Lost Rider(3)

Ironically enough, the same man that helped push me out is now dragging me back.

Looks like the old man was right when he said one day I would be crawling back with my tail tucked between my legs. A failure that would be begging him to take me back when I couldn’t make it out on the circuit.

“Well, laughs on you, ain’t it,” I grumble, reaching out for another smoke.

I might be crawling back, but it damn sure ain’t to beg him for shit. I can still see his face when I said my parting words to him.

Over my dead body.

Only it’s not my dead body, it’s his.

The thing I’m struggling with the most, though, is the deep regret that’s filled me since I found out he died. And fuck if that doesn’t piss me off more, because if I was honest with myself, I would know that it isn’t the loss of my career that has been eating away at me. Instead, all I can focus on is the fact that, even at my peak, I wasn’t good enough for him to be proud of me.

No matter what, the silence from him over the years said it all. He couldn’t give two fucks what I accomplished out there on the circuit.

It took me a long time to realize that I had been pushing myself for so long to prove to him I was worthy, but even when I fucking knew it wasn’t worth it, something inside me still wanted to matter to Buford Davis.

All those lost dreams and unmet goals will die right along with the little piece of hope that I’ve been carrying around for years, unknowingly, but fuck if that little piece didn’t make itself known in the past few days.

So, like it or not, with no career left and the summons from home that I couldn’t ignore, I’m headed back to Pine Oak. A town that I always feared would suck me back in. The same town that is now the only future I can see in front of me, since the dreams I left to chase are just as dead as the man that drove me from my hometown in the first place.

Irony, ain’t you just a bitch.



Ten Years Ago

I should have known she would be here. Hell, if I’m honest with myself, I came here because I knew she would be. Right or wrong, I can’t help the pull I get when it comes to Leighton. She’s the only thing that can calm me when I feel like I’m spiraling out of control and fuck it’s so selfish and unfair of me to put that kind of unspoken pressure between us—especially now.

My heavy booted feet take me from the wood edge and into the clearing at what I like to think of as our pasture. The flowers are blooming bright this time of year, the bluebonnets that her mama loves so much surround her as she lays gazing up into the blue cloudless sky.

She looks like an angel.

Even from the distance between us I can tell she’s upset. Leighton is always happy, it’s something that used to annoy the hell out of me, but in the same breath, it was something that calmed me in the oddest ways.

When I decided I was leaving Pine Oak—leaving her—I knew that I would mourn that part of her. I didn’t understand it at first, but it’s also a big part of why I know I have to break away clean. The feelings that I’ve come to realize are a lot bigger than she’s ready for—I’m ready for—aren’t something I can deal with. Not when escaping this town—my father—is right within my grasp.

“Hey, you!” Leighton says with a smile, lifting up on her elbows and turning her head in the direction that I’m trudging through the flowers, careful not to harm any of them on my path to her.

I’m silent as I drop to my ass on the blanket next to her. I can feel her eyes on me, but I focus my attention on the fields around us. There’s a slight breeze, the flowers blowing and flowing in the gentle flow of air.

“What’s on your mind, Mav?”

“Nothin’, Leigh,” I mumble, my mind back at the ranch and the hateful words that my father threw at me when I told him I wouldn’t be changing my mind and sticking around. That was before he threw his full bottle of beer at the back of my head. Thank God I had just taken off my Stetson. If he had ruined this hat—the one that meant a whole hell of a lot—I probably would have killed him.

“That’s a whole lot of nothin’ to be frowning about, cowboy,” she jokes, reaching out one dainty hand to grip my wrist in a stronger hold than she should be capable of. “Talk to me, Maverick. You wouldn’t have come out here if you wanted silence.”

“Just got in a fight with my dad, it’s nothin’ new, Leigh.”

She makes a noise in the back of her throat and I look over to her, her gaze hard and angry. “About you leaving?”

I nod. Her anger isn’t something I’m used to, but on the rare occasion that she knows I got into it with my dad, it’s something she has no trouble showing me.