Extract from Harper Sloan’s LOST RIDER
He lets out a sigh, his breath fanning against my face. “I was lost, Leigh. I had just been told I could no longer have the only thing I was livin’ for anymore. I kept myself angry and drunk, not thinkin’ about anythin’ because I didn’t allow myself to get sober enough to think. Would I have come back without his death? Honestly? Not as soon as I did, but I would have come back. I made sure the life I had been livin’ was so full of trainin’ and ridin’ that I didn’t give myself time to think about anythin’ other than the competition. I wouldn’t let myself think about what I was missin’ out on. But once the ridin’ was gone, and once I crawled out of that bottle I had been swimmin’ in, well, darlin’, the only thing I had left was to look at the regrets I wished I could take back. So it might have taken me a little while, but I still would have realized that what was missin’ was you.”
He’s telling me everything I want to hear. Things I would have given into just like that, with no thought, years ago, but a decade of pain has the doubt still lingering.
“We don’t even know each other anymore.” He smirks devilishly, and memories of our one night together flood my mind, making my cheeks heat. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare. I’ll amend that. We don’t know each other well enough anymore to even know if we’re compatible.” That smirk turns up a notch, his perfectly straight white teeth flashing at me. “Jesus Christ,” I grumble. “We don’t know each other as the adults we’ve become is what I’m tryin’ to say, Maverick Austin Davis, get your head out of the gutter.”
