Page 38 of Maverick (The Bull Riders #3)

Chapter Sixteen

Maverick

Absolutely everything is shit. It has been since she left.

I hate myself for sending her away, and yet, I haven’t been able to untangle all of the things I said, or that she said, in the time since she’s been gone.

I had to head to Vegas for the championship.

Because time doesn’t stop just because this sucks.

I miss her. I miss her in every space of my house. I miss her in every crack in my heart.

I don’t feel any of the exhilaration preparing for the championship that I normally would. I’ve done this so many times now. This is the year I’m going to win. I know it.

And then…

And then.

All her words echo inside me constantly. A refrain that I can’t turn off.

She’s wrong, though. About all of it. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t.

She’s twenty-four years old. She doesn’t know a damn thing. She doesn’t know about life. She doesn’t know about me. I just need to push everything aside and get to this win. I need to put this away because it doesn’t matter. She isn’t going to change me.

Nobody has managed to do that. Much to my chagrin.

But God, I miss her. She reminded me that life isn’t always terrible. But I’m afraid that I am. I’m afraid that her declaration only solidified that. She said exactly the kind of thing Sadie used to say to me. Why do you have to do that?

I don’t know why. That’s the thing. I don’t know why I do it. Stella seems to think it’s because I need to protect myself. But if I needed to protect myself, why would I be out here doing this? Why would I be a bull rider? I wouldn’t be. That simple.

And if breathing hurts now, how is that any different from my whole entire life?

It just is.

I stand in the back by the chutes and watch as the event begins.

The crowd is wild, the lights are bright. Adrenaline is hot and high. This isn’t like any other event. It’s big money. Big budget. Massive crowds.

And still, when I see a little blonde figure up in the stands, I stop.

There’s no way that I’ve actually spotted her.

Hell, there’s no way she’s actually here.

Yes, I bought her those tickets, and I transferred them to her phone.

But… She wouldn’t come to see me. She hates me. Or at least she should.

It makes no sense on earth that she would be here. But I know it’s her. I recognize the set of her shoulders. The way that she walks. And, if I’m not mistaken, she’s talking to Colt and Dallas.

My whole stomach feels hollow. She’s here. For me.

Except…

Somehow, instinctively, I know she’s really not here for me. She’s here to show me that she doesn’t give a fuck. That she’ll be here because she has tickets and she wants to be. If she were here for me, she would’ve texted me. But no, I torpedoed that. I really fucking did.

But it felt like the right thing to do. For her. For me.

I just need to win this. I need to win this so it can be over.

As I stand there, back behind the chutes, all her blonde beauty filling up my vision, I realize that nothing is over after this. Unless I decide to give up the ghost entirely, this isn’t over. And it isn’t going to be.

And I don’t know how to live. I had a tiny taste of it for the last two months. Living. Living in some kind of way that felt good, but there’s no way that’s real.

There is no way that I was able to open myself up to her, show her all the things that I am, and she didn’t run the other way. There’s no way that I was able to be this… fucked up guy and all my lack of glory, and she still wanted me.

That’s not real. It can’t be.

So what do you think, Maverick? You make yourself a champion? And then what?

Nothing. I’ve never believed that it would make me a good man. If I believed that it would make me a good man, then I wouldn’t have been able to see nothing beyond it. I don’t think it’ll make me a good man.

But she doesn’t seem to need me to be the kind of good that I thought I had to try to be.

And what even does it mean? Because she is right. I didn’t take advantage of her even though I wanted to. I don’t think that I should get accolades for it, but it definitely goes in the column that suggests I’m not the world’s most hideous villain.

Maybe.

And then it’s my turn to ride. I know what I have to do. And I wonder if I even care anymore.

You have to do it. You have to do it, because if you don’t, it’s going to be the unanswered question forever.

I get into the chute and drop down onto the back of the bull, big and fearsome, pissed off.

Me, not him. Though he doesn’t seem especially happy either.

I have to keep my head in the game. I know that I can’t think about anything else. But as the gate opens, and the bull bursts out into the arena, all I can think about is the real unanswered question.

Could I have had her if I tried?

Everything slows down. The bull is bucking, his hooves pounding hard in the dirt. The world is still. Quiet. It should be noisy. Raucous and rowdy as I claw my way to victory. But there is no victory. Because I lost Stella.

I had no control over losing Sadie. And I didn’t know how to share my real self with her.

I didn’t do it. I didn’t give her a chance.

The shortcomings in our marriage, the difficult spots, they were not on her.

They were on me. But I was young and feral, and I didn’t know a different way to be. I do now.

I think of Stella, who at twenty-four is somehow so much wiser than I am. Who told me to change myself, not to wait for her, or our feelings to change me.

To get off my damned ass and do it myself.

But I lived a whole life where my love couldn’t change a damn thing, and so I wanted to believe it was magic. And that maybe mine wasn’t enough. Just like with my mother.

