throngs of fans and riders mingling. Everyone was there. Everyone except Gage.
Her sister had taken off with her current beau but said to text her if Sierra needed her. She wasn’t sure what Savanna thought she could do.
Could she make Gage love her?
Could she make him realize that they should be together?
Somehow, she doubted that was what her sister had in mind.
She finally went to his truck and waited for twenty minutes before he came walking toward her. She remembered what Marcos had said about lost months but right now turning tail and leaving sounded better to her than facing him. He’d been the one who’d taken a beaten from a huge, raging beast but she was the one who felt battered.
Her heart wasn’t going to be whole if this didn’t work out the way she wanted it to.
His normal gait was slow and he had a hitch in it. He looked rough and tough. And despite the battering he’d taken there was an aura of danger around him.
She bit her lower lip and knew she needed to just be cool. He’d had a rough day and a rougher night. He’d been worried about his dad before he’d ridden. The last thing he needed was for her to lose her cool.
But she’d never been in love before and she had thought after last night that things would be different between them.
“Sierra.”
Just the way he’d said her name made her realize that this wasn’t going to be a conversation she’d enjoy. In fact, she was pretty damned sure that it was going to end with her in tears.
“Gage.”
He sighed. “I’m in a lot of pain and not really up for this conversation.”
She just stood there. She wasn’t one to back down and he knew it. “What conversation? Because I don’t see that anything has changed since this morning when you told me that you wanted to figure out how to make things work.”
He shook his head.
“Everything changed, darlin’. I could have died. You know that’s what happened with Marty and while I was being tossed around like a ragdoll that’s all that was going through my head. Except Marty had been smart enough not to be involved with anyone.”
“I don’t know that was smart,” Sierra said. “That ride didn’t change how I feel about you.”
“Well it changed something in me,” he said.
“What? What could it have possibly changed?”
“I’m doing this for my dad. And until you showed up I’ve been sticking each ride and hanging on with no problems. You are a distraction, Sierra, and one I don’t need,” he said.
“A distraction?” she asked, trying to be cool but it was getting harder.
“Yeah. And I stayed up too late last night having sex when I should have been sleeping,” he said.
“I didn’t make you have sex with me, Gage Powell. In fact, you rode pretty damned good in Sacramento and we were up way later that night.”
“Well, I didn’t care about you then, so you weren’t in my head the next morning.”
“Shouldn’t that mean something? You care about me and I care about you. I don’t want this to end.”
“Well that’s not the way this works. We have to both think it can work and I’m not sure it can.”
She saw that his eyes were bloodshot and as he got closer she noticed how tired and beaten he looked, but he was also determined. She stopped standing by his truck and went to his side. She wanted this to work and she needed to be all in.
She wrapped her arm around him carefully, looking up at him.
“I love you,” she said, putting all of her emotions into those words. No more hiding and pretending. “I haven’t said that to many people. Just my sister and parents. And I wasn’t looking for love or even looking for you, but it happened and I don’t want to let you slip away.”
“Ah, dammit, darlin’. I love you too. In fact, I love you too much to put you through this. Today just brought home the reality of what I’ve been doing. I love riding. I don’t think I can quit. And I said it was for my daddy that I was doing it but that was a lie. A big ol’ selfish lie. I’m doing it for me.”
“That’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I can go on the road with the tour. You know I run the sponsor program,” she said.
But he shook his head. “That’s not possible. I know what it’s like to watch someone you love die, darlin’. I’m not about to do that to you.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“I do. We got this,” she said. “You and me together make a formidable team. Give us a chance.”
He leaned down, resting his forehead on the top of her head, and she held him. But even as she did she knew that her hold on him was tenuous.
“You can take the next few months to figure it out. You have enough points to qualify for next year and won’t have to decide anything until December.”
“Sierra, I’m riding next week in Little Rock.”
“You can barely stand up.”
“So. I’ll be fine. I’m taped up good.”
“At least skip Little Rock,” she said. “Wait for Nashville.”
“I can’t. Dad’s coming to see me ride in Little Rock.”
“He might not even know it’s you,” Sierra said. “Be sensible.”
“I’m not discussing this,” he said. “I started this for Dad and no matter what it’s turned into, he’s planning to be in Little Rock and I’m going to have a good clean ride.”
“That’s foolish. That’s pride.”
He didn’t say anything and she realized she wasn’t going to change his mind. She knew from being around the tour for as long as she had been that his injuries were serious. The head wound probably meant a concussion. And he wasn’t even going to think about taking a week off.
“What if you don’t pass medical?”
“I will,” he assured her.
“What if I asked you not to ride?”
