AllFreeNovel
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Well, screw Charlie Montgomery. I’m here to work. And that’s what I’ll do. With or without him.
I look up and down the pasture. Fallon and Wyatt bickering on their horses. The small shed with rainwater barrels out front. Dusty pickup trucks squeezed into a small lot on a narrow side road.
That’s when a loud snort gets my attention. I turn my gaze to find a round horse pen, maybe forty diameters across and framed by steel bars, near the pasture. A storm of a horse, ebony with a white diamond marking on its brow, prances back and forth. It looks restless and angry, the way I feel right about now.
I cross to the pen and climb the rails, leaning forward to get a better look. “Hey there,” I say before clicking my tongue like I saw Charlie do earlier.
With a harsh flare of its nostrils, the horse stomps out of my way.
Annoyed that this is one more being that doesn’t like me, I inhale a determined breath.
I won’t give up on it.
Heart racing, I stretch my hand out toward the horse. I climb higher on the rail, pushing up on my tiptoes. A mistake. Because I lean too far forward. I lose my balance.
And then I fall.
Irun.
For Ruby’s fucking life.
She’s sitting in the round pen where Wyatt keeps the “demon horses.” Wild horses he rescued from bad situations that still need to be broken.
The horse could trample her.
That single thought has me racing to Ruby like it’s ripping out my fucking soul.
She stares, unsure why I’m running at her like a damn idiot. And then she waves at me.
Fucking waves.
I don’t have time to be angry. I have to get her out of there.
The horse thrashes around, and the bars clang as it ricochets off and around. When the horse’s hooves barely miss crushing the top of her hand, Ruby realizes pretty damn quick why she shouldn’t be in that pen.
Bright blue eyes wide with panic, Ruby crab crawls backwards. By feeling blindly and gripping the bars, she pulls herself to standing. She’s trying to climb up, but the flailing horse whipping up dust and grass is making it hard for her to get a good grip.
In my periphery, I see Wyatt racing his horse to the pen. Fallon follows close behind. Ruby flinches, fear snapping in her eyes like a downed wire. Her rose-gold hair catches the sun as she presses her small frame against the bars.
And that’s when I see her.
Maggie.
Maggie, in the alleyway, smiling that smug smile she wore like a badge, waiting to compete in her last barrel race of the season. Only minutes before she could compete, her horse got spooked and somersaulted backward on top of her. I fell to my knees in that arena and screamed. I didn’t stop until my father took me to the hospital, where we waited to hear that Maggie was gone. I wanted to kill that horse, blast its brains out with a shotgun because it had stolen Maggie away from me.
I couldn’t protect her. My one damn job in life and I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t save her.
I couldn’t.
And then the memory—the nightmare—clears.
Time speeds up.
Sound returns and I’m at the pen.
Heart hammering against my rib cage, I grab the middle bar and slide myself beneath the lower rung. I roll across the ground, then rocket up to stand beside Ruby.
