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“Give it here.”
I watched him open it up and type something in, and when he turned it around, I realized he had put Flynn’s number in my phone. I looked up at him with tears in my eyes before taking the phone from him, and I slipped it back into my pocket before throwing my arms around his neck.
“I don’t know what happened with y’all, but call him. He’d be happy to see you.”
Lord, didn’t I know it.
“Any chance I can cash in that ride?” I murmured.
He led me out to the barn and showed me this beautiful white horse. His coat was white, and his mane and tail were black, and I could have sworn the horse had a mischievous smirk on his face.
“This here’s Oreo. Let’s get you saddled up, and you can take him out. He hasn’t been out yet today, so he’ll love you just for gettin’ him out of his stall.”
“You think I don’t remember how to put one of these on?” I asked. Bradley laughed while he saddled up Oreo, and when I swung my leg over, he whistled lowly before he turned to walk away.
“Flynn’s a lucky guy!” he called back.
I wish I could’ve believed him. The truth was Flynn deserved better. I fell in love with him, and I knew he loved me, and yet when I was tossed my dream job I left his side without so much as consulting him in the matter before I booked a flight for Paris. On the one hand, that’s my career. They handed me my dream on a platter and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna turn it down. But Flynn was my soulmate, the man I clung to all through college. I supported his bull-riding endeavors even when his parents were too worried about his safety to see how happy it made him. He supported me in my fashion passion, even though he repeatedly admitted he didn’t understand a lick of it. We feasted on each other’s presence during the day and dined on each other’s bodies at night, and we had dated so long that our parents had already begun planning our wedding before Flynn had even proposed.
It was just… one of those things you knew would eventually happen. We knew it, our families knew it, and the entire town knew it.
The least I could do was give Flynn an explanation as to what happened. Even if my assumptions were incorrect and even if he would’ve followed me to Paris or, at the very least, supported me as I went, I needed to let him know that it was all in my head.
I needed him to know that I still cared for him and that there had been no one after him.
God, there was so much I wanted to say over dinner, and I felt my hands trembling as I held Oreo’s reigns.
“Steady now,” I whispered to myself.
I ducked us out of the barn and got us going in the field. I ripped my hair down from my ponytail and let the wind comb through my hair, and I held my arms out while my hips synced to the rhythm of his thunderous hooves. My god, I had forgotten how powerful I felt on the back of a horse. I always used to tell Flynn that being on the back of a horse was more liberating than being on the back of a bull, and then he’d just smirk and tell me I hadn’t been on a bucking bull before.
And then I’d prove to him wrong every single night whenever I straddled his hips.
Everything was going so well. I had Flynn’s number, I had reservations, I finally had the guts to tell him what happened all those years ago, and I had actually gotten to sink my hands into the thick of his muscles again. I was on top of the most beautiful horse in this town, I was galloping through the greenest fields this state had to offer, and I felt absolutely unstoppable.
But then, Oreo reared back onto his haunches and started shrieking up a storm.
“Whoa! Oreo… calm down, boy. Whoooooooa.”
I grabbed tight onto the reigns and flexed my thighs, but my foot slid from the stirrup to my right. I felt my body slowly slide off to the side and figured if I tucked and rolled, I could at least run back to the barn while Oreo shook off whatever it was that was spooking him.
But, when I looked down, I realized it was a massive snake.
“Shit,” I bit.
I tried desperately to rein him in, but when he brought his feet back down, he bucked back with his hind legs. He was whinnying in pain, and I was in unfamiliar territory, and I heard Bradley screaming behind me as the hooves of another horse quickly approached. I felt my body being thrown from Oreo as Bradley continued to roar my name in the background, and when I hit my back, the last thing I remember is Oreo’s hooves above my face and a sharp pain ricocheting down my neck.
And then? Everything went black.
Chapter 9: Flynn
I’d finally gotten
done mucking out the stables when I heard my phone vibrating on the counter. It rang, and it rang, and I rushed over to catch it just before it fell off the counter and onto the tiled kitchen floor. I didn’t recognize the number on the screen, and part of me was tempted to simply let it go to voicemail. It was easy around here for people to get numbers and then start soliciting things, and while I loved buying cookies from the scouts around the area, I didn’t like politicians and churches calling me up and asking stupid questions and wanting me to donate money to some campaign I’d never heard of.
But, something told me I needed to take this call. Something in the pit of my gut told me that the local area code that was flashing meant something terrible had gone wrong. I thought of all the things that could’ve happened: maybe someone broke into my parent’s old home I renovated, or maybe something had happened to Bradley at the stables. I told him he was taking on too much work with his dad climbing up in age, and I’d offered my services on a part-time basis time and time again to him.
However, the voice I received on the other end of the line was one I never thought I’d ever hear again.