Goddammit, is that really the thing?

It is. I feel it, boiling and burning down in the center of my gut.

It is the whole damn thing. I couldn’t change her.

I wasn’t enough. And so I never wanted to show all of myself to Sadie, because I thought I had to play a part, to be someone who could be enough, and then with Stella, because I wasn’t aiming for that, I didn’t try. And she wants me.

But it seems impossible. Seems like a miracle that I can’t claim. Seems like something that doesn’t belong to me. Because I’m the bad guy.

But what if I tried to be her hero? What if I tried to make myself into someone, something that was worthy of her?

All this time, I wanted love to change me. To make me enough. But I need to change for love. For her. I need to make a future if I want to be able to see it.

Otherwise, all that’s ever going to be there is darkness.

All that will ever be on the other side of this is nothing. Unless I create it.

And then, it’s like seeing it speed up again. I’m still on the bull, still going, being tossed around like a ragdoll. The noise of the crowd in my head. I look up. Is she still in the box? I can’t see. My vision is blurry.

The clock crosses eight seconds. I jump off the bull. I’m last. I’ll know if I won the minute the score goes up.

All I can think about is her.

My thoughts are spinning. Because suddenly I can see something on the other side of this, and it’s not dependent on the outcome. Win or lose, there’s either a life without Stella, or a life with her.

There are choices that I can’t make now.

And that’s unfair. I can’t make my mom get off drugs.

I can’t make her see everything that she sacrificed.

I can’t save Sadie from the random twist of fate that made her lose her life that day.

I can’t go back and be better, because I wasn’t then. But I can be now. I can be better now.

If I’d never met Stella, though, I don’t know if that would be true. There’s something about her. She challenged me. Changed me.

She said all the right things. Even when I said all the wrong ones. I’m more myself with her than I’ve ever been with anyone. And she doesn’t see it as a bad thing.

Well, she didn’t. She’s here tonight, though, and I want that to mean something. I really desperately do.

The score is posted, and my name goes to the top spot.

I did it.

I won the championship. A million dollars. Bragging rights.

I look up at the box I know she should be in, and I don’t see her there. I’m suddenly desperate. Sick with the need for her.

It’s all that matters. She’s all that matters.

Maybe she left early. Maybe I hallucinated her.

I also don’t blame her if she came without using my tickets, because that sounds like something she would do, too. I don’t blame her for being sick of me and my shit.

But I need her. I need her to still want me. Even though I messed it all up. I need her to still want me, even though I haven’t given her reason to.

The only lead I have on where she might be is the suite, even though I couldn’t see her there. When I arrive, there are people milling around outside, and I don’t see her.

People are staring at me. Because I’m not down in the arena accepting accolades. Not collecting a prize like I ought to be.

Except I need to be here.

Here.

“Stella!” I shout her name.

Then I look up and see her walking down the hall. Her eyes connect with mine, and her cheeks are wet with tears, her eyes red from crying.

I don’t want to be in the arena at all.

I want to be here.

With the only person I can actually see in my future.

She meets my gaze, her lips moving, nothing coming out.

“Stella,” I say. “I have to tell you, I have to do it before I do anything else. Before anything else happens. The night that I won you in that poker game was actually the best night of my life. Even if I didn’t know it then.

It changed everything. It changed me. I just wasn’t ready to accept it yet.

I wasn’t ready to do something about it.

You’re right. I had to do something. I had to be active instead of passive.

I want to change for love. I want to change for you.

I’ve fallen in love before. I’ve been a husband.

But what I wasn’t, ever, was brave. Brave enough to pull out all the dark things inside of myself.

Brave enough to show anyone who I actually am.

But you… You make me that kind of brave.

Stella Lane, you make me into the best version of myself.

A version I didn’t even know that I could be.

And I love you. I love you, and I’m sorry that I told you I didn’t.

I’m sorry that when you gave me a chance to be the hero, I was still the villain. ”

“Maverick,” she says. “You won. You won this. I saw it, I just…I had to take a minute, I…you’re supposed to be down there celebrating. This was your dream.”

“But there’s nothing to celebrate,” I say. “Nothing to celebrate if there’s not you. You’re the dream, sweetheart.”

Then she closes the distance between us. She throws her arms around my neck, embracing me in a way I know I don’t deserve. But that’s Stella. Because somehow, she’s made precisely for me. For my hard head. For my idiocy. I really did win the hand. I had no idea how true that would be.

Every story needs a villain. And every story needs a hero.

In my story, the hero is Stella. There’s no doubt about it.

“I love you,” she says.

I kiss her, and everyone in the booth cheers. For me. For her.

I kiss her right back, and I don’t care that we have an audience.

“I can see it now,” I whisper.

“What?”

“The future. And it’s beautiful.”