Page 81 of Roped

“Oh.”

“Named after my sister’s horse. We had to put him down a few years ago. Which is when I got him,” he keeps going.

“O-okay.”

“He’s gentle, yeah? Warms up easy. All you gotta do is hold on to me.”

I realize what he’s doing, putting me at ease. I lick my lips and whisper, “What’s the name of your horse? The white one.”

“Milly.”

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but my mouth pulls up in a tiny smile. “Pretty name.”

“Lynnie named her too.”

“Good choice.”

His eyes warm and he asks, “Ready?”

Pursing my lips, I shake my head, clinging to him.

But he snaps the reins anyway and goes up to my forehead to place yet another kiss on it. And then we’re off and I tuck my face in his neck and just breathe. Or try to. My impulse is to scream, but something about how I’m sitting, tucked so safely in his lap, the best seat in the house, keeps my panic contained. I’m still shaking, though. I’m still sweating and holding on to him like I’m going to plunge to my death at any second. Especially when Tulip has to hop over something or there’s a particularly jarring movement. But overall, I’m proud of myself for not throwing up.

All of that changes, however, when Radisson snaps the reins again and Tulip speeds up. And when I say speeds up, I really, really mean it. Tulip is going faster than the first horse, Milly, that he forced me to ride on. I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared. No, I’m angry.

I’m furious.

I’m seething, and I tighten my limbs around him so fucking forcefully that I hope he’s suffocating. I hope I kill him before I die. But first I think I’ll sleep. I can’t believe I’m thinking that right now, but Tulip’s gait is fast and rhythmic. And since my eyes are closed and my face is tucked in his neck—that I’m going to bite in a second and give him a matching mark he was dying for—I’m starting to feel drowsy. It could also be the fact that I’m not all that heated anymore. The wind is whipping against my body and sweaty strands of my hair are flying around my face. It actually feels good to cool off.

It actually feels good.

Wait, what?

I’m reeling with this realization, that for the past however many minutes I’ve either felt angry or so relaxed that I forgot to feel afraid, when Radisson slows Tulip down to a gentle trot. My limbs loosen around him, and my breaths aren’t as choppy as when we began.

He brings his lips to my ears. “Open your eyes.”

I squeeze my limbs around him and then, slowly, very slowly do as he says. The first thing I see is blue. My favorite color. Blue water, calm and still and so freaking pretty that I gasp. It’s a lake, a very small one, surrounded by the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. Not more green than the eyes of the man I’m wrapped around, though. The man who brought me up here, to my favorite color.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

I know he heard me and agrees with me when his chest moves with a deep, easy breath. Then, in a very low voice that’s still rough, he states, “It’s him.”

I go still around him, knowing exactly what he’s referring to. Or who.

“He did somethin’ to scare you off the horses.”

I want to shut my eyes again, but I keep them locked on the blue water. And I keep holding on to him and sitting in his lap, my favorite seat now and ever. Then I say the words I’ve never spoken to anyone before: “When I was ten, I s-saw him rape my mom.”

It’s his turn to go still, his breath pausing in his chest. I don’t blame him. I halted my own breaths, but only because I’m expecting the sky to fall around me. Or lightning to strike me down. I’m expecting my father to kill my mother. As irrational as this is, I can’t stop feeling it, and so for the next several seconds, I stay quiet and he lets me.

Then, watching the water, I continue, “I didn’t know what… he was doing. It was in his s-study and I… I don’t remember why I went there, probably to steal something of his. I liked to do that. Take his things, take my mom’s things, just to annoy them, piss them off. Because they never… they never paid attention to me. But when I opened the door, I saw him…” I fist Radisson’s collar and squeeze my thighs around him and he keeps holding me. “He was on top of her and she was c-crying out… At first, I thought he was trying to kill her. But then she kept saying no and that she didn’t want it anymore, and… I realized what it was he was doing. Even though I was only ten, something inside of me knew.

