Chapter 23
RCMP WILD Headquarters, RCMP Barn, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia
Whatever he carried, she suspected it ran deeper than the loss of her career. Deeper than losing her family’s respect, respect that had always felt conditional anyway, earned through performance instead of love. Or maybe it was something harsher still. Something more devastating.
She’d been in law enforcement long enough to recognize the pattern. Don’t show weakness. That only invites shame. Americans or Canadians, it didn’t matter. The uniform changed, the rules didn’t.
Shame. God, she knew that emotion like it was stitched into her bones.
But giving in to it had only ever added a bitter edge to what she’d already lost. She had been injured.
That part had been out of her control. But her dancing, there was nothing shameful in that.
It had been hard work. Grueling. Demanding, and it had been wonderful.
What he was doing now, holding himself together through sheer force of will, she recognized that, too. It made her want to reach for him, not to fix what was broken, but to stand with him in the truth of it. To know him fully. To let herself be known in return.
That kind of knowing wasn’t safe.
But it was honest.
He changed the subject, the strong column of his throat working. “You did a good job on my 25. Clean as a whistle.” The tone changed imperceptibly, the cadence in his voice slipped down an octave, as if he wanted her to move closer to him.
The words landed heavier than she expected.
She suspected praise from him wasn’t casual.
The fact that he’d offered it at all told her he’d checked the work himself.
“It’s a beautiful weapon.” She watched him approach, worried about his safety.
Jet did fine when they were working, but he didn’t like to be cornered, and he especially felt vulnerable when he was cross-tied.
“Don’t,” Blair said.
He stopped.
She waited, keeping one hand on Jet’s neck.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Breakneck’s eyes slid to hers, gray and steady, with that intent focus that made her feel like the only thing in the room when he chose to give it. “Meeting your horse,” he said simply.
She blinked. “Jet doesn’t care for men.”
One of the SEALs snorted behind him. “Understatement,” Skull muttered. “Devil horse tried to eat me.”
Breakneck’s gaze didn’t leave her face. “You care for him,” he said quietly. “That’s enough for me.”
Something low and warm flickered under her ribs, and she crushed it fast. “I’m serious,” she said, fingers tightening slightly in Jet’s mane. “He was abused. He has his reasons. He doesn’t trust easily.”
“Neither do I,” Breakneck said.
Confirmation, but not surprising information. “You trusted me in the compound.”
“You earned it.” Then he looked at Jet.
The shift in him was close to imperceptible. His shoulders eased, his posture lowering a fraction, not in submission but in some kind of respectful alignment. His hand slid slowly away from his side, palm open, fingers loose, no direct reach, letting the horse see the shape of him.
He drew in a quiet breath, exhaled even slower.
Blair recognized the pattern now. Sniper breathing. The same cadence he trained himself to use behind the rifle. The same measured inhale and exhale he’d used when he’d steadied her in Interrogation Two while the world exploded around them.
Jet’s ears flicked. A tension moved through his neck, then lessened. Breakneck didn’t step closer. He let Jet decide.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice low, roughened by exhaustion. “It’s all right. I’m just standing here.”
The words weren’t special. There was nothing magical about them. But something in his tone, calm, patient, utterly unafraid, slid under Jet’s skin the same way it had under hers.
Jet snorted once, head jerking. Blair felt the tremor under her palm. Her muscles tensed on instinct.
Breakneck stayed exactly where he was.
“Smart boy,” he said. “You keep your distance. Make people earn it.”
Jet blew out a breath, longer this time. His neck muscles loosened. His head dropped an inch, then another, nostrils flaring as he took in Breakneck’s scent from afar.
Blair swallowed.
This was ridiculous. This was a horse. This was basic groundwork. She knew that. She did this with new horses, skittish ones, traumatized ones.
But watching him do it with no expectation, just presence, felt like watching something she wasn’t supposed to see.
She swallowed hard, forcing back her fear. See him, want him, allow him to find his way. She didn’t mean Jet. Breakneck eased one step forward.
Jet’s ears flicked again, nothing but a soft, wary curiosity.
“You don’t like men,” Breakneck murmured. “I get it. Most of them are assholes.”
Skull sputtered. “Hey.”
Boomer elbowed him. “He’s not wrong.”
Blair should have laughed. She didn’t.
