"Soon," I answer. "But there's something else first."
I watch her face while I say the next part, because I need to see how it lands and I need to be honest with her about what it means before I commit to it.
"The regional rodeo is in four days," I tell her. "The big one. The one that draws every major name on the circuit including Dusty and Colt and every contractor and handler who was anywhere near the Caldwell run."
I pause, letting her catch up to where I'm going. "It's the last place all of them will be in the same location before the season ends, and it's the best chance we have to move on this while we still have the element of surprise."
Riley is very still beside me.
"You're going to ride," she says, and it isn't a question.
"I'm going to finish it," I answer. I mean I'm going to finish all of it. The investigation, the threat and the weeks of being two stepsbehind someone who has been running this game longer than I've been paying attention to it.
"On my terms, in my arena, in the one place where I've always known exactly who I am and what I'm capable of."
She looks at me for a long moment. Something moving behind her eyes that she lets me see instead of tucking away the way she used to.
"Then we'd better be ready," she says quietly.
And just like that, without ceremony or condition, she's in it with me all the way to the end.
Outside, four days feels like nothing and everything all at once.
The biggest rodeo of the season is coming.
And this time, everything is riding on it.
Chapter twenty
Please Don’t Do This
Riley
Iwait until Hadley is asleep.
It was planned that way. Not because I'm protecting her from the conversation but because I need to have it without editing myself. Without filtering what I say through the part of my brain that is always aware of small ears and impressionable hearts.
I find Jace in the kitchen. I always seem to find him in the kitchen. That room is the place this house does its real living. He looks up from the counter when I come in with the particular awareness he has of me now.
The kind that started somewhere around the night everything shifted between us and hasn't gone away since.
He knows before I open my mouth.
I can see it in when he sets down whatever he's holding and turns to face me fully, giving me his whole attention the way he does when he understands that what's coming is deserved.
"Riley," he says, and just my name in that tone is already an answer to something I haven't asked yet.
"Don't," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. I guess that is the thing about being a school counselor for long enough that you learn to regulate your external temperature even when your internal one is running dangerously high.
"Don't say my name like you already know what I'm going to say and you've already decided it doesn't change anything."
He doesn't look away. "Okay."
"I don't want you to ride," I tell him. The words land hard. They're not hard to say, but saying them out loud makes the fear underneath them real.
Real in a way I've been trying to keep at arm's length since he told me about the rodeo four days ago. "I know that's not what you want to hear and I know it's not how you're thinking about this. I know you have reasons that make sense inside your head. I just need you to hear me say it before any of that. I don't want you to ride."
Something moves through his expression, carefully and attentive, taking in what I'm saying without immediately countering it.
