Falling For A Cowboy. Karen Rock

about cadavers...”

      “Stop.” She put her hands over her ears. “Just stop. Everything comes easy to you. Heck. You’ve never had to work for just about anything in your life, so I get your not understanding this. But I.” She poked a finger in his chest. “Am. Not. Getting. Better.”

      “So you won’t even try?”

      “I just want to be left alone.”

      “What’s that mean? Holing up in your room? Hiding out from the world? Ignoring your friends?” He cleared his throat. “Me?”

      “It’s not hiding. It’s being realistic. Facing facts.”

      “About what?”

      “That I can’t do anything anymore.”

      “You can do plenty.”

      “Not barrel race.”

      She angled her head and viewed him from the corner of her eye, using her working, peripheral vision. Those perfect brows of his slanted over his straight nose, and white rimmed his golden-brown eyes all around. He appeared every bit as uncomfortable and confused as she felt.

      And she couldn’t bear it.

      He surrounded himself with capable, successful people. Winners. She couldn’t blame him for not understanding how to handle someone disabled like her. Disabled. She already hated the word. It meant not able. Who wanted to be known as that—even if it was true?

      “You can’t see at all?”

      “Not dead on. Everything’s a blur of color in the center of my vision. From the sides, I can focus some.”

      “You can’t see my face?”

      Her insides shriveled at the pained note that entered his voice. “Not all of it. Not at once. And soon.” Her voice fractured. “Soon I might not be able to see even that.”

      He brought her hands to his warm, smooth cheeks. When he swished her fingers over his down-turned lips, she yanked free.

      “Let me help you,” Jared insisted.

      “Do what? I can’t compete anymore. Can’t ride. Can’t drive. Heck. I can’t even walk alone on my own. I don’t want to depend on anybody for anything. I don’t want to be reminded of—”

      “Reminded of—” he prompted.

      “Of how helpless I am.”

      “No one’s saying you are.”

      “But they’ll be thinking it. You’re thinking it.”

      The beat of silence spoke volumes and hurt way more than she’d imagined it could. They’d never lied to one another, and she didn’t expect anything less than brutal honesty from her best friend now. Outside, the battering rain eased, then trickled. The thunder and lightning moved off to torment another mountain.

      She glimpsed Jared’s chest rise, then fall with a long exhale. “You’re no quitter, Amberley. That isn’t the gal I—” he stumbled, fumbled for a word. “I care about.”

      She flushed. What’d he been about to say? Oh. No matter. None of it did anymore. Jared liked being around her because she challenged him. Once it sunk in that those days had ended, he’d come around only out of pity. She didn’t believe for a second he’d abandon her. His decency and loyalty meant he never turned his back on his friends. But she wanted to be his equal, not his charity case. Better she cut things off while she still had her pride. Jared ran with a fast crowd and she’d only slow him down.

      “Then stop caring about me,” she forced herself to say, “because that girl’s gone.”

      “Not happening.”

      She paused, thinking fast. She needed to get rid of him once and for all. For both their sakes. “So as my friend you’ll do anything for me?”

      He nodded quickly. “Now you’re seeing sense.”

      “Promise?”

      “Promise.”

      “Anything?”

      “Name it,” he vowed.

      “Alright. Then bring me home and don’t ever come around again.”

      “Amberley...” he protested, his voice full of air like she’d sucker punched him.

      She shook her head. Firm. “You promised.”

      * * *

      “AMBERLEY, PHONE!”

      At her mother’s call, Amberley roused herself ever so slightly from the 24/7 stupor she’d fallen into these past few weeks. “Tell them I’m sleeping!” she called without opening her eyes. She turned and burrowed deeper under her covers, ignoring the slight bump up in her heart rate.

      So far, Jared had kept his word and not called since that night on Mount Sopris, but a part of her, a lowdown, cowardly, traitorous part, still hoped, every time she heard the phone ring, that he hadn’t respected her decision...

      Hadn’t given up on her.

      She missed him. Missed her friend. Missed that smile. Not that she’d ever see it again anyways.

      Oh. Stop bellyaching. It was for the best. If she cared about him, she’d let him go. She sighed and flopped over on her back, arms flung wide, her best thinking position.

      What was the saying? “If you can’t fix it, you just have to stand it.”

      She glanced over at the bedside table cluttered with cans of pop, bags of chips and dishes left over from eating meals in bed the last few weeks.

      Or wallow in it...

      Inertia. Another good word for her current state. Suspended animation. That summed it up, too. Maybe she should request to be cryogenically frozen. Least then she’d do something for science.

      “Amberley!” shrilled her mother again.

      She shoved herself upright, and her covers dropped to her lap in a messy heap. “Can you take a message?” From the corner of her eye, she spied the digital clock with the oversize display her mother had brought home recently. It read 1:20 p.m.

      Outside her open window, the sky was a blue so brilliant even her eyes picked it up, the air was still washed clean from recent rain, and birds warbled from the two rustling maples that stood sentinel at the end of their drive. It was the kind of weather that usually woke her feeling elated, glad to be alive, wishing she could belt out some musical number like “Oklahoma” or the “Sound of Music.”

      Not that she could sing a lick, but on days like this she’d always felt anything was possible. Even singing on key. Like maybe she could ride to the end of the earth and back before it’d even had a chance to circle the sun.

      “It’s about Harley!”

      Harley? She tossed off her covers and stumbled down the narrow hall to the kitchen, hands brushing the walls to keep her bearings. Her wrinkled sleep shirt swung around her knees.

      She mouthed “Thanks” to her mother and brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

      “Sorry to bother you, Amberley, what with, ah, all you’re going through and all.”

      Harley’s stable owner, Benny Jordan, an asthmatic former champion roper turned rodeo clown who’d retired to this area fifteen years ago, breathed noisily into the phone.

      “Is Harley okay?” Her fingers gripped the handle hard, and she dropped into the seat her mother pulled out. Inside her chest, her heart skittered every which way. Although it’d been weeks since she’d seen Harley, not a day passed where she didn’t wonder how he was doing and if the stable was taking good care of him. Prior to her accident, they’d spent most of every day together. Now, the thought of seeing him again only reopened the wound of all that