Page 50 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

“You don’t want to stay here? You want to run off and fuck around?

Fine. Leave. I don’t want to work with whatever the fuck you’ve got going on right now anyway.

Not in the park and not at the ranch.” I grabbed a trash bag and tore open the cabinet we kept our food in.

I dumped the contents of her shelf in the bag one after another.

No point delaying the inevitable if she didn’t want to be here. “You need to get your shit together.”

“I had my shit together for twenty-two years! Shit fell apart. My life is an explosion of shit. Shit is dripping from the ceiling. I don’t want to keep it together anymore.”

“You have a job here. You have friends. You have family. You have me.” With each phrase I counted off, another item landed in the trash bag. “Other people would consider themselves lucky to have all that.”

“Yeah, well, good for other people,” she scoffed and pushed herself off the table. “I don’t want it. Not like this.”

I dumped the bag of groceries and followed her when she marched upstairs. “Like what?”

“Like I’m just exchanging my overbearing parents for an overbearing brother and an overbearing boyfriend. Why does everyone always think they need to handle my life for me?”

She’d just called me her boyfriend. Kind of didn’t matter when she was about to leave, but it still pulled a string inside my chest that had been coiled tight for weeks .

“When did I try to handle your life for you?” I asked.

She whirled around in the doorway to her room.

Now it was her turn to count items off. “When you did my laundry. When you tried to stop me from drinking at the saloon and then stalked me home afterward. When you literally threw me over your shoulder to carry me home after the cast party. I mean, I could go on about the ones I know about. But then there’s the ones that happen behind my back.

When you told Sanny to send me back home after my first week here.

When you ran to Renee’s office to get me fired– yeah, Vivi told me about that.

And when you started planning a whole future for me with Sanny without consulting me.

Anything else that I should know about?”

“Have you ever paused to consider that I do those things for you and for Sanny? That I care?”

“If you care about someone, you let them make their own decisions.”

“If you care about someone, you consider how your actions affect them instead of acting like an entitled brat!”

She threw the door shut in my face.

I deserved that for calling her a brat. Fuck. If I’d had any hopes of her staying before, they’d been completely eradicated now.

Rubbing my chest, where that taut string still trembled after she’d called me her boyfriend, I automatically turned and left the house.

There was only one place that had always been safe when the world around me went to shit, when my mother got sicker and needed more care, when my father pawned our car to afford another bottle of Jack.

There was one place quiet enough for me to sort through my thoughts, where I could allow myself to feel hopeless and angry for a few minutes before I had to make plans to fix things.

I made my way through the staff walkways and to the stables in a daze.

It was still hours before the show– and I wasn’t sure if we’d do the watered-down version without Annie Lou again– but I knew that spending that time with Tornado would soothe my nerves.

It always had, even before I’d officially started his therapy-horse training.

I barely made it into his box before he pushed his face into my chest. My arms closed around him instantly.

I let his slow breathing and heartbeat radiate through me, quieting my own pulse.

Just when I thought I was getting a handle on myself, I stroked through his mane and knocked my knuckles into the string of faded beads there.

“Well, shit,” I breathed.

I’d let Esra braid them into his mane this year, but the beads were older than Tornado himself.

They were one of the last things my mother gave me.

Her physical therapist had her threading these big colorful wooden beads to help her fine motor skills as long as possible.

She’d lost the ability to move her own wheelchair shortly after making her last beaded lucky charm.

The beads were mocking me now.

A glaring reminder that caring for someone didn’t mean taking care of them and handling their every issue yourself. Caring for someone meant providing them with tools. It meant helping them live independently as much as possible.

I could practically hear Mom’s disappointed sigh from beyond the grave.

Esra may have pushed my buttons to bait me into a fight, but she hadn’t been wrong.

She’d trusted me. She’d told me how much it hurt that her family expected her to move on from her dream and settle into another profession they approved of, when all she wanted was some time to find herself without that dream.

Only for me to turn around and help Sanny do that exact same thing.