“And then he made a weird sound and he… stopped. My mom stopped, too, crying I mean. He stood up and that’s when he saw me. I was so afraid I froze. And then something made me push the door open and come running at him. I don’t know what it was, but I just… I wanted to hurt him. So bad. I wanted to kill him, and I guess he was surprised by that. He was surprised by how fast and strong and determined I was. I tackled him to the ground, started smacking him, scratching him, kicking at him, screaming at him. I couldn’t hold him down, though. He flipped me on my back and… he held me down so tightly, like he was h-holding Mom, and I thought”—I squeeze Radisson once again, fist his hair—“he was going to… do something, do the same thing he did to Mom, and… But he said if I told anyone what I saw, he’d kill my mom. He told me I had to keep my mouth shut, pretend I never saw anything, pretend everything was okay, like before, or he’d push my mom down the stairs and it’d be m-my fault. And then he left. He kicked me and my mom in the ribs, and he just… walked out.

“I looked over at my mom and she was just lying there, on the floor; her eyes were all vacant and her clothes were… I crawled over to her and covered her up as best as I could, and I knew. I finally knew why my mom didn’t love me. Didn’t pay attention to me. Why she was always drinking or going out shopping. Why she wasn’t like other mothers at my school. She was trying to cope. She was just trying to survive my dad, and God, I… I’d always been so horrible to her, see. I’d always been so rebellious and difficult. I’d scream at her, throw her things. I’d ruin her things just to make her mad, just to get a reaction out of her when all this time, she was just trying to survive her marriage. Which is why, despite my dad’s threats, I told someone. I had to protect her, do you understand? I had to do something, anything, to get my mom out of there. So I told my nanny. I told Reverie’s mom, and she was the worst person I could’ve ever told. She was very loyal to my dad and he found out. So then one afternoon I came back from school and there was a party. It was loud and obnoxious, the kind I always hated and ran away from. There was drinking and laughter and horses. That, I’d never seen before. People were riding, racing each other. There was an obstacle course and I saw my father riding through it. There was someone with him, on a different horse, that I didn’t pay attention to until… Until they fell and everybody started screaming and shouting and… It was my mom. She fell from the horse. I was so shocked. I was… so afraid. I don’t know what made me look at my father, but I did and… he was looking back at me. I knew it was him. He did it. He somehow pushed her off the horse and she was lying there, on the grass, just like in the study. Only her eyes were closed, and…”

I hug him even tighter as tears streak down my cheeks and the blue water becomes blurry. “I thought she’d died. I thought he really killed her and it was my fault. It was because I opened my mouth even though he told me not to. So I promised myself, promised, I’d never tell anyone. Not a single soul. I promised myself I’d protect my mom; I’d do whatever my dad said, whatever he wanted. Anything and everything he wanted, I’d do it. If he wanted me to pretend everything was fine, I’d do it. If he wanted me to be all fun and party and be like nothing had changed, I’d do that too. But something had changed, hadn’t it? Everything had changed. I was only ten, but for the first time in my life, I realized how bad men could be. How ugly this world was. How ugly my world was, the family that I grew up in, my town, my father’s ranch. All the stories my mother used to tell me when I was little, about the rivalry and how we were good guys”—I shake my head—“I knew she’d been lying. Maybe she was trying to lie to herself, too; I don’t know. All I knew was that my father was evil. So when he wasn’t around, when people weren’t looking, I’d keep an eye on Mom. I’d know when my dad would do… that to her because she’d disappear for days after that. If not physically, then mentally. She’d get that vacant look in her eyes. It was like she didn’t recognize who I was or even who she was. She’d take pills, too, lots of them. I always hated that about her, hated that she took her pills and just checked out. But after everything, I realized why she took them. She needed the escape, the help to just shut everything out. And I guess, one day she took too many of them and she OD’d. One of our maids found her and of course told Dad. He took away her pills after that, got his doctor to prescribe news ones. And he controlled them, only gave them to her when he wanted to.