Burn for Cowboy (Stampede Sizzlers) by Jenna Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

said as the doors opened on their floor. “Are you okay?”
    “Yes,” she lied. Adam, Adam, Adam. The name thundered in time to her racing heart. The walk to the room took forever. “I’m going to…”
    “Tell me about Adam Payne.”
    She stared at him then walked into their room. “There’s nothing to tell.” Was she going to throw up? It certainly felt that way. She swallowed again, trying to unwedge the knot in her throat.
    “You’ve already lied to me twice. That says that there is something to tell. Tell me about Adam, Meredith.”
    She shook her head as she turned on the television. Anything to stop him from talking.
    Mike muted the television then rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at her with eyes hidden by the dim light. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve spent ten months with him in our bed. And I’m tired of it.”
    Something painful turned in her chest. “That’s not fair, Michael. That’s not fair at all.”
    “Okay, not ten months. How about two?” He held up two fingers. “I can tell you the exact moment he came into our bed and that’s when I asked you to move in with me. Tell me I’m lying, Meredith. Tell me.”
    She opened her mouth to do just that but nothing came out.
    Her fingers gripped the front of her shirt.Her other hand found the scar on her leg.
    She abandoned the couch and the silent, mocking television and walked into the bedroom. She turned on the lights and shut the door to see the full length mirror hanging on the back. Memories flicking at her.
    The past.
    Last night.
    Adam.
    Mike.
    Her fingers brushed down the front of her shirt, easing the buttons open.
    The scar on her abdomen was not as ugly as the one on her thigh. But it was just as devastating. She had miscarried that night, her traumatized body unable to hold onto that tiny beat of life. She had begun to hemorrhage from wounds sustained in the car accident. Her spleen, her gall bladder, her uterus: all removed. It had been, the doctors had said, a damn miracle she had lived.
    Blood loss alone should’ve killed her when her femur had broken, ripping through a seventeen year old figure skater’s thigh. She had lost her coach, Holly Prentiss, and her grandfather that night. Black ice on a highway that neither a car nor the semi-truck coming toward them saw. A shriek of metal and everything was gone.
    Her fingers traced the neat scar below her belly button and then lower. Her dreams of ice had been ended by ice. Those damn Fates.
    How they loved spilling irony into her life and fucking it up. She had lost the baby that had scared her so much. Terrified her.
    Adam’s baby.
    The baby he had thrown away when he had thrown her away.
    She went to get one of Mike’s shirts. She needed the comfort of his scent around her. She lifted the sleeve up to smell the faint sandalwood cologne he wore
    Why? Why now? Where had Adam been for the past eight years?
    Living his dreams of ice, while she had forged new dreams. Coaching.
    Michael.
    She lifted the sleeve to her nose as she sat on the corner of the bed, staring at the faded ghosts who hours earlier had writhed in want and need. Michael.
    The man she craved.
    Adam.
    The boy she loved…
    Just thinking of seeing Adam, had her jumping off the bed.
    Her hand shook as she pressed the sleeve against her lips. She thought she felt alone... until the hospital. Alone was waking up in the hospital to find her loved ones gone: Holly, her grandfather, Adam. They left her alone with the pain, with the fear that she’d never walk, let alone skate. The nurses had gossiped about her father who demanded to know if she’d skate while the doctors had just been concerned that she’d live through the night.
    Once it had been determined there was no gold medal in her future, her father had given up on her.
    Alone and struggling to survive, at seventeen, with no one to make it stop hurting.
    What hurts you is not allowed.
    Mike opened the door, the beat up jeans he relaxed in riding low