Because if she had settled for a job at the ranch, she would have settled for me.

“I fucked up,” I muttered against Tornado’s forehead.

He huffed in agreement.

I went back to the house, half-expecting Esra’s room to be completely cleared out. Her door stood ajar, but the inside still looked like her suitcases had exploded. That was a good sign, at least.

She wasn’t in any of the shared rooms. I even checked with Lucas to see if she was in his room, but she must have taken off shortly after me.

I checked the saloon and the dressing rooms but couldn’t find her.

I eventually had to go change into my costume, and just hoped that she’d be in the park as Annie Lou.

This morning had been a shit show. We were good at butting heads because we knew how to get under each other’s skin. In the best and worst ways, apparently.

She didn’t show up for her meet and greet. My jaw locked up at the thought that she might be using the time slot to pack her things and disappear while most of us were working. After everything we’d said, I wouldn’t be able to handle an Irish goodbye.

I needed to talk to her.

I went through the motions of my own meet and greet.

I knew how much these characters meant to all the guests– and how important they were for the park– but for once, I couldn’t care less.

Inwardly, I was already preparing to come clean to Sinan about the last few weeks.

If she was gone from Wild Fields by the time the show was over, he’d know where she’d gone, and I didn’t want to come across like an ax murderer when I pried that information from him.

Tornado felt my nerves when I saddled up for the show.

His ears twitched and he danced on the spot for a few moments before letting me get on.

Not ideal, but I was working with him to stay calm no matter who sat in the saddle, and he had the routine of the show down.

My mood shouldn’t be impacting him too much.

He calmed down beneath me the second I saw her.

Ace Ryder and the bandits rode into the town square, and I forgot to draw my gun, because there was that tell-tale blue dress disappearing into the bank.

She was here. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bank building and missed so many of my marks that Renee hissed in my ear on the intercom.

When it was finally time to storm the bank, I was first through the doors. I beelined straight to her and yanked the damn bandana off my face.

“I need to talk to you about this morning,” I said, knowing that every single person on the intercom could hear me.

“I have nothing left to say to you, Noah,” Esra whispered, avoiding my gaze.

“You can listen. I have some things I want to say.”

Before Esra could respond, Richard started pushing us toward the exit by the shoulders.

I’d never hated the show before that moment, but god, I just needed a few minutes alone with her. Esra went rigid when I touched her to take her hostage .

“Mask,” she hissed.

I was really out of it. Fuck. I pulled the bandana back over my nose.

Okay, I just had to get her to the hideout.

I had to keep my shit together until then, and then I’d have seven minutes to tell her that we could work this out.

I’d let her make all her own decisions. I’d let her do her own laundry.

We managed the first bit of our act, only for Tornado to side-step when we got close enough for me to lift Esra on to the saddle.

“Easy.” I patted his side. Two agitated riders would be rough, but it was just for a few minutes.

Tornado seemed to still a little, and I hoisted Esra into the saddle.

I followed behind her and signaled for him to start walking.

Only to realize my mistake when Esra scrambled for the hidden straps on the saddle.

Shit. I grabbed them from her hands and buckled her in just moments before Tornado broke into his canter.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

I had to get my head in the game. She could have gotten hurt. What the hell was wrong with me?

We made it to the hideout, and I slid out of the saddle first. When I reached for Esra, she swiped my hands away. “Touch me again and I will kill you,” she hissed, unbuckling herself.

“Fair,” I muttered, considering I had just almost gotten her thrown off the horse.

So instead, I braced my hands in the air, ready to help her out of the saddle if need be.

She’d been mounting and dismounting Crumble without a hitch, though, and her movements were just as smooth as she swung herself out of Tornado’s saddle.

I saw it in the split second before it happened. In the way Tornado’s shoulders tensed. I lunged forward, ready to catch her, but my horse danced three wobbly steps to the side in the exact moment Esra still had one foot in the stirrup. My fingertips brushed her elbow, just before she went down.