Chompin' at the Bit (Horse Play #2) (41 page)

I
wasn’t sure what the fuck just happened, but I was sure, it all could have been avoided if I could have found the strength to pull my head out of my own ass and tell Madison how I was feeling. I understood just how fast everything was happening, and I could tell that she was working toward acceptance, but it still worried me a little. I could sense how stressed she was, and I didn’t want to make it worse by unloading my own shit on her. Honestly, I figured things would get better and we’d find that perfect moment to talk about our fears soon enough. 

Days went by, and there just never seemed to be a good time between work and Madison being so tired afterward. Before we knew it, two weeks had passed and we still hadn’t been able to clear the air between us. Madison assured me she was “fine” whenever I would ask, and she seemed happy. Other times, though, I could see the elation fade from her eyes, and her apprehension seep back in. I knew that if we didn’t talk about it soon, the smallest thing would trigger an explosion between us.

And I was right.

The day was no different than any other. We got up, ate, worked, had lunch and went back to work. We didn’t talk about the pregnancy in the company of others, but I was starting to get used to it. Then, everything seemed to get a little hazy. One minute, I was working on the fence with Tom because it was a day, maybe two, from falling apart, and the next I heard Madison’s beast of a truck roar to life. By the time I made it to the side of the barn, she was already gone. Just …
gone
. Without a fucking word. I panicked.

No. Scratch that. I lost my fucking mind.

Trying my best to contain the whirlwind of emotions I was feeling, I ran into the barn to find Wayne hunched over his desk. He told me that Madison had run into town for him, and I believed him—I did—but that damn nagging motherfucker I had been trying to keep buried these last couple weeks resurfaced, telling me that all women were the same. That Madison was showing all the signs I should recognize. The voice poked and poked and then poked some more, reminding me about Madison’s apprehensions. It told me she wanted to go back to competing and that she would do anything to get there.

Anything,
it said

When I got a hold of her, she confirmed what Wayne had already told me: that she was headed into town to pick up an order for him. So, why didn’t that make me feel any better? Why couldn’t I get the
ridiculous
idea that Madison was capable of the same betrayal Kaylie was out of my fucking head?

It could have been the fact that she was adamant about keeping the pregnancy a secret. It could have been that, just before finding out she was pregnant, she had made the major decision to restart her training so she could compete next season. Whatever it was, it only served to add fuel to the raging inferno of emotions inside me.

After going back to help Tom with the fence, I hit my thumb with the hammer at least half a dozen times, cut my hand with the hacksaw and gotten four splinters. I was a fucking mess. It was a wonder how Tom and I even got the fence done. Actually, I was pretty sure Tom did a majority of the work, and I was just getting in the way and being a hazard to the entire project.

Unable to focus on anything, I found myself dialing her number again. Unfortunately, talking to her that second time didn’t help put my mind at ease either. She was acting secretive, and it only served to spike the anxiety I harbored for my past coming back to bite me in the ass again.

I was pretty sure Wayne was starting to get annoyed with me every time I asked what all Madison needed to pick up, or if she’d given him a time that she’d be back. He would just look up at me from his desk and shake his head before telling me she’d be back as soon as she picked up the order. Finally, he just sent me home.

“This time will be different. This time will be different,” I repeated over and over to myself. I knew it wasn’t fair to just assume what Madison might have been up to, but I couldn’t stop.

In an effort to try and take my mind off things so I didn’t wind up going even crazier, I opened the fridge to look for tonight’s dinner. Food was the last fucking thing on my mind, though. I started pulling random vegetables out, not really paying attention to what they were or what I could make with them. That was when the door opened and Madison walked through it. Relieved beyond words, I barely registered her joyful expression or the brown bag in her hand as I wrapped my arms around her.

What happened next could only be described as an out of body experience. It was as though I had lost complete control of who I was, and that soulless monster scratched and clawed his way to the surface, completely taking over while I was forced to watch helplessly as he spewed hurtful accusations on her.

