Page 8 of Austin
But Austin always had liked setting his sights high, aiming for the impossible. He’d also had three classes with her that year and, sometimes, when she was concentrating and her features relaxed, she looked different. Softer. More approachable. As if the whole perfection thing was an act and there was another person behind the cool exterior, a person more like her carefree sister. He wanted to meet that person.
A few times he’d gotten a glimpse of her, the other Kristen, the one who didn’t look so high and mighty. He’d seen her laughing in the corner of the library with her friends on one of his rare visits, and after the librarian had shushed them, they’d looked at one another and then Kristen had burst into laughter. She unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a cough, which only made everyone laugh harder. He’d never seen her laugh before. It had intrigued him.
Not long after that, she’d dropped her books in the middle of the hall a few minutes before the bell when the halls were nearly empty. A flurry of papers had scattered across the tiled floor—more paper than he’d probably produced in all his high school English classes. He’d stopped to help and could still remember how she’d looked up as he knelt next to her, a startled expression chasing across her face before she’d smiled. A tentative, self-conscious smile that had transformed her face as her cheeks went pink.
And then her friends had swooped out of a nearby classroom to save the day, and she’d avoided his gaze as she’d stuffed the papers into her binder. He’d left, but couldn’t stop thinking about Kristen Alexander and how she’d seemed more shy than snooty for those few seconds. He’d always found her sexy in a hands-off kind of way, with her full mouth, long legs, firm ass. And now it looked as if there was more to Kristen than she let on. Catnip to a guy who liked a challenge, so he’d set about trying to charm her.
His friends followed his progress closely, since a lot of them had money riding on the deal. Of course, word had gotten to Kristen about his plan to ask her to prom, and she’d sent a short sweet message back to him.
Tell him I don’t date losers.
He could still recall the jaw-dropping moment when one of his rodeo buddies passed the message along with a hearty laugh and a slug in the shoulder. “She thinks you’re a loser, dude.”
Maybe it was because of his father, who’d agonized about feeling like a loser after giving up a promising rodeo career to tend a farm that had gone bankrupt. Or maybe it was the fact that everyone and their grandmother had heard her comeback before he had, and started razzing him about it, but Austin had come close to tipping over after getting the message.
Then he wondered if it was possible to convince her that whatever she’d heard had been taken out of context. Most likely it hadn’t, but he had to do what he could.
With damage control in mind, he’d found her at her locker, wrestling a heavy book off the top shelf. She’d looked over her shoulder at him and froze, eyes wide, lips parted. Classic deer in the headlights.
“Austin.”
He’d reached out to take the book off the shelf and hand it to her. “I heard you called me a loser.” He spoke easily, as if it was no big deal and he was giving her a chance to explain, but people passing by in the hall started to slow their steps. Some came to a standstill. Fine. If she’d called him a loser because of his melt-the-ice-princess remark, then he’d apologize in front of witnesses. Make it right.
Kristen shot a look at the growing crowd and then tilted her chin up. Pressed her full lips tightly together. Refused to answer.
“Didyou call me a loser?” Austin asked again. “Because if you did, you should own up to it.”
Her face had gone totally red. “I did.” The quiet words seemed to ring through the hallway.
“Why?” A clear opening for her to mention his campfire boast, and thus a chance for him to apologize and maybe even salvage this situation. She didn’t answer immediately, so he’d asked again. “Why?”
She glanced at the crowd as if looking for a means of escape. There wasn’t one, so she’d swallowed dryly, then tilted up her chin and said defiantly, “Because you act like one.”
The words had felt like ice water hitting him in the face. “What?”
“You don’t go to class, you drink too much, you have no goals. You’re wasting time when you could be achieving something. You swagger around like you own the school, but you don’t respect what goes on here. Youactlike a loser.”
Austin had stared at her, stunned. Kristen, who never talked, was talking now, and he didn’t like what she had to say.
“I’m not a loser.” The words had come gritting out from between his teeth. He was a high school rodeo champion, for fuck’s sake, but apparently that didn’t count.
She’d hadn’t said another word; in fact, she’d looked as if she wanted to melt into the floor, then she’d pressed the book he’d handed to her against her chest, slammed her locker and pushed her way into the crowd, which parted to let her through.
He could still recall the heat in his face as he fought to look as if it were her loss, then turned without a word and walked in the opposite direction, shoulders square, back straight.
But inwardly he was shaken.
All this time he’d been trying to charm his way into her good graces, and she’d thought he was a loser. Shit. Who else thought that? And if they hadn’t, did they now?
Austin had never thought of himself as having a fragile ego, but he had been damned glad that graduation was only a month away, because that confrontation had changed the way he felt about himself, school. Kristen.
And his buddies, being the kind of guys they were, didn’t let him forget that Kristen Alexander had called him out for being a loser. In their defense, they’d had no idea that he hadn’t shaken off the incident—or that her remarks had cut deeply, making him wonder if he really was a loser. He didn’t have goals, other than graduation and rodeos, certainly had no long-term plan for the future. That had seemed pretty loser-like.
The craziest part of the situation was that the confrontation had led to him becoming friends with Kristen’s twin, Whitney, who’d looked him up the day after the confrontation. She’d made no excuses for her sister; had simply wanted to check on him. And eventually, after most of their graduating class left Marietta, moving on to better and brighter things, they’d become friends.
Austin turned away from the window and sat on the bed, where he pulled off his new boots: first one, then the other, letting them fall to the floor. The ice packs he’d jammed into the small fridge were cold and he slapped one on his shoulder and another on his hip before reaching for the remote.
Big event tomorrow. It was time for a win. He’d made decent money on the tour thus far, and had avoided serious injury; for the most part, he’d only aggravated old injuries and that he could live with, especially with four long months stretching ahead of him. But he hadn’t won yet.
Kristen wouldn’t be there to see it, but he was going to show the world what a winner looked like.
