Chapter Eight

"When It Isn't Like It Should Be"

The hardest part wasn't my broken leg or the cuts and bruises that I had on my body. It wasn't the fact that I wouldn't be riding or even driving for a little while yet. It wasn't that the doctor had ordered me to stay indoors, doing next to nothing until we were sure that the baby was fine. It was the look on Samantha's face when I told her about our decision to put Pride down.

I'd hobbled to the vet's office on my crutches, Brad's hands never too far away incase I lost my balance. Charlie and Clay ambled along beside us and Samantha…well she'd never left him at all. She was still sitting in a chair outside his stall, waiting for our decision. No one had told her what I'd decided and I almost wished they had. But I couldn't take the cowards way out this time, I had to look her in the eye and tell her what I was doing. And then I'd have to live with it for the rest of my life. God, I couldn't remember the last time I'd hurt this much.

"Right this way, Mrs. Townsend." The veterinarian assistant said to me in the voice I was sure she used so many times to tell the owner that their horse was just fine, they could take them home tomorrow or the next day. But I wouldn't be taking Pride home and I guess that's why I was crying.

I'd been the first to see Pride when he was first born, I was actually in the stall, my face wet with happy tears. I'd seen him grow from a young foal to a gangly adolescent and then into a charming, powerful racehorse. I'd ridden him in his first race and groomed and bathed him a thousand times. I'd worried over him, fussed over him, trained him and I'd loved him so much I thought my heart would burst. He was sedated when I saw him and I saw that they'd done their best to make him comfortable.

I leaned into Brad, suddenly feeling weak in the knees. My proud, charming, gorgeous racehorse had been reduced to drugs and a laying in a stall, unable to move. Samantha looked up at me, her tears soaking her face. It was then that I started to cry to, the sobs gently shaking me as I pushed away from Brad and hobbled over to her. "I'm so sorry, Sam. I did everything I could."

She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my hair. "Don't do it, Ash. He could get better. Don't do it."

I closed my eyes against the pain but it still found it's way in somehow, tearing up my soul, leaving me in shattered pieces. I knew that I could believe her, I could give him another chance but she hadn't seen Charlie cry, she hadn't seen the tears in Clay's eyes or Brad's, she hadn't heard the seriousness in the vets tone, the severity of the break. "I love you," I whispered in her ear. "Know that."

To explain the way that it hurt be when she pulled herself away from me wouldn't be possible. The way that she looked at me, her green eyes burning holes into me, daring me to admit to her what I was about to do. I knew that long after Samantha and I fixed things between us, long after she forgave me, and I hoped she would, I would remember that look in her eye. She was looking at me as if she didn't know me at all, as if I were a stranger to her and a cruel one at that. I took in a lot of things in that moment, the fact that we were losing Pride, that I'd almost lost my baby, that I never wanted to get on the back of another horse again, and that that would be the day that I would lose my very best friend.

"Forgive me." I whispered. I knew she couldn't but I prayed that someday, in her heart, she'd understand.

*

Samantha wouldn't talk to me. Or more accurately, she stopped having anything to do with me or Townsend Acres. Charlie told me that she didn't answer his calls anymore and when she saw him coming around at Whitebrook, she simply turned the other way. I worried about her constantly, looking out the windows of Townsend Acres, nursing my own grief. Brad was going to hire someone to take care of me until the doctor wasn't so worried about my miscarrying but then Caroline came with her bags in hand, telling me that she'd be there as long as I needed her. I laughed dryly and told her that that might be for awhile.

"Here," Caroline said to me, handing me a cup of tea. "Drink this. It'll calm you down."

"I wasn't aware that I was worked up." I said and took a sip, looking at her over the rim of the mug.

"You are." She said, sliding into the seat next to me, her stomach bulging slightly through the material of her shirt. I'd almost forgotten about the baby that was inside her, the baby that would be my baby's cousin. "Samantha is going to come around, honey." She smoothed my hair slightly and it surprised me a little how easily Caroline, always the dramatic one, could slip into the role of comforter. Motherhood had become her.

"I miss him, too you know." I said, taking a sip of tea and resting my dark head against the cushions of the couch. "She wasn't the only one who loved him."

Caroline, who know me so well, didn't say anything, she just stroked my hair and let me talk. I hadn't realized until now how much I hated that she lived in New York, that I only got to see her a few times a year. That it took something like this to get her to stick around for awhile. I hadn't realized how much I missed my sister.

"She thinks it so easy for me to do this, that I didn't for my own selfish reasons. That I didn't want to have to focus on something else while I'm pregnant, maybe she even thinks that Brad put me up to this, but she didn't see Charlie cry. She didn't see the look on Brad and Clay's faces when we all decided to put him down. She wasn't there when we talked to the vet and she didn't have to sit and wait to hear her baby's heartbeat, wondering if it would be there or not."

"Sshh." Carline said, pulling me closer. "Don't cry, honey. It's all going to be okay. She's going to be just fine, all she needs is time."

I was so numb that I hadn't even realized that I was crying.