“The answer would be no.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said. “Riding isn’t going to make your dad love you. He’s never going to look at you and see whatever it was he thought he saw in Marty. Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t reckon that’s any of your damn business, Sierra,” he said, walking past her and getting in his truck.
She knew she’d said too much but had no way to take back the words. She wasn’t even sure she would if she could. She didn’t want to see him do something stupid that wasn’t going to help him get what he wanted and needed from his dad.
Or from her.
She shook her head and walked away from him.
*
Sierra had stubbornly refused to go back home to Dallas even though Gage had done everything in his power to force her. Instead she’d followed him in her rental car to Little Rock. She’d parked in the sponsor lot when they got to the arena and he pretended he hadn’t watched in his rearview mirror until she got out of the car and walked toward the Montez Denim tent.
Fuck.
He ached. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t hurt and suddenly he knew why most riders retired long before thirty. How many years could a body take this kind of abuse? He had started this year to prove something. He’d pretended it was something for his dad or for himself or even for Marty but now he wasn’t sure what it was exactly that he was here for.
He wasn’t questioning his purpose. He was neck and neck with Kane. He couldn’t miss riding for a week. He might lose. He’d forfeit his shot at the gold buckle and he just wasn’t sure he could do it.
It was the one thing that he’d have that Marty had never achieved. Could never achieve.
He felt small and petty but there it was. He wasn’t walking away from riding again. He was a damned good rider. He’d thought all those years ago that he’d been doing it for his dad but it turned out that he’d really done it for himself.
He saw the other riders pull in and make their way to the locker room. It was time to soak his old bones and he was going to have convince Doc Freeman that he could ride. That wouldn’t be hard. Doc got that all of them were here for a reason. No one did this for the fun of it. Or if they did, not for long.
His phone pinged and he glanced down to see a message from Sierra. His heart beat a little bit faster.
Sierra: Your folks are here at the fan zone.
Gage: Thanks. I’ll be over shortly.
The message window had dancing dots and he waited to see what she was typing to respond but then just a thumbs-up icon appeared. What had she been about to say?
And why did it matter?
He’d kicked her when he’d been down. He’d driven her away. The way he did with anyone he cared for. He was being treated the way he deserved.
He scrubbed his hand over his face and realized he was on edge. He got out of the truck, kicked the front tire as hard as he could and felt a bolt of pain shoot up his leg.
“You okay?”
Glancing over his shoulder he saw Kane standing there with his gear in one hand, his hat in the other. Of course, his rival would see him making an ass of himself. Though Kane was more than just a rider on the tour. They’d become friends of a sort.
“Yeah. Just wishing I could kick my own ass,” Gage admitted.
Kane laughed.
“After qualifying I’m willing to oblige,” Kane said.
“Hopefully I’ll draw a bull that will take the rage that’s in me,” Gage said. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Any time.”
Kane walked toward the arena and Gage locked the doors to the cab of his truck and walked over toward the fan zone. As soon as he entered the main fan area he was stopped by fans. He posed for selfies, signed Montez Denim posters and even signed one woman’s bosom.
He felt someone watching him and glanced up to see Sierra watching him. She looked older than he’d seen her look before. She had her hair pulled back tight in some sort of high updo and wore a pants suit that made her look ten years older than he knew her to be. There were faint lines under her eyes and he realized it was because of him. That was what he’d done to her. He could have left her with a smile.
But instead he’d kept coming back, trying to take something for himself. Trying to pretend he wasn’t the portent of destruction that he’d always been, thinking he could pay the price, but instead it was Sierra who was paying it.
He hadn’t wanted that.
He turned away from her, but then knew he had to apologize.
“Sorry,” he mouthed to her.
She nodded. Then wrapped one arm around her waist and pointed to a table where his parents were seated and waiting for him. When he glanced back to her, Sierra was gone.
He knew it was only fitting but he missed her. He could pretend that by ignoring his feelings they weren’t real but he knew he loved her.
And that love meant he had to be a better man.
*
Sierra hurried back past the temporary tattoo station and into the back where they stored the posters for each of the riders. She crouched down behind one of the large boxes, pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face against them and cried.
He’d signed some skank’s chest like…like it was nothing. What did she expect? Well, certainly not to see him smile down at the woman and then meet her gaze without a hint of shame. She had to stop this.
She had to stop following him around like some sort of lost puppy dog.
She’d been around the tour long enough to know that a rider as high in the points as Gage was never going to skip a ride. But all of that went out of her mind when it came to Gage. She knew it was because she loved him and despite everything she knew she still did.
Well she wasn’t fickle so it wasn’t surprising that during the last week she hadn’t fallen out of love with him. But she’d wanted to see something in him. Something that would show her he was sorry for what had happened, but that wasn’t his way.