Breakneck stayed loose, no tension in his hand, no force in his body. Jet stretched his neck, inch by inch, sniffing the air. Then, slowly, the gelding’s muzzle brushed Breakneck’s fingers.
Jet’s breath was warm against her hand and Breakneck against her pulse at the same time. Something inside her stuttered.
Breakneck simply let Jet touch him. Let the horse decide.
“Good,” he said softly. “You did good.”
The same words he’d murmured, barely above a whisper, after pulling off the impossible RPG shot. His focus was just as absolute here as it had been in the compound. A shiver went down her spine.
He was aware of everything, Jet’s breathing, her position, the space between them, just as he had been when that RPG threatened them all. He’d known where everyone was in real time, how to move, how to turn his body to take the blast in a way that spared her as much as possible.
Blair’s throat tightened.
Jet let his muzzle rest in Breakneck’s open palm for a moment, then bumped him once, a brief, testing nudge that would have flattened a less grounded man. Breakneck absorbed the impact like it was nothing.
“Yeah,” Breakneck murmured. “I’ve taken worse hits today. You’ll have to try harder.”
Blair could have sworn Jet huffed at that, the equine equivalent of a smirk.
She found herself smiling before she could stop it. She wiped it off her face just as fast.
Distance. Control. Caution. She was allowed to feel. She wasn’t allowed to be careless.
“Fine,” she said. “He likes you.” Her voice came out more ragged than she liked. “That’s saying something. He’s a beast when he’s on edge.”
Breakneck’s gaze flicked back to hers, something unreadable in it, a shadow, a question, and a wanting she could almost feel if she stared too long.
“Story of my life,” he said quietly.
Then he stepped away from Jet and turned toward the remount string without another word.
The distance fell back between them like a curtain.
But the image of that big, damaged warhorse breathing into Breakneck’s hand lodged somewhere under her sternum and refused to move.
The barn stretched long and high around her, rafters dark with age, the smell of hay and leather and animal heat hanging thick in the air. Hooves shifted in stalls, a chain rattled once and settled, the low creak of wood underscoring the quiet like a held breath.
From down the long stretch of barn, a horse whinnied so loud, Jet lifted his head and responded.
Talon. He had been Constable Stephen Sanchez’s mount.
The sound echoed off the timber beams, raw and lonely, the kind of call that carried more than impatience.
Her throat thickened at the memory of the loss, the kind that stayed keen, no matter how many scenes like it she’d walked through.
Horses didn’t forget their partners. Neither did good officers.
Grief lingered in bodies long after the paperwork was filed, long after the cause was named and cataloged.
Talon’s stall stood apart, shadowed, the bedding inside undisturbed, as if movement itself had become something to fear.
He wasn’t unridable because he was dangerous. He was unridable because he was still carrying the weight of what had happened, and Blair had learned the hard way what it cost to move forward before something like that had been faced.
She stiffened as Breakneck stopped walking, his body snapping into a tension that wasn’t negative. It was understanding.
His profile was turned toward her, the air alive with dust motes and dispersed light, catching the sharp, unyielding cut of his jaw, the rough stubble forming there, dark against his skin when he turned his head.
His shoulders looked impossibly broad, the shirt outlining his upper body in heat and shadow.
Her heart stuttered, then beat hard.
Somewhere behind them, tack leather shifted softly as one of the men leaned against a stall, boots scraping faintly against packed dirt.
He changed direction away from the remounts. She started after him, catching oh-shit glances from Beef and Tyler.
“Breakneck,” she said, catching up to him. “He’s not a viable mount right now.”
He kept walking. She grabbed his arm and turned him.
The contact felt too loud in the quiet, skin on fabric, breath on breath.
He didn’t look at her. His head dipped instead, his gaze tracking her hand on his sleeve, and that messy shock of silky hair fell forward over his forehead in an unapologetic, rakish sweep. The sides were shaved close, stark and punk-cool, a quiet rebellion he wore without explanation.
Her touch detonated through them both, a sharp, electric awareness that left her fingers tingling. She released him at the same moment he pulled away.
“They fell during a rescue,” she said, steadying herself. “The constable was crushed. He blames himself. He’s still grieving.”
The barn seemed to still around them, the horses listening, ears flicking, bodies quiet.
“You’re feeding that guilt and grief by keeping him locked up.” His voice low and gravelly, dragged up from somewhere he didn’t let many people hear.
“The vet said it was for his own good.”