Coiled Tight (Saddle Up #6)

Chapter 1

one

cam

This was all fine.

Perfectly fine.

Yup.

Everything was going according to plan.

Sure, I’d moved to a different state to work in the middle of nowhere, and I hated my own guts with a passion I hadn’t known I was capable of, and let’s not forget about the fact that I’d had a PI hired to find my ex best friend, and—oh, yeah—the current issue:

I had arrived at the sanctuary where I was planning to hide away and repent, only there was no one anywhere near the fence, and I didn’t see any bells to ring or any other way to get someone’s attention. I supposed I could climb the fence?

There was a chance it would be electrified, though. Besides, this was the middle of nowhere—Muffat County, Colorado. I might’ve been trying to break a record on how many bad decisions someone could make in a year for the past… three, four years?

I’d kept some survival skills, though.

Maybe if I tried calling? Whoever answered might hate me if they were in the middle of something important with an animal and I accidentally spooked them, but who knew when someone was going to pass through here?

And, like, I had emailed the man who interviewed me my flight details and told him I’d be heading straight here.

There was also the fact that this place had like three thousand acres, if their shockingly up-to-date website was to be believed. I could barely see the top of what I assumed was the main house from here, and that was only if I squinted a lot and used my imagination.

The phone rang twice, three times. I was about to check if I even had proper network service when that soft buzzing sound alerted me that the person had actually picked up.

I remembered last minute that it wouldn’t be the gentle old man who had interviewed me.

He’d explained he wasn’t part of the day-to-day operations and was giving me his son’s number instead.

“Um. Hi.”

Great first impression, Cam.

What the fuck did I think I was doing here?

“Hello?” The voice was raspy as fuck. My heart picked up—a combination of the way that voice would have me salivating under normal circumstances, and my general anxiety acting up. There was movement in the background. “If you’re trying to sell something—”

“I’m the new vet,” I rushed out, garbling all the words together.

Fuck. Biting my lip meant I wouldn’t whimper out loud, at least. And I would ignore the tears rushing up to the corners of my eyes.

It had been a long day. More like a long life, really.

“I’m by the main gate… I think? There’s no one here. ”

Silence met my words. Was it because Hot Voice was too stunned to speak, or had I made no sense because anxiety got the best of me? My teachers always said I had to pay more attention to enunciating.

“I can be there in twenty, but I wasn’t expecting a new vet.”

“Um. Your father hired me.” Could I stop smacking my lips and running my mouth dry every time I opened it? Was that too much to ask for? “I signed a contract.”

More silence.

Shit.

My new boss hated me, didn’t he?

He had to.

Maybe I should’ve just repented by joining some weird monastery like a normal person. Or by committing to chastity of the not kinky kind for the rest of my life. Or… something.

Upheaving my whole life wasn’t giving the results I’d been hoping for so far.

Well, I wasn’t enjoying this, so I supposed I was moving in the right direction of punishing myself.

“Okay.” And now Hot Voice was talking extra slow.

It was important not to assume people’s intentions, but it was hard not to see it as condescending.

Unless they were a Daddy, someone slowing their words for me was my biggest pet peeve.

“There’s an old bar, walking distance, if you turn around. You can wait there.”

I nudged a loose rock with the tip of my shoe. A bar would be better than standing in the middle of nowhere with the sun threatening to burn a hole through my head. I fidgeted with the bar of my suitcase, though. I didn’t want to lug the heavy thing around again. Besides, I hadn’t seen that bar.

Oh, shit.

What if this wasn’t the front gate? I had used the app on my phone to come, but everyone knew those apps couldn’t be trusted when far away from civilization, and…

Breathe, Cam.

The worst-case scenario would be that I was in an enclosure with one of the big animals, but those, I knew, were not only fenced but used the natural undulations of the ground to divide them. I hadn’t gone through any depression in the terrain, so I was just…

Somewhere on the edges of the three thousand acres they owned.

“Um.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Is there a problem?”

My heart rate picked up to the point I worried things could get bad real fast. I didn’t have anything with me. Well, I did, but it was in my suitcase, and I didn’t know if I could go through unpacking the whole thing in search of a Xanax.

I wasn’t supposed to depend on them anyway, or whatever fancy words my doctor had used.

Some people online said to ignore that advice and called it ableist and a million other things, and some days, I was prone to agree with them. Other days, I just didn’t know, and it was too exhausting, and I just wanted something to go well for once and—

“I don’t think I’m at the front gate.”

Did I enunciate more clearly this time? I couldn’t tell. The last thing I needed was for Hot Voice—presumably the sweet old man’s son, even though I didn’t feel inclined to run on assumptions anymore—to think I’d hit my head somewhere.

“What do you—” A heavy breath accompanied what I was sure would have been very colorful language if he hadn’t stopped himself. “Share your location with me; I’ll call one of the hands to take over here.”

So now on top of putting him out, I was inconveniencing yet someone else. Sure. This was fine. Totally fine.

“Okay,” I said meekly. How could I not feel like a tiny ant he couldn’t wait to step on? “I’m really sorry.”

I would gladly step on myself if it stopped this whole thing.

Thankfully, I had enough wits about me to end the call before he could say anything else.

Going through the motions of sharing my location was easy; I’d made it a shortcut because of how many times I needed to have someone pick me up, all the times I’d panicked and thought someone should know where I was seen last or…

Yeah.

Well, being here was going to be an adventure, that was for sure.

An adventure where everyone hated me, but hey, I deserved it.

It didn’t feel great, but…

Welcome to my life.