*

"Babe?" Brad said when he entered the house. Caroline had headed over to our parent's place for a couple of hours and I was now seated on the couch, reading a magazine. "Oh, is that the new Daily Racing Forum?" He asked me. "I've been dying for that one to come out."

When I held up the magazine to show him that it was not the Daily Racing Forum but one on decorating, he didn't try to mask his surprise. "What's the matter?"

"Do you really have to ask me that?" I asked him, raising my eyebrows.

He sighed as he sat next to me, raking his fingers through his hair. "How many times do I have to tell you that this wasn't your fault? We all checked Pride over and we all thought he was fine."

I felt the angry tears rising in my throat again and I was determined to ward them off this time. I was tired of giving into them, tired of showing everyone my wounds. I just wanted to move on with my life and if that meant I couldn't so much as look at a horse, then so be it. "I'm tired of talking about." I said, pushing my hair over my shoulders and attempting to smile at him. "Let's talk about something else, okay?"

"Okay," He said, squeezing my hand and smiling back at me, apparently oh-so-pleased that I was willing to go along. "I talked to Dad today and he's still excited for the Preakness. We're thinking that Maiden Glory might have a really good chance at it. If we get the right jockey on him, we're thinking Jilly, we could have a great horse."

I closed my eyes and pushed myself off the couch. "I said I wanted to talk about something else."

"We are." He said, standing and grabbing my arm. "Wait, stop. What's going on with you? You love horses and I assumed you'd be excited about this."

"It hurts, Brad." I said, staring at his fingers pressing into my arm until he let go. "It hurts to talk about it, it even hurts to breathe. How am I suppose to go out to the barns and go about my business, acting as if it's all okay?"

"I know it's not okay, Ash." He said, massaging my shoulders gently. "Just give it time and it will be okay. You can't give up everything you ever dreamed about just because something goes wrong. Accidents happen."

"I just-" I stopped for a minute, looking around the spacious dining room. It had been nearly a week since Pride's death and so far I hadn't gone done to the stables once, I hadn't bothered to watch morning work outs, using the excuse that I was too tired or worried about the baby but it wasn't true. None of it was. When Pride died, there was apart of me that had died, too. The part that lived for that minute and a half that I was flying down the racetrack, who loved to spend hours grooming and fawning over them. I wasn't the girl that I used to be. "can't do this anymore."

"Excuse me?" He said, stepping back and staring at me as if he didn't know me at all. I wondered if he was right.

"I'm not going to mess with them anymore. I'm done riding, I'm done training, I'm done going out there. You can handle all of that, I won't deal with it anymore." I started to walk away, my magazine in my hand but he stopped me, his hand brushing across the material of my shirt.

"Wait just a damn minute," he said and I wondered why he had to be so angry with me. Why he couldn't just step back and accept my decision. It hadn't been easy for me but it sure as hell was easier than walking past that stall everyday, the memories following me every place that I went. "Your trying to tell me that after working with horses for the past twenty-two years of your life, your just going to walk away because of one horse?"

"It wasn't just one horse, Brad!" I said and this time I couldn't hold back the tears. I gave into them and I enjoyed letting those the hurt and angry and frightening fury that was held within me. "It's everything! You have no idea the hell that I have put myself through for them. You just don't understand."

"I don't understand?" He jabbed his finger at his chest, the veins in his neck standing out and his face reddening. "Just who do you think your talking to? I've almost broken my back working to get this farm where it is, making sure everything is running smoothly. You have no idea the pressure that I go through every day."

"It's not about the damn pressure, Brad!" I shouted. "It's about the heartache that happens when you put every thing you have into a horse, your money, your time, your sweat, your blood but most importantly your heart. You do not know what it's like when it becomes more than business and it becomes personal. You've never lost a damn thing in your life!" There. I'd finally said it. It was laid out for all the world to see, my angry, bitter heart exposed.

"Haven't I?" he said, his voice dangerously low. "My mother walked out on me when I was twelve years old, not too long after you walked into this farm, thinking you were the only one with problems. You think my father's such a freaking great guy but you don't know how many times I sat around waiting for him to come home, waiting for what felt like forever only to find out he wasn't coming. You weren't there when I had to make the decision to put Prince down. That horse was my best friend but you didn't see the tears that I cried, no one did. You think you have me so figured out but you don't. You don't know a damn thing."

I felt numb right down to my toes. I felt drained of the pain and the frustration and the agonizing over every second of that race. "I'm sorry, Brad. I just can't."

"You can't have both sides, Ash." Brad said when I started to walk away. His hands were shoved into his khaki pants and the blue of his shirt made his eyes appear to be glowing. Or maybe that was the unshed tears. The tears I'd never seen him cry. "You can't have a life without horses and a life with me. It doesn't work that way. Not with us. If you run away from the horses then you mine as well run away altogether."

"What if I did?"

"Runaway?"

I nodded.

He bowed his head and I thought I heard him chuckle a little under his breath but when he looked up I saw the pain in his eyes and that's when I knew that everything would change for us forever. "Then there wouldn't be a thing I could do except wait for you to come back."

Three hours later I had my bags packed and reservations at a hotel until my flight left the next morning. Brad didn't say anything.