Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) (28 page)

“You are so right that I need to get out,” I told her, shaking my hair over my shoulder and loving the way it felt.

But what I really needed was someone to tell me to think twice about what I was about to do. To tell me that when your heart has been broken by the first man you have ever loved and you don’t know what the hell you’re going to do with your life, you can make disastrous decisions.

JoJo’s was packed, which only added to my careless, quickly-turning-reckless attitude. We let the Irish boys buy us drink after drink. Linda could hold her liquor and knew how to space out her drinks. I had never drunk so much before and didn’t know how to space out my drinks so I couldn’t really tell how drunk I was getting before I was already sopping drunk.

It felt wonderful at first. It felt freeing and adventurous. A few of the Irish boys flirted with me and I loved every second of it. All I could think was how sorry Chris would be, how if he could only see me now, surrounded by guys who would love to take me home. I told myself he could have MB—that they deserved each other. I thought about how serious he was all the time—the opposite of the fun-loving Irish guys.

It probably would have been fine if I’d stayed with the Irish boys. I think I would have shut down any real attempts by them to get me to go home with them. I would have felt alive and sexy and gone home and cried again for Chris, who I was still very much in love with.

But McNair Sutter took the seat next to me when one of the Irish boys, Cormac, or was it Cian, had gotten up. McNair put his nearly finished drink on the bar next to my half-finished one.

“Chris know you’re out like this?” He gave me the once-over, checking out my outfit. I could tell he liked what he saw.

“We’re on a break,” I said, getting close to him so he could hear me over the din.

McNair gave me an intrigued smile. “On a break, huh?”

“Probably means we’re broken up for good,” I said.

“Could be. Either way, no use crying over rotten milk. People come to bars to forget things.” He nodded to the bartender to bring him another of whatever he was drinking and asked if I wanted a refill. I polished off what was left in my glass and said yes.

“So what are
you
trying to forget?” I said.

“My heartless, soulless social life.”

“Social life? You call what you do a social life?”

“What would you call it?”

I had to think about that one. “Drowning yourself in conquest-sex?”

“Conquest sex?”

“Yeah, it’s when—”

He held up a hand. “I think I can figure it out.”

He looked into my eyes. There was no doubt he was incredibly hot but his attractiveness had never effected me viscerally before. Now, with too many drinks in me, I felt sucked into his stare. So this is what all the girls went crazy about. That’s when I should have gone home.

“Does it get old? Sleeping with different people like every night?” I said.

“Every night might be an exaggeration. You know I have had longtime girlfriends.”

“What’s longtime to you?”

“Months, a year.”

“What happened?”

He gave a terribly sexy shrug. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was completely confident in his stature. And there were his green eyes and slight stubble.

“It just ran out of steam.”

“Do you think you’ll ever settle down? Do you think it’s about meeting the right girl?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

“And that doesn’t bother you? Not having it all figured out?”

“It bothers me when it’s a horse I can’t figure out, but my life is pretty good. It’ll sort itself out.”

I envied him. He had the horses Chris needed. He didn’t just have one great horse, he had a few so that he could manage their schedules and decide which horse would contest which big class and which would get to rest. He could decide which venue suited which horse—what would give him the best chance at the win. He had young horses coming along to take the place of his top horses as they aged. He never had to try to scrape together money just to buy a complicated ride like Athelstane.

So maybe it was that he was the anti-Chris. Maybe it was that I was drunk. Maybe it was that I just wanted to feel something, or that part of me wanted to hurt Chris as much as he’d hurt me. Or, it just happened, the way some things do. They aren’t planned. They aren’t thought out. They don’t have reasons. But that doesn’t mean those things don’t shape your life for years to come.

Somewhere in that night, Linda went home with a nice Irish bloke, and I went home with McNair Sutter to his gorgeously decorated place in Palm Beach Polo with sleek modern, low, steel furniture and large framed black-and-white photos. On the way to his place I checked my phone one last time. Still nothing from Chris. Would a text from him have changed what I was about to do? Even if it just said ‘hi,’ the answer was yes. It would have changed everything.

McNair had a whole wall of his trophies and ribbons, all from the biggest classes. We kissed standing in front of the trophy wall and he greedily moved his hands all over my body. Then, in his bedroom, we started to take each other’s clothes off. First my shirt, then his. My bra, his pants. My pants. He rolled down my underwear, twisting it in his grasp as he did so the fabric bit into my thigh.

“Very nice,” he said when he saw the work of Irina, the laser hair removal queen.

That was when my stomach lurched and I knew it was all wrong. That what I was doing was a big mistake. McNair wasn’t Chris. He could never be Chris, and Chris was what I wanted.

I wish I could say that I gathered my clothes back up, got dressed, and went home. I didn’t, though. I stayed and had sex with McNair. He was gorgeous, even more gorgeous with his clothes off. His chest was tan and his stomach and arms ropey. He was absolutely amazing to look at but I didn’t feel anything much beyond the recognition of his good looks. I didn’t feel the heat and passion I felt for Chris. I didn’t feel the connection. Perhaps McNair had never had such a connection and so he didn’t know to miss it because he seemed perfectly satisfied with what we were doing. He told me how hot I was and how much he wanted me as he moved on top of me, his eyes wide open and staring at me the whole time.

I felt the sour taste of the liquor coming up my throat as he thrust into me. It didn’t hurt but it felt hollow and sad. Perhaps it felt sadder since he seemed to be so turned on.

When it was over, I did gather my clothes.

“You don’t like to cuddle?” he said.

