BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (31 page)

“Yes?” I answered carefully, wanting to
hear what it was she had to say.

“I don’t care,” she replied before she
yanked her arm out of my grasp and turned around. “Just leave…Please.”

Even though I was pretty sure she was
turned around, I still put on an act with my body language, as well as with my
voice. I dropped my head and looked up at her carefully while I sighed and
shrugged my shoulders. “Okay. I get it,” I answered sadly, “I just thought you
were different. I wanted you to be different. I thought you would be able to
help me.” I sniffed a little for effect as I turned around. “All I wanted was
for someone to be there, to listen and to help me out of this unending circle
of hot women and hell. You don’t know what it’s like, Ashley.” I shook my head
and swatted my hand in her direction before I answered, “
Aww
,
fuck, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. Forget I even said
anything…At least do that for me.”

With that, I turned around and walked out
of the room, slowly. I made the motions as though I was genuinely distraught
and just begging for someone, anyone to help me see the light and escape from
this nightmare that is my life.

Dammit!
I should have said that,
I thought as I stopped short, right
in her doorjamb, waiting for her to finally turn around and say something,
anything to me. But
she didn’t.

So I continued my gloomy walk out of the
room until finally, at the last moment, I heard her say, “Tyler?”

I turned around with just the right
precision. I was careful not to move too fast, but also not too slowly, as to
make her think that I had lost interest. “Yeah?” I asked coldly, as though I
was angered by my realization that she wasn’t who I thought she was.

“I just wanted to let you know, that no
matter what…It doesn’t matter anyway, because I have a boyfriend.” she replied,
raising her eyes with a sense of proving her commitment to him. “Back at
school…His name is Blake.”

“Sounds like a pussy,” I answered and then
shrugged. “But I don’t give a shit. I’ve been with other girls too and if this
doesn’t work out, then no one ever has to be any the wiser.” I raised my
eyebrows toward her as though to show her how serious I truly was.

“No,” she said, with an amused smile
playing at her lips.

I shrugged, having seen all I needed to
see. “Well, it was worth a shot, I guess.”

She returned the gesture before she
answered in a strangely humored voice, with no inclination that I had actually
figured her out. “Sure, I guess, if you say so.”

“Ashley,” I answered carefully, with a
prideful smile shimmering behind my saddened eyes, “believe me when I tell you
that it is always worth a shot.”

Chapter
17

Ashley

I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed
to be doing. There was a lot going on and I felt as though I was caught in the
middle of it. After his cryptic message, Tyler had left the room and closed the
door behind him.

Although I knew that I shouldn’t be, part
of me was intrigued by what he was saying.

Still, instead of trying to have a
conversation with him, I decided that it would be better to just sit in down
and focus on other things, besides the curiosity that the meathead had piqued.

However, no matter how hard I tried, I
knew that it wasn’t just my curiosity that had risen through the comments that
he made. He had also, probably unwillingly, hit a nerve. For as much as I hated
to admit it, there was a time where he was right. That time had long since
passed now, but there was a good portion of my life where I always wanted to
see the best in people. I would be the one to give the underdog a chance and
try to find decency where others could not.

Growing up, this caused me to get hurt a
lot, but I was never dissuaded. My mother and I were a lot alike in that
regard, which was probably why she stayed with my father for as long as she
did. It never really worked out for her either, but it was still an ideal that
I held close to my heart. It was something that I admired about my mother and
tried to emulate in my everyday life.

Yet, once my mother died and my life took
a spiraling turn for the worst, that part of me was finally beaten down until
it was just a shadow of my former self.

Much like many of my other more desirable
traits, they lessened significantly or failed completely when my mother passed
away and I was unable to get them back; that is, until I went to college.

Until then, I felt as though I was living
in a storming, tremulous cloud. I was insecure and afraid. My life as I knew it
was failing me and all I could do was sit back and watch as it was destroyed.

I no longer had my mother and my father
seemed to steadily coil toward insanity. He claimed that I was all he had, but
the feeling was not mutual. Soon after my mother died, my father became so
distant that I honestly began to believe I had lost him as well.

Guilt ate him alive and the more I stayed
in this house, the more I realized that it wasn’t so much that he was
spineless, in the traditional sense. I began to believe that he was just trying
to please his new family so much that he completely forgot about the family
that he had left from my mother.

I knew that deep down, my father loved me.
That wasn’t really the issue that I was having. Rather, it was the fact that
the manner of love was not the same. He didn’t care about me anymore. He was
too busy trying to relive his life and get it right, that he didn’t bother to
fix what was still broken.

However, that wasn’t my stepmother’s
fault, or even, as much as I would like to blame him for everything wrong in
the world, I couldn’t even in good conscious blame Tyler.

I noticed this not long after my mother
died and although his oddity and singularity had changed in form, it still
manifested in a way that made me feel the same.

I hadn’t just lost my mother that day. I
might not have known it, but I had also lost my father too, and that was what
changed me.

After trying to find not only the best in
my father, but also the man that I remembered when he was around, to absolutely
no avail, I began to grow bitter. Every time my father hurt me, I stopped
caring just a little more and now, seeing him with his new family, completely
disregarding me because I didn’t want to completely accept them as flesh and
blood like my father had, had snuffed out the light of forgiveness for good.

When I realized this, I became
increasingly angry. I couldn’t help but feel the sense of aggravation and
hardship that attached itself to me. I not only hated that Tyler was right, I
also hated that I had completely given up my otherwise unwavering compassion.
It was just too painful to always look for the good.

Even if I found it, the pain I had endured
to fight through all of the darkness inside the person had inevitably left a
stain on my heart and I knew that I just couldn’t take it anymore.

So, once he left, I got up, after a moment
to ensure that he was gone, locked the door, went back to my bed, lay down and
went to sleep, hoping that when I woke up, I would be back in my dorm room and
this would all be a bad dream.

Unfortunately, I awoke the next morning in
basically the same position which I had fallen asleep the day before.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt a pain
in my head and aching muscles from the way I was sleeping. I didn’t feel
hungover anymore, but I certainly didn’t feel that good.

I was unbelievably thirsty and could not
help but notice that a good portion of my pain was coming from the fact that I
was starving.

After all, I hadn’t eaten or drank
anything the day before. I was probably very dehydrated as well and in the
summer heat, that was basically the last thing that I wanted to be.

So I was forced to get up and go
downstairs, just as my stepmother was serving breakfast to everyone.

Oh
joy,
I thought as my eyelids drooped into an unhappy
expression.

“There you are, Ashley,” my father said,
smiling at me. It was strange, because this was literally the first thing he
had said to me in a week. Maybe he forgot to take his medication and
momentarily forgot that I was the cause of all his troubles. I thought to
myself sardonically, but what I said was, “Good morning, Dad.” I then looked
over at Theresa and said good morning to her as well, before turning my
attention to Tyler and nodding my head.

I still didn’t care to say very much to
him and with the mood that I was in, I dared anyone to ask me why.

However, my foul mood was curbed for the
moment by the smell of food. I made my way over to the table and sat down,
trying not to think about everything that this room and this table represented
to me.

I smiled at everyone before I grabbed the
coffee and a plate. Through my hunger, I was blinded. All I saw was bacon, eggs
and toast and I didn’t stop seeing it until I had almost finished my second
helping.

“Wow, Ashley,” my father commented, “If I
didn’t know better, I’d say you hadn’t eaten in a day…”

At his particular choice of words, I tried
not to laugh.
Joke’s on you, Dad,
I
thought,
you don’t know better. You don’t
care to know better…bacon!

Even though I tried, it was hard to be
angry or hateful when your body just continued to demand food.

“It’s delicious,” I told Theresa after my
third helping. “Thank you.”

Theresa smiled at me in a caring way, even
though I seriously doubted that she meant it, before she answered, “I aim to
please. Are you alright, though?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, more as a
knee-jerk reaction than with any degree of honesty.

“That’s great!” my father exclaimed,
before he said, “Because today, we are going to go on a family outing!”

Instantly and probably graciously, I lost
my appetite and I could tell from the look that Tyler shot me from across the
table that he felt similarly about the idea.

At
least the two of us can agree on something…
I thought, even
though I really had wished it wasn’t that.

Besides the look we shared with one
another, no one else spoke again for a long time. No one asked where we were
going, or showed any interest at all. The reaction around the table was
strange. Even my father and stepmother kept eating. I glanced between one and
then the other, trying to figure out what was going on, but eventually, as the
reverberation of my father’s words fell away, I wondered if I had just imagined
he had spoken.

With this thought, the air grew strangely
eerie.

This
house is like living in the Twilight Zone,
I thought to
myself before I shrugged it off and continued to eat my meal, happy that I
wasn’t pressed to comment.

Chapter
18

Tyler

No one said anything for a long time. I
guess my mother and stepfather thought that we would just leap up and down with
glee at the idea of spending time together, but I was sure that wasn’t going to
fucking happen.

Even though they waited patiently and ate
their breakfast casually, still grinning broadly as though they had gotten the
exact level of excitement they expected from us, no one said another word for a
long time.

At first, the silence was weird, but
eventually the strain fizzled out and we continued our meal.

Then, after a little while of acting
completely normal, I heard Ashley’s father speak up, trying to revive the
suggestion that now seemed dead in the water.

“Doesn’t anyone want to know where we are
going?” he asked, looking around the table, between Ashley and I, who basically
ignored everything that was going on. That didn’t seem to matter though, since
he continued without missing a beat, “We’re going
to
the amusement park.”

Of course, my mother looked like he had
just announced that he won the fucking lottery, always the dutiful wife, but
Ashley and I seemed to have our own parallel thoughts on the subject.

I sighed and tried to get out of it by
saying. “That sounds like fun, but can we take a raincheck? I’ve got to be at
the gym in an hour. It’s a big day for me.”

“No,” my mother said suddenly, “you’re not
going anywhere…but with us.”

I rolled my eyes.
Did you guys stop screwing each other long enough to realize that you
had children or something?
I thought and groaned.

“A raincheck?” Ashley’s father picked up,
almost immediately after my mother had shot me down. “We have been here for a
month already and we haven’t done anything together as a family except a few
meals here and there.”

“Maybe you would have a better concept of
time if you came out of the damn bedroom every once and a while.”

At that, I felt my mother kick me hard
under the table, while I heard Ashley try to muffle a laugh.