She’d thought…she’d thought now that she was older she would know herself. Know her heart well enough to take a gamble and actually win at love, but it seemed that she was a Montez through and through. There wasn’t a happily ever after in the stars for her.
The flap opened and Savanna walked in. Sierra sat as quietly as she could, hoping her sister didn’t see her. And at first Savanna was busy tapping furiously on her phone, typing out a message. Then she put the phone down on the stack of boxes that Sierra was sitting behind and started to adjust her breasts in the low-fitting top when their eyes met.
“Sierra? What are you doing in here?” Savanna asked.
“What does it look like?”
“Oh, honey,” Savanna said, dropping down to sit next to her. “It gets easier.”
“What does?”
“This life. Falling for a rider. They are tough. You know that it’s all about sticking the ride, getting enough points and winning the buckle. We’re just a distraction when they need it and when they don’t they move on.”
Sierra’s heart ached. Not for herself because she wasn’t going to do this again, but for Savanna who had done this year after year. “I’m not ever getting involved with a rider again.”
“You say that now, but next year, there will someone who’ll catch your eye,” Savanna said. “That’s what always happens to me. And now I’m getting older and am less of a novelty…some days I wonder how my life became this.”
She reached over and patted her sister’s shoulder. She got it. She really did. “You like it.”
“Not right now,” she said. “The Brazilian I’ve been seeing has a fiancée and she’s coming to the finals so he said we should cool things off starting now.”
“That’s still a few weeks away,” she said. She was very aware of when Gage would take his last ride and his contract with Montez Denim would be up. And he’d walk away.
“He said he wanted to keep himself for her when she arrived so he’d be hungry.”
Suddenly Sierra felt sorry for her sister. She knew that Savanna would scoff if she tried to comfort her.
“Men.”
Savanna smiled. “What’s going on with you and Gage?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t need to be distracted by a girl. He has his own agenda and I don’t have a place in it.”
“Are you sure?”
She thought of that moment when their eyes met and she’d seen his demons in his gaze. She’d wanted to go to him and pull him into her arms, but he’d just mouthed the word sorry. Was that even a proper apology?
It was his way of making something better in his mind.
“Yeah. Damn, I’m dumb. Looking at me sitting behind the posters, crying like a baby. I can’t do this,” Sierra said. She pushed herself to her feet.
She rubbed her hands over her face and then reached up taking the elastic from the tight bun she’d twisted it into this morning. She shook her head and then took her own phone and used the front-facing mirror to check herself out. She still looked tired and drained. She forced a smile.
“Me either. Enough feeling sorry for myself. I’m a Montez.”
“That’s right the Montez girls aren’t going to hide out,” Sierra added.
Savanna smiled at her and then linked her arm through Sierra’s as they went back out into the main fan area. Gage’s dad was talking loudly about how his son was going to win it all.
For a moment Sierra wondered if he knew it was Gage riding and not Marty. But that no longer mattered. Gage had made it clear he didn’t want or need him in his life. She saw Lucy standing off to one side watching both of her men. She had that mixture of pain and pride in her eyes and Sierra realized that she’d come to care for much more than just Gage.
She went over to Lucy.
“I’m so glad you guys were able to come to Little Rock,” Sierra said.
“Me too. It’s so nice to see Gage’s picture everywhere and the fans who are waiting to see him. I never realized it was this big. I figured a few people knew his name, but nothing like this.”
“We are very happy with our partnership with him. Gage is a really good rider.”
Lucy turned to her. “It’s more than a business deal, isn’t it? I had the feeling when you were both at the ranch that there was more between you.”
“Not anymore,” Sierra said.
“I’m…I don’t know what to say. I thought you were different and I liked seeing you with him.”
Sierra had too but she wasn’t going to force it. He said to give him space and he didn’t need her and she had her pride. She’d gone to him once, but how many times was she supposed to do that?
“I think you have your VIP credentials for the weekend,” Sierra said. “If you need anything else just let any Montez Denim staff member know and we will take care of it for you.”
“Where will you be?” Lucy asked.
“Back in Dallas. I have some stuff to take care of for the finals in Fort Worth,” Sierra said. Like sorting out her life and trying to figure out how to see Gage and not feel that mix of love, fear and anger.
She walked away from the fan event and out of the arena. She texted Savanna to let her know what was going on and then just got in her car and sat there. She couldn’t run away. The finals were coming up. A million dollars was on the line and Gage was going to ride. She told herself she was staying because she was a sponsor and needed to make sure she had the PR campaign ready to go but she knew she was here for Gage.
No matter how she might wish otherwise.