Never Say Never (10 page)

“It’s that bad, huh?”

I inhale. “I’m not a fun person,” I say, each word coming out forced. “Not anymore.”

He looks at me, pained, and takes my hand again as if he needs to feel my skin against his. “I don’t believe that. You look like you’re about to raise hell tonight.”

Oh right. The slutty dress. There will be no hell-raising for me. I don’t have it in me. What I want is my bed and a glass of wine. He licks his lips and closes the distance between us. His hips are just inches from mine. With the heels on, we’re nearly the same height—a curse of being a tall girl.

“Are you free tomorrow night?” he asks, and I nod. “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

My heart skips a beat. Is this really happening? “Do you need my address?”

He shakes his head. “Claire will figure it all out.”

“Claire?”

He looks over his shoulder for the woman he was with before. “My assistant. She does everything for me.”

“Must be nice.”

“She’s all right.” He shrugs. “Dinner tomorrow. And if you can handle it, drinks after.”

“Deal.” I’m smiling again.

With my hand still in his, we turn and walk out of the ER. We exchange numbers and pause in the parking lot.

“Have a good night,” he says, and he lets his eyes do one last sweep over my body.

“You too,” I tell him. He’s still holding my hand, and I don’t want him to let go. An ambulance speeds to the hospital, and I get a flash of my ride in one. I yank my hand back and shiver. “Good night, Aiden.”

“I’ve tried everyone else,” Dr. Wells says. I bite the inside of my cheek. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. The clinic is full. I have literally nowhere for her to go.”

I close my eyes and get out of bed that next morning. Lori is passed out next to me, and Chrissy is sprawled out at the foot of the bed. I cut myself off after one drink, finding it hard to keep the visions away with alcohol sloshing around in my mind.

“I don’t know,” I say as I pad out into the hall, softly closing the door behind me. “I don’t know if I’m…if I’m ready.”

“I know, honey,” Dr. Wells says, and the empathy in her voice breaks me. She’s been our vet for years. An older woman who’s seen it all, Dr. Wells sometimes feels like my grandmother instead of my vet. “And I also know your mother wouldn’t want you to lock yourself away in that house. She wouldn’t want you to close your heart or your barn.”

I take a minute, tears filling my eyes. “You’re right.” I can only whisper, too close to crying. “I’ll take her.”

“Thank you. I’ll have someone drop her off later this morning.” I can hear the smile on Dr. Wells’ face. “I’m proud of you, honey. And your mom was too. She still is.”

And now I’m a blubbering idiot. I sob a goodbye and hang up. I go down the stairs; they empty into the living room. I cross the room and enter into the kitchen, looking out the window above the sink. The sight of the barn calms me. I stare at it for a few beats, then turn and make a cup of coffee.

A pile of bills sits on the island counter. I’ve put off opening them for the last two days. There is nothing I can do about them, after all. I can’t avoid it forever. I open my laptop, going to the Excel spreadsheet Dad set up for me, and cringe when I enter the negative numbers. How the hell was I going to afford the farm? I always knew horses were expensive—especially sick horses—but I had no idea how many thousands of dollars it took to keep this place open month after month.

“How did you do it, Mom?” I ask, and I put my head in my hands. My grandmother—Mom’s mom—offered to give me money but I turned it down, knowing she didn’t get much living off of social security. But damn, I could use all the help I could get right now.

“Hay?” Lori calls from upstairs. “You down there?”

“Yeah.”

She slowly comes down the stairs, the wooden boards creaking under each foot. “Who were you talking to? I heard you crying. You okay?”

“Dr. Wells.”

“The vet?”

“Yeah. She has a newborn foal that needs a home.”

Lori squints in the morning light. “You’re taking her, right?”

I nod and get a second coffee mug out for Lori. “I didn’t want to,” I confess. I turn to my best friend. Lori likes horses but isn’t as passionate as I used to be. Sometimes I think it is odd I am best friends with someone who doesn’t eat, sleep, and breathe horses like I did, especially when we were younger.  “I’ve never not wanted to before.”

She sips her coffee. “It’s the first time you’re doing this alone,” she says softly.

“I know. Phoenix…we set out to get her together. But this foal…I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“You should. Haley,” she starts, and I know she’s serious. “I’m worried about you. I know it takes a long time to heal, but you’re shutting everything out—even the horses—and that scares me so much. I don’t want you to shut down completely.”

I can’t argue, can’t tell her she’s wrong. She’s not. I want to tell her about the visions, about the horrible, nightmarish flashbacks that suck me into hell, repeating the last horrible moments of that night over and over and over until I’m sure I’m nothing more than a pile of ash and bone.

But I don’t.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell her. “This foal will be a lot of work. It’s the perfect distraction.”

Lori smiles before her brow furrows. “Yeah, a newborn is going to be a lot of work. What are you going to do?”

“I have today and tomorrow, then I’ll call in sick Monday if I have to. So that’s three days to try to get her to drink from a bucket or a hanging bottle. If I need to take the day off Tuesday, I will too.”

Lori doesn’t say anything. She sips her coffee, looking concerned. “You have a date with Aiden tonight.”

“I’ll cancel,” I say.

She spits out her coffee. “You can’t cancel on Aiden!”

“The horse is more important to me. Someone has to be with her tonight to make sure she settles in, to make sure she’s not missing her mother, and someone needs to bottle-feed her.”

