Riding on Air (20 page)

“The hell I am.”

William's face went stiff. “I know about your stash.”

“What?”

“Bottle of pills in the medicine box in the tack room? Your Dad know about that, does he?”

I sat there with my mouth hanging open and no words coming out. “What the hell? What were you doing looking in there?”

“When I put Jinx's gear away after your fall I was looking for the fly spray you use. I just hadn't had a chance to ask you about it yet. How many have you been taking?”

I stared at William with tears welling up to sting my eyes and clog the back of my throat. I swallowed anxiously, my skin gone hard and cold, numbness creeping across my tongue.

“What's with the inquisition?” I choked out eventually. “You think I'm stupid and a druggie?”

“Of course not.”

“How can you think that? How can you say that? And why did you ever bother with me, if that's all you think of me? God!”

I fumbled for the door handle. Stuff the consequences; there was no way I could sit there with him for another minute. Not for another second.

“Ow,” I cried, tears spilling over my lower lids when I banged my swollen fingers against the door.

“Stop it. You'll hurt yourself.” William's fingers plucked at my sleeve, trying to draw my arm away.

“Leave me alone, what do you care?” I sobbed, distraught and humiliated and just plain horrified. How had it come to this? How could I lose control like this and let him see me crying like a baby? I could excuse myself and blame it on being sore and tired, worried and confused, but it didn't make me feel any better. Who wants to fall to pieces in front of their dream guy? Not me.

William's hands gripped my arms and his fingers dug into me so strongly I gasped, shocked into gulping back the latest rush of tears. He was never rough with me, never, not in fun, not accidentally and definitely never on purpose. But he grabbed me now and held me firmly, not enough to cause me any actual pain, but definitely enough to shock me out of my panic.

“I care a lot, actually. I care when you're sad, or hurting, or when you're frustrated or when your hands are really bad. I care that I've upset you and made you cry and I feel like the world's biggest bastard for that, you've no idea, but I'm going to keep doing it because I care. I care about you too much to stand by and watch you risk breaking your bones or your neck or your beautiful stubborn skull because you want to go to a
stupid
dressage competition. You might care about that more than you care about yourself, but I don't. You are more important to me than
anything
.”

I sniffled, my hair falling in my face, hiding from him while I sat silently. About a thousand conflicting thoughts were galloping through my poor overheated brain. He'd called me stupid and stubborn but also beautiful. He said he cared about me. Annoyance and delight chased themselves around my brain until I felt almost dizzy and sick. But if he cared about me, really, shouldn't he care about what was important to me? I tried again to explain why it was so important.

“I need to qualify Jinx for the squad. To do that I need to take him to Goulburn and do well in the Novice tests. To do that I need to get him doing better lateral work and collecting properly. And to do that I need to ride him. Can't you understand this is my dream? Don't you support that?”

“Of course. But I want you safe more.”

I don't, I thought automatically, but managed not to say out loud. I wanted to get Jinx onto that squad more than anything else in the world.

“I'm going to take Jinx to Goulburn and I'm going to ride him myself to get him ready. There isn't anyone else, unless you think you can help me?”

William shook his head. “I would if I could, but I'm no dressage rider. I could work him for you, but I can't teach him any of that fancy lateral stuff.”

I'd meant it sarcastically and it gave me pause that William had answered so seriously. I was impressed, even though I didn't want to be, that he at least knew shoulder-in was a lateral movement. It was more than what my brothers knew.

“So then I have to do it. And anyway, I want to do it. This is my dream, it's been my dream for a long time and—and you can't stop me.” I added that last bit in a cold sweat, terrified at how close I'd come to saying something else; to blurting out that unspeakable truth that hid deep within my heart.

William's hands slid from my arms and he dug at his hair again.

“Actually, I can,” he sighed.

“What do you mean?” I asked in a tiny voice. I shivered, cold and afraid, and huddled in on myself, struggling to get the words out to stop him saying what he was about to say. I wanted to go back and undo this whole conversation, rewrite history so that when we pulled up I had the sense to sit there with my mouth shut while William hopped out and came around the car, as usual, to open the door for me. But there aren't any do-overs, are there?

“If you try riding Jinx before your hands are better, I'll tell your Mum about the falls. I'll tell her why.”

“You wouldn't.” I swallowed. It was bitter with anxiety and betrayal.

“I would,” he said grimly. “I don't want to, but don't think I'll let that stop me from doing the right thing if you won't do it yourself.”

“Even if I hate you for it?”

William caught his breath, as though I'd hurt him.

“I'd rather have you alive and hating me than be going to your funeral knowing I stood by and let you get killed.”

“But you don't know anything will happen! I'm fine! I fell off, so what, people fall off horses all the time. It's a risky sport.”

“That's no reason to take stupid risks. Most people don't ride a horse they can't control. They won't choose to get on a horse they can't stop. Most people don't ride when they can barely hold the reins. Wake up, Melissa, this is one stupid dressage competition. There'll be others. You only get one life.”

“Stop saying I'm stupid,” I said, more tears threatening to close off my throat. “I'm not stupid and my dreams are not stupid. How can you say this?”

You can't love me and say this, I thought. But of course I couldn't say that.

“I don't think you're stupid, I didn't say that. But riding when you know you can't use your hands
is
stupid. Stupid and dangerous. Of course
you
aren't stupid, but that just makes it even more un-fucking-believable to me that you insist on doing something so reckless. William's face was slowly changing from white to red as anger started showing in the taut lines of his neck and the rasping tones of his voice. I'd hardly ever heard him drop the f-bomb in all the years I'd known him and my stomach went a little hollow at hearing him swear like that. He must be pretty upset. But so was I.

“I have to do this, can't you understand how important this is to me?”

“More important than your life?”

