Last Second Chance

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Guys, please relax. I’m fine.” Stella was winded from the fall, and her tailbone and back felt less than stellar. But she really was fine. The audience had been more than Shadowdancer was ready for. She felt guilty for having pushed him too far again.

“You need to see a doctor, Stella Jo. At least let someone here check you out. You hit the ground hard.”

She couldn’t help but smile at Van’s concern. The moment she’d caught her breath and sat up, he’d been wearing much more pain on his face than she was. Sure, they were sleeping together, but until she’d seen him white as a sheet and wringing his hands, she hadn’t known if his feelings for her were more than vagina-deep.

Judging from the way he was pacing around her tiny bungalow, he cared quite a bit. His fawning over her while trying his best not to cross a whole slew of lines in front of Jesse Ramirez kept her from feeling the throbbing tenderness her fall had caused.

“I promise, I’ll just be a little sore. Some ibuprofen and an ice pack and it’ll be like it never happened. I’ve taken much worse.”

Van glared at her. She smiled.

Jesse ran a hand through his hair. “At the very least, we should report it so that if you have issues later—”

“Jesse, please. Please, pretty please, do not report anything.” Stella looked up at him with pleading eyes as Van handed her a baggie full of ice wrapped in a dishtowel.

“I don’t have to include that, um, he was here.” He nodded towards Van.

Stella closed her eyes. “This is all my fault.”

“Accidents happen,” Jesse said quietly.

Stella wondered if he meant the incident with Shadowdancer or her relationship with Van.

“So, um, I’m just going to get some rest. I appreciate the concern, boys. But I’m tougher than I look. You’d be surprised the level of pain I can withstand.”

Van’s breathing seemed to ratchet up a few decibel levels. She was feeling strangely free since getting up from this most recent fall. She’d gotten back on, been thrown, but she’d gotten back up. She was okay. Not in a hospital, not in a wheelchair, and not paralyzed. The fears that had chained and held her—shackled her to the ground, literally—for the past five years fell away.

Van made a grunting sound under his breath, and she forced herself not to smile. He certainly knew she could handle pain. Just like he knew how much she not only endured but also enjoyed everything he dished out.

“Call me if you need anything,” Jesse said as he left. He held the door open, clearly expecting Van to follow.

Stella cursed in her mind. Van should go. It would look strange if he didn’t. And even though Jesse had probably already put most of the pieces together, it still wasn’t smart to draw him a clear picture just in case.

Van moved hesitantly towards the door, undoubtedly realizing the same thing. He had to go.

Right.

But each step he took away from her brought her pain closer to the surface, intensifying the pulsating ache inside. She wanted him to hold her—or at least to hold the ice pack on her tailbone.

“Stay. Please.”

Van’s shoulders tensed and he looked at Jesse.

Jesse sighed. “I’m assuming you mean him.”

“He’s not a dog, Jesse. Speak to him directly.” She remembered Van revealing that he’d been treated like an unwanted pet as a child before he’d screwed her into oblivion.

“I’d tell you both to be careful, but I’m pretty sure neither of you would listen.” With a shake of his head, Jesse left them alone.

“I’m not fucking you, cowgirl. Even if you beg. You just took a serious spill that, frankly, scared the fuck right out of me.”

Stella laughed and then winced as her tailbone pinched at the reminder. “You can go then. What good are you?”

He made a playfully wounded face as he settled onto the couch beside her, taking over ice pack duty.

“You might be surprised. I can be gentle when I need to be.”

She knew this already. It was one of the many reasons she was falling in love with him. She dozed off against Van’s warm body as he held ice-cold relief against her.

Stella woke to her cell phone ringing loudly beside her. The sun was coming up, judging from the way light slanted across her through the blinds.

She grimaced at the name on her screen when she lifted the phone. Her entire body felt like it had been used as a piñata. But she’d ridden. Van and Shadowdancer both. So the pain was worth it.

“Good morning, Mama,” she said into the phone after she’d accepted the call. Her eyes landed on a piece of paper with black scrawl on it.

Trying to sleep on your couch nearly killed me. I limped out of here. Good work, cowgirl.

The hazy memory of him kissing her goodbye in the middle of the night, his voice husky and soft in her ear telling her he had to go, came back to her.

She smiled as her mother launched into a flurry of words Stella was too sleepy to comprehend.

“Wait. Slow down please. I just woke up.”

“I said,” her mother began in a tone that sounded a great deal like a manufactured brand of calm, “that I got a call last night from a Jesse Ramirez. He said you were riding again but had taken a fall and he wanted me to talk you into seeing your family doctor.”

Normally she would’ve considered planting a stiletto into Jesse’s balls for contacting her mother. But her newfound desire to experience life, to grab it and shake it, bend it and make it do her bidding, changed that.

“I think that’s a great idea. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Lesley and come home this weekend. How’s that sound?”

Candace Chandler stammered. Clearly she’d been prepared to argue against Stella’s normal impenetrable defense of excuses. “Oh. Well. That’s… Well, that sounds fine, Stella Jo. I’ll, I mean, we’ll be so glad to finally see you.”

Her mother had been right the first time. She might be glad. But she’d be the only one. After they hung up, she dug through her memory.

Her dad had never once been happy to see her. Not a single time, no matter what accomplishment they’d been celebrating or event they’d been attending in her honor.

He wishes I didn’t exist.

The thought—no, the fact—slammed into her with a force that made her want to cry. It was irrefutably true.

Van had given her courage. Shadowdancer had unlocked her strength.

She was going to take her newfound traits home and demand some answers. And unlike last time, she wasn’t leaving without them.