Page 79 of Austin
But maybe not enough.
“Or maybe too much,” Shelby pointed out when she and Ty stopped in Omaha to watch him ride while on their way to Tennessee and he filled them in about his friend. “And you don’t know what went on with them. Sometimes guys aren’t good at reading the signs. And sometimes they ignore the signs.”
Well, he wasn’t guilty of that. He’d read the signs and deduced that he wasn’t going to put Kristen through hell. A little pain now was better than a lot of pain later. From what he’d been able to glean from the Marietta grapevine, she’d landed her job in Reno. Once there, she’d slide back into her old life, hook up with some guy who didn’t regularly flirt with death and all would be well.
For both of them.
He had to remember that, but sometimes it was hard when he was dealing with a hole in his gut that wasn’t diminishing with time.
You’re doing the right thing—doing what youhaveto do.
He couldn’t offer Kristen the security she needed, couldn’t even guarantee that he’d have a job in a year, a month, a week. If he got hurt tomorrow, if he found himself in Kelly Kincaid’s shoes, he had no backup plan, other than holing up on the Forty-Six until he figured out his plan.
Whatever that might be. The practice pens he’d visited had been inspiring, but he’d need a partner to set one up. And a clientele. And a location. Even if he had all those things, the reality was that he’d probably still need a day job to make ends meet. That meant luck or training.
He missed the days when he hadn’t thought about the future.
Missed them a lot.
He did his best to focus on his upcoming ride as he traveled north on Highway 93. It was late afternoon when Missoula came into view, the city spreading out in the valley beneath the mountains that had once held a deep glacial lake. He’d always liked Missoula. He’d had some good times there. He planned to have more good times.
While he could.
Austin’s face tightened. He had to stop thinking like that. It wasn’t doing his rides any good. He’d finished okay in Omaha, okay in Deadwood, okay in Billings. But he’d dropped a couple places in the standings and needed to ramp up his focus. Regain lost ground.
Missoula was where he was going to do that. If nothing else, he’d do it for Kelly, the guy who’d helped him see that no matter how much you might want something, that didn’t mean you were going to get it.