Things turned ugly fast, and Madison was all too quick to realize why I had been acting like a complete control freak these last couple of weeks. When she questioned my trust in her, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my chest. I had been so badly burned in the past that it was hard to see clearly sometimes. I
knew
she wasn’t Kaylie, and I had heard her weeks ago when she told me that she would never do what Kaylie did, but none of that seemed to matter in that moment as we faced off in the kitchen.

In my defense (and it wasn’t a strong defense), I didn’t outright accuse her of anything, but she didn’t exactly jump to conclusions, either. No, she followed the trail of breadcrumbs to the root of what was going on, and I could almost hear her heart shatter upon realizing it.

Watching that first tear fall down her cheek destroyed me;
I
made her cry. Madison wasn’t someone who cried often, and to know I was someone who made it happen destroyed me. I wanted to reach out and pull her to me, but I still wasn’t in control of my own body.

When I raised my voice at her, I wished the floor would have opened up and swallowed me whole. It was our first fight, and I hated every fucking minute of it.

It wasn’t until she thrust that paper bag against my chest that I finally snapped out of it, blinking rapidly before raising my hand to clutch it. Her hazel eyes—now a vibrant green as she cried—were usually so warm and soft, but now they were cold and hard as she stared up at me, more tears threatening to spill. I brushed her hand lightly, that electric spark between us faint but still there when our skin touched.

I wanted to say something, apologize for my outburst so we could reconcile and move on—talk about this rationally, like adults—but before I could even open my mouth her tears fell, staining her pink cheeks, and she fled the room. The sound of our door slamming echoed through the house, startling me.

So, there I stood, in the middle of our kitchen, clutching a small brown paper bag to my body as Bones sat at my feet, looking up at me with confusion. My mind was reeling from the maelstrom of emotions that we’d just stirred up, and it took a few minutes to realize there was a reason she gave me the bag: there was something inside. For me.

I was an ass … a jerk … an insensitive prick. While I couldn’t help my insecurities given my past, I could have worked harder to show her just a little trust.

Knowing just how undeserving I was of anything she had to give me—emotionally and materialistically—I looked down at the bag I held to my chest. I contemplated putting it back on the counter, knowing this couldn’t have been how she intended to give it to me. My curiosity got the best of me, though.

Slowly, I lowered the bag and opened it, reaching in with my free hand and pulling out a book. I inhaled a sharp gasp as my eyes fell to the cover of the book in my hands, and I was suddenly inundated with even more guilt than I ever thought possible.

The bag fell to the counter as I ran my right hand over the age-weathered cover. I couldn’t believe she had gone to all the trouble of finding out my favorite childhood book
.
Then, to find an early publication—one that had to cost a shitload of money …

I was an ass … a jerk … a fucking insensitive prick.

I could only imagine what she thought of me now. Fuck.

Setting the book down, I gathered all the courage I could to go and apologize. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she might try to castrate me on sight. Bones was on my heels as we made our way toward the hall, veering off and out to the backyard with an excited yip when he heard the birds in the backyard.

It was down to just me now.

I was halfway down the hall when I looked up and stopped dead in my tracks to find our door wide open. The sight before me shocked me because I could have sworn I heard it slam. Running my hands through my hair, my gaze shifted to the left and my stomach rolled when I saw that it wasn’t
our
room she escaped to, but
hers.
That couldn’t be good, considering she hadn’t been in there much at all since the incident with Dane.

My hands shook as I reached for the knob, turning it and easing the door open slowly just in case there were any flying objects I needed to be shielded from. But the room was silent. Too silent. Then I heard her quiet sniffles. The scene before me as I pushed the door open the rest of the way made me feel as though I had been punched in the gut.

Madison was lying on the far side of her old bed with her back to me. Her breathing was uneven as she cried quietly in the darkness of her room.