“I guess not.”

He lay completely naked on the satiny gray sheets of his upholstered, low platform bed. He wasn’t self-conscious about himself at all, not even the fact that his dick was now flaccid and small-looking.

“Chris doesn’t seem like the cuddling type anyway,” he said.

I hated that he had brought Chris’s name into this tarnished moment. And Chris
was
the cuddling type. He didn’t have a dark heart like McNair.

I probably shouldn’t have driven home because I was still fairly drunk. But I made it home on the mostly empty roads. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up. I slumped by the toilet, retching. I knew that what was happening was a simple physical process—my body had consumed too much alcohol in too short a time and was trying to rid itself of the poison. But somehow it felt more metaphorical, like my body was so disgusted with what I’d done it was trying to purge it all out or to punish me for what I’d done. A punishment I felt I keenly deserved. When I finished, I threw myself face first into bed. I pulled the covers over my head. All I could think was,
what have I done? What in the world have I done?

Chapter 32

“What? Is what true?”

“Someone posted on HorseShowDrama that you went home with McNair.”

“Oh my God,” I said. My head throbbed and my tongue felt as big as a horse’s. I needed water. Gallons of it. I made it to the bathroom with the phone still pressed against my ear. Somehow I was able to cradle the phone against my shoulder, fill a glass with water, and drink it while simultaneously pulling down the sweatpants I’d thrown on when I got home and sitting on the toilet.

“Are you peeing?” Zoe said.

“Yes. Please, give me a pass. I had a really bad night.”

“So it
is
true? Did you sleep with him?”

I hadn’t yet figured out what I was going to do about what had happened with McNair. Technically Chris and I were on a break and he hadn’t called or even texted me in a week but I knew full well that none of that meant sleeping with McNair was permissible. I hadn’t decided yet if I was going to try to lie and not tell anyone about McNair and just hope Chris never found out. I had basically just passed out but now it was clear that there would be no covering up what I had done. Unless…

“Do you think Chris will see it? He said he never goes on that site. But will other people tell him? Will he find out?”

Zoe’s voice was impatient. “God, first, just confirm that you slept with him.”

“Yes, okay? I slept with him. I slept with McNair. I was totally drunk and I made a horrible, horrible mistake. I knew it was a mistake when it was happening but for some stupid-ass reason I didn’t stop it.”

“I know. I’ve been there before. It’s like you get to a point and you just wait till it’s over.”

Zoe’s words were some consolation although I didn’t really like the fact that she had faced similar sexual situations.

I started crying. “I’m so lost, Zoe. I don’t know what I was thinking. I screwed up so badly.”

“You weren’t thinking. We already established that one.”

“I guess I was also so pissed at Chris. Maybe for a second I thought I’d make him jealous. Oh God, it’s over now. For good. He’ll find out if he hasn’t already and he’s going to be so disgusted with me and he’s never going to want to get back together. I mean—McNair?”

“Yeah, you probably should have picked someone else. Anyone really. You know what happened with them right?”

“No, I know Chris doesn’t like him.”

“He got their team disqualified from a Nations Cup because he had weighted boots on his horse. You can imagine how Chris felt about that.”

Zoe was quiet on the other end. I was still sitting on the toilet, my sweatpants bunched at my knees.

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be between you two,” she said softly.

I said through my tears, “I can’t believe that. I won’t accept that.”

“Are you going to tell him? He
will
find out. If not today, then in a matter of days. No one in this sport keeps their mouth shut. I also wouldn’t be surprised if McNair says something.”

The idea of Chris finding out from McNair, of him bragging, made me feel like I might need to throw up all over again. “I have to go tell him myself.” I knew as I said it that I had to, and that it would be the hardest thing I’d ever have to do. But if there was any chance he’d ever forgive me, it had to come from me.

Chris was surprised to see me. I studied his face and his body language to try to tell if he already knew. It was clear he didn’t. In fact, he brightened when he saw me and gave me a hug, which nearly killed me. He would have never hugged me if he knew. When we pulled away he saw the pain on my face.

“What happened?”

I knew he thought something had happened to one of Dakota’s horses like Midway. He knew how much I liked Midway. Or maybe he thought I’d had a falling-out with Dakota, that I lost my job. I don’t know what exactly he thought but there was no way he thought I’d slept with someone else.

I cleared my throat. “I have to tell you something and it’s awful.”

He cocked his head at me and gave me a funny look, like,
what could you have to tell me that could be so awful?

It was right then that I realized Chris was naïve too. So much of the time I felt like I was the young, innocent one when it came to so many things, like the pressures of the competition, the financial hardships, and the complications that came with love and sex. Finding Mary Beth with another guy should have made him jaded and skeptical but it hadn’t. His heart was still pure and open to being in love. He had trusted me fully.

I think if I had never slept with McNair and I had come to him that day and told him how much I missed him and how much I loved him, we would have gotten back together. I felt it in the way he had put his arms around me and the way he had looked at me. Knowing as much made what I had to say even harder.

“I went out last night with Linda and I got drunk. Really drunk.” In my head rehearsing what I was going to say to him, I had planned to give lots of build up and explain why I’d made such a bad decision, but it seemed worse to do that now. It seemed like Chris deserved me owning up to what I’d done, not trying to minimize it or make myself blameless.

“I went home with McNair,” I said. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Chris stared at me, his eyes narrowing. It seemed like he was trying to understand what I was saying. He was trying to make sense of it. “You slept with McNair?”

“Yes,” I said plainly.