“Okay,” Lori says after a minute’s consideration. “I’ll stay and watch the baby for a few hours so you can go out. Kit owes me anyway.”

“I can’t make you do that.”

“You’re not making me. I volunteered. And it’s a baby horse. I love baby animals! Just show me how to feed the poor thing, and you and Aiden can go out for a few hours.”

Fuck, she is the best of the best when it comes to friends.

Chapter 8

If I’m not playing a character, I’m drinking. The character doesn’t always have to be a role in a movie. It can be the role of how Aiden Shepherd should be, the role of what’s expected of me. I’m a twenty-four-year-old multimillionaire, after all. I have fame, fortune, and friends who emulate the same. It’s the fucking dream, isn’t it?

It’s not, and it will never be enough. Playing the role of how Aiden Shepherd should be is fucking exhausting, though over the years I’ve gotten good at shutting everything out, keeping the darkness that lives inside me at bay, keeping it distracted, and keeping me from feeling. Aiden Shepherd never feels numb, he never feels hopeless or lies awake for hours at night, unable to sleep and contemplating if life is even worth living. No, Aiden fucking Shepherd wouldn’t feel those things. He’s got everything, remember?

I reach for the Scotch on the nightstand next to my bed in the hotel. Ice clinks against the glass. It’s pitch black, and I got home from the hospital a few hours ago. My ankle is swollen and a little painful, and it annoys me more than anything. I chug the rest of my drink, taking comfort in the way it burns as it goes down.

The empty glass drops to the floor, ice spilling on the white carpet. I don’t care. I close my eyes and put my arm over my face, thinking of Haley. She looked good in that skimpy little dress. The night was still hot, and her sweater was odd. I saw a flash of a scar the first time we met. Did she get that in the fire?

I asked Claire to find a good place for us to go out to dinner tomorrow. She also arranged a car for me, picked out my clothes, and programmed Haley’s address into the GPS. Which was good, because that meant less shit for me to do in the morning, which really meant I could get plastered tonight and pass out, not waking until after noon. It would give me enough time to sober up, shower, and be good to go.

And that’s exactly what I do. The day passes slowly, and I start to get nervous. I haven’t felt nervous for a date in years, not even when I was with a Sports Illustrated model. I think about it as I drive to Haley’s house, listening to the directions from the GPS. Claire’s on speakerphone almost the entire time and calls back each time I hang up on her. She’s worried I’m going to get lost or drive off a mountainside or something ridiculous like that. Plus, I refused to let the bodyguard come with tonight.

It’s not often I’m alone like this. Even in L.A., being “alone” means having people around you, having your PA, manager, and agent close enough that a taxi ride across the city is all it takes to whisk you away to safety and out of the public eye. Out here in Montana, I feel alone. Completely alone, and I kind of like it.

I know Haley lives in a white two-story house. Like a proper creep, I looked up her address on Google Maps and spent too much time using the street view to peek around. She lives on a country road that wraps around a hillside, leveling out at the top. All I was able to discern from the satellite map was a barn close to the house and a decent length of white fence.

The sun is setting, casting long shadows over the land. I slow as I go around a sharp turn and my foot lets off the gas. Grass-covered hills turn into giant stone mountains that meld into the darkening sky. The world suddenly feels so big, and I feel insignificant and unimportant. The car idles on the road as I look at the land before me. I blink and shake myself. It’s crazy to think something so wild, something so beautiful and untamed, still exists in this world.

Not long after, I arrive at Haley’s house. It’s just like it was on the map, but the grass needs cutting and the flowerbed is full of weeds. A white horse looks out at me over a half door and whinnies. I narrow my eyes, still bitter about the fall yesterday. My ankle is feeling okay, and I ignore the doctor’s advice to stay off it for another few days. If the pain gets to me, I’ll just drink. Yeah, yeah…I know. Booze isn’t the cure-all for everything, but it works for me.

I cut the engine of the Mercedes. Everything about this is so conventional it feels weird, which makes me laugh. An old-fashioned date like this isn’t my norm anymore. I’m off my home turf and feel disadvantaged. Haley made it clear my fame doesn’t sway her opinion of me. I can’t pull the usual cards and impress her and be sure she’ll come home with me, where we’d fuck and I’d pass out, physically satisfied and distracted enough to sleep through the night.

I take a breath and get out of the car. Lights are on inside the house, and I peer through the windows as I walk to the front door, but I’m unable to see anything past the sheer curtains. A wrap-around porch hugs the farmhouse, and the steps creak under my feet as I ascend the stairs. My heart thumps in my throat and I wish for a drink, more pain meds—anything—to take the edge off my anxiety.

A cat meows at me, snaking its way around the legs of a wicker chair. Flowers hang from baskets on the porch, leaves and buds dead and withering from being forgotten. Another cat sits on a white rocking chair. A dog barks from inside the house. I extend my hand to ring the doorbell and suddenly feel like I’m on set again. The farmhouse, the picture-perfect view of distant mountains. People really live like this? I take a breath and hesitate.

It might look like a set, but there’s nothing guiding me. There’s no one to give me a line and cue me along. There’s no redoing an awkward moment or saying a line over and over until it’s perfect.

Fuck real life.

The doorbell rings, reverberating inside the house. The black and white cat comes closer, tail in the air. It meows again and rubs its head on my leg. I’m not really a cat person—hell, I’m not really an animal person. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s that I don’t have time for them. I hold out my hand, and the cat presses its cheek against my fingers, purring already.