I needed to make things right, and the only way to do that was to apologize and hope to God we could talk about everything we’d been holding back from each other. We couldn’t keep going on like this.

Slowly, I walked into the room, carefully crawling up onto the bed. When it dipped beneath my weight, Madison’s body stiffened, but she didn’t glance back at me, nor did she say a word. That could have been either good or bad. I wanted to believe it was probably somewhere in the middle—maybe a little closer to the good side of the spectrum—and continued toward her. There was no way to be certain how she might react to my next move, but I wrapped my arm around her in my first act of surrender.

I laid a gentle kiss to her shoulder as she moved her hand to rest over mine—a pretty fucking fantastic sign, if you asked me—and sighed. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, tightening my hold around her. “I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

The longer Madison went without speaking, the more the world fell apart around me. What if I had ruined everything? What if she never forgave me?

“H-how could you even think I could
do
that?” she asked, her soft voice cracking. “Do you have any idea what it felt like to have you look at me that way?” A tear I hadn’t even felt form fell from my eye and trailed over the bridge of my nose as I listened to her hoarse voice. “It fucking sucked, Jensen. It broke my heart.”

I quickly tried to think of a way to explain everything I was thinking. It was all one big jumbled fucking mess in my head, and I was having trouble finding the right words.

Madison interjected before I had a chance to speak. “Look, I know you didn’t actually
say
anything outright, but I could see it in your eyes, Jensen. You compared me to
her
. To Kaylie. Since you and I started seeing each other, I
never
compared you to Dane.” She paused to take a breath, and it shuddered as it filled her lungs before she exhaled smoothly. “When I saw Kaylie all over you at your sister’s wedding, I
trusted
you—not her so much, but you? Yeah.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she apparently had more to say—and I was in no position to interrupt her.

“It would have been nice if you’d shown the same level of trust in me.”

Fuck, she was right.

“I’m not saying your past with Kaylie hasn’t affected you—it’s only natural that it did—but I’m not her. I told you from early on that I would
never
do what she did if we found ourselves in this very situation,” she continued quietly. “So, what changed?”

I sighed, dropping my head to the pillow behind her. “At first, I guess I was scared that your love of competing would be more appealing to you,” I confessed. “And then, when you took the test and it came up positive, you didn’t want to tell anyone and that terrified the shit out of me. I guess what Kaylie did only made dealing with your apprehensions that much harder.”

For the first time since I joined her in the room, Madison turned her head, glancing at me from the corner of her red, puffy eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“Because you seemed so stressed about it already, I didn’t want to make it any worse,” I told her honestly, realizing just how stupid it sounded saying it out loud for the first time.

“That’s stupid,” she said, mirroring my thoughts. Sniffling, Madison turned her head forward again and squeezed her hand around mine as her body pressed back into me. “I’m sorry, too, you know.”

Shocked by her apology, I lifted my head to look down at her. “What do you have to be sorry about?” I asked.

She shrugged. “For not talking to you about any of this.” She turned her face to me again, her eyes glistening with tears that rested on the brim and threatened to fall. “I was scared, and I handled it poorly—I know that now—but I would never—” She sobbed again, effectively cutting herself off as she directed her face away from me again, holding my arm tighter to her chest as though she were afraid I’d let her go.

“Shhh,” I whispered, kissing the bare skin of her neck and squeezing her just a little tighter to let her know I had no intention of going anywhere. “I know.” I couldn’t even say the words out loud. “I let my stupid insecurities get the best of me, and I thought the absolute worst. Fuck, I hate that I let
her
poison this.” I placed a hand over her belly.

Madison shook her head adamantly. “Not just her,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t been so secretive about everything, you’d have understood that, while scared, I am happy. You wanted to tell everyone, and I didn’t because I was afraid that if something happened, if we miscarried, then we’d have to put your parents through that again. I couldn’t bear it, Jensen. There was never a doubt in my mind that I would have this baby. Fear of the unknown? Hell, yes. But never any doubts.”