5. Jaxon
Jaxon
So that’s the way it’s going to be—her against me. A competition to see who lasts the longest.
“Hey, Jaxon,” Grady says, coming out of the law office. “James wants to talk to you for a minute.”
“Alone?”
Grady nods.
“What’s it about?”
“Beats me,” Grady says with a shrug.
I return to James’s office, where he’s thumbing through a stack of papers. “I almost forgot to show you these.” He slides them across the desk. “I want you to know the full picture before you make any decisions about Lucky Chance.”
I study the top sheet. “Are these loan documents?”
“Yes,” James says with a nod. “The farm carries two point eight million dollars in outstanding debt, spread across three loans. The first is a standard operating line your father renewed annually, which is manageable. The second is for a stallion named Dakota Lightning.” He turns to the next page and points to a number.
“Your father invested heavily in that young stallion four years ago. He financed six hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the purchase. His first yearlings sold at the Keeneland yearling sale last September, but it didn’t go well.
The loan balance on that stallion is still just over five hundred thousand dollars. ”
I stare at the numbers. I don’t know a lot about horses, but this kind of debt makes my stomach knot.
Keeneland’s September yearling sale is the biggest sale of Lucky Chance’s year, and Dad’s stallion flopped.
Nobody’s going to pay to breed to him now, and we’ve got two more of his crops coming up behind.
“The third one is what concerns me the most.” He pulls out the next page.
“Your father made several broodmare purchases four years ago. He believed the thoroughbred market was climbing, but his timing was off. At the same time, your father bet heavily on Dakota Lightning. The plan was for his first crop to sell well enough to bolster the farm’s cash flow.
If those yearlings had sold the way everyone hoped, we’d probably be having a different conversation.
But that loan for the broodmares still carries a substantial balance and is structured as a balloon payment loan. ”
I glance at James. “Meaning?”
“Your parents kept up with the monthly payments, but the full remaining balance comes due in one lump sum.” He adjusts his glasses as he skims the loan information. “If that balloon payment can’t be refinanced or paid by next summer, the bank can foreclose.”
“The broodmares?”
“No,” James says. “The farm. He bought the mares. The land is what he put up.”
I let out a sigh. “Will the bank work with us?”
“They’ve worked with your family for years. But now the bank will want new guarantees before they renew anything. Your parents signed personally. They’ll expect the same from whoever is running it.” He sets his glasses down. “That’s you now.”
“James, I don’t even have a plan yet.”
“Then I’d suggest working on one.” He tucks the papers inside a folder and closes it.
“I’ve been your family’s attorney for a long time, and I don’t want to see the farm go to a bank.
But there’s a reason Miriam and John left you in charge.
You and your brothers need to decide what the future of Lucky Chance is.
” Then he slides the folder to me. “Good luck.”
I head outside where Wyatt’s the only one left waiting. My phone chimes in my pocket, and a woman’s name I haven’t seen in years flits across the screen. I turn off my phone without opening it.
“Someone from South Carolina missing you already?” Wyatt teases.
I shoot him the same grin I’ve been using since I was seventeen. “Some of us still got it, Wyatt. Don’t be jealous.”
He shakes his head and holds out an apple that he snagged from James’s office. “Want one?”
I hold up a hand. “I’ll pass.”
He rubs it on his shirt. “Sorry, Jaxon. I know that wasn’t the news you were expecting.”
“Yeah, especially since James just showed me how much bad luck this farm’s had in the last few years.”
“What?” Wyatt’s brow furrows.
I hand him the folder with the loan documents. Wyatt looks them over, then whistles low. “This isn’t good.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. “I haven’t even made up my mind yet about staying.”
He stops and stares. “But I thought the trust stated—”
“I know what it said,” I interrupt. “I’m supposed to be the manager-in-residence. It doesn’t say what that means.”
Wyatt hands me back the papers. “But how are you going to get out of it? I thought it was clear.”
“I asked James to take another look. Find a loophole. Maybe there’s something we missed.”
Wyatt raises an eyebrow. “You’re the only one here who doesn’t need a loophole.” He bites into the apple with a crunch. “The rest of us have to figure out how to do both.”
I know he didn’t mean it as a dig, but I wish I had a career to go back to. I wasn’t ready to retire, even though I knew, at thirty-two, my days were numbered.
I never let myself think about what came after hockey. It’s always been about winning for me, no matter what it took—and I’d do it again, just to watch my team make the playoffs.
I loved being on the ice: the burn in my legs, the thwack of a snapshot, teammates who’d become like brothers to me.
“I’d rather owe six months of work like you guys than run the thing.” I tip my head back against the sun-warmed brick and close my eyes. “I don’t even know the first thing about managing a farm.”
“You could talk to Earl.”
I open one eye. “Our farm manager who’s about to keel over?”
“We have Earl and Summer to thank for keeping the farm running. I’d stay on their good sides.”
“That’s pretty much impossible,” I mutter.
He tosses the core in a trash can. “How much money do we need to come up with?”
“A lot.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’ll take a look at the books in the farm office tomorrow. I need to know exactly what kind of money we’re bringing in and what we can do to pay off this debt.” I shake my head. “I’m just wondering what else I don’t know.”
“Summer would be a good place to start,” Wyatt suggests. “She was Mom’s right hand.”
“You know I can’t ask her. That woman can’t stand me.”
“Well, you need her as an ally if you’re going to make this work long-term.”
“Who said I want this place long-term? I just want to sell the farm when the two years are up.”
Wyatt’s brow knits. “Sell it? No one said anything about that.”
“We discussed this over a decade ago. No one wanted the farm then.”
Wyatt leans against the front of James’s office building. “Jaxon, I was only twenty and playing college football. I didn’t know what I wanted. Rhett and Grady were eighteen. None of us were thinking about life after sports.”
“You’ve changed your mind?” I ask.
“I don’t know what to think. But Lucky Chance Ranch should stay in the family,” Wyatt says. “Dad would want that.”
Easy for him to say. He’s got two more years of football contracts lined up. I’ve got nothing—no backup plan, no savings that’ll last until I’m Earl’s age. Nothing but a few coaching jobs I reached out about and never heard back on.
Wyatt studies me for a second. “You got something lined up? After this, I mean.”
“Working on it.” Which is a nicer way of saying no.
Mom mentioned the youth team was looking for a coach right after I got injured. Like the peewee league is supposed to make me feel better about where my career ended up.
“This farm will bring a lot of money if we sell it,” I say. “And I don’t want the bank to take it.”
“Doesn’t change the timeline for you. Two years is two years,” Wyatt reminds me.
“I know that,” I grumble. “I wish Mom