“Don't be such a drama queen.”

“How close did you come to breaking your neck or scrambling your brain today? Are you really going to sit here after we've just come back from hours of neuro-tests at the hospital and tell me you're not putting your life on the line?”

I sat and glowered, another tiny shiver rippling my skin at how close he'd come to the same thoughts I'd had earlier.

“I'd already decided to be more careful,” I said truthfully.

“How? Are you going to get someone else to sort him out while you give your hands a chance to get better?”

“I—no, I was going to lunge him. And I wasn't going to ride him past the goats or anything.”

“Yeah, because lunging the guts out of him worked so well this week.”

I bit my lip, stung by the unexpected sarcasm, and regretted confiding my training strategies to William while we sat in the waiting room at the hospital.

“I overdid it, but I'll judge it better this time.”

William reached over and slid his hand around my wrist. He lifted my arm up and pointed at the angry swollen joints of my fingers.

“And how is all that tacking up and grooming going to give these a chance to rest? What's your answer for that? More pills?”

I clenched my jaw and looked out the window rather than look at William's almost accusatory stare and definitely anywhere rather than the aching, distorted evidence that my hands weren't in a good shape for anything, let alone riding.

“I'll think of something,” I muttered. “I always do.”

“Don't ride until you're better. Please.”

He changed his grip, cradling my wrist as though it was precious, his fingers stroking the skin.

“I have to, Will. I have to do this.”

William's eyes flared a brighter blue.

“Don't you care about anything besides that squad?”

“No,” I said unthinkingly and could have bitten my tongue off as I saw William's face go white.

“I didn't mean it like that William, of course I care about you, I always—”

“Never mind,” he said and turning his shoulder to me, opened his door. He hauled his long frame out of the ute and slammed the door shut, making me wince. I watched him anxiously as he came around to my door and I was still fumbling for something to say to put it right when he helped me out of the car and slammed the door closed behind me.

“William, I—”

“Don't talk for once, just listen. You might not care about yourself, but I do. So much that I don't actually care what I have to do to keep you safe. If you ride Jinx in the next three weeks I'll tell your parents that your hands are bad. And don't think I won't know—Gary and Brendan will tell me if I ask them.”

“You wouldn't really tell,” I said doubtfully. It went against everything I believed to go running with tales to someone's parents and I didn't think William was any different.

“I don't want to, but that doesn't mean I won't. Like I said, small price to pay to save you from your own stupidity. And yes, you are stupid. There, are you happy now?”

“No! I can't believe you'd do this to me. I can't believe you don't understand that this will ruin everything.”

“It already has. I can't believe you don't get
that
.”

I stood speechless at last as he walked away from me and opened the driver's door of his ute.

“Get Tash to ride Jinx and you stick to the pool. If in three weeks I can confirm that with Gary then maybe you'll be able to go to your precious dressage competition after all. Oh and don't count on your secret pill stash because you won't find it there anymore. I noticed you have to ask your Dad for them these days and now I know why. Maybe having to go without them will make you admit just how bad your hands are.”

And with that he got into his car and drove away, leaving me standing there shaking from a mixture of anger, regret and most of all, fear.

I'd just been insulted, bullied and blackmailed. My boyfriend had just basically said he cared more about me than anything in the world, even as he'd betrayed me in the worst possible way by threatening to ruin my dream. And worst of all, although he hadn't come right out and said it, I had a horrible suspicion he wasn't actually my boyfriend any more.

“No, Tash, stop,” Eleni called out. “You need to turn up on the quarter line, not after it, now circle and try again.”

“Yes sir,” Tash mumbled, heavy on the sarcasm, but she turned Jinx and came around again in a springy collected trot past ‘A'.

I sat in a folding camp chair outside the arena and watched Eleni striding around looking uncannily like her instructor, Iris, the image ruined only by the foam strap holding her arm up across her chest while her collarbone healed. She even sounded just like Iris whenever she yelled comments and instructions at Tash.

It would have been funny except for the knot of mixed feelings lodged just under my breastbone. It was weird to see Tash, mocker of all things dressage, riding Jinx in extension and collection, practicing halts and transitions and attempting shoulder-in. Jinx still hadn't got the hang of that and Tash and Eleni were concentrating on it today. Eleni had decided Tash and Jinx, after four training sessions during the week, were now used to each other enough to take it up a notch.

I agreed with her, even though this was the first time I'd seen Jinx working all week. I'd been banned from the early training sessions—Eleni had insisted that she and Tash needed to be free to get on with it without me hovering and distracting them. When I first admitted to her and Tash that I needed their help, Eleni had hesitated for so long I thought she was going to say no. But she just said she could only do it if I didn't interfere all the time and she didn't know how to say that to me, so in the end she had to just blurt it out.

It was a bit hard to hear, but then everything about this was hard. It was hard to ask them for help in the first place. I wanted to train Jinx and qualify for the squad by myself—that was almost as important to me as doing it at all. Getting Eleni and Tash to train and work my horse while I was stuck racking up mind-numbing laps in the pool wasn't how it was meant to be.

It had been hard to swim those laps this week knowing Eleni and Tash were working Jinx and I wasn't there to see what was going on. I knew enough about training horses to understand why Eleni wanted me to stay away during those first few critical rides, but it was about the hardest thing I had ever done.

Even though it seemed ridiculous, it was also hard to see how well Jinx was going. He looked amazing; his back rounded, neck arched elegantly towards the contact Tash offered him, black tail swinging softly with the relaxed rhythmic tempo of his strides. Tash sat so beautifully straight and still, always encouraging him in the proper direction, never hindering. When she made an error, Eleni's critical eye picked it up and Tash corrected it quickly, with the result that Jinx was literally improving with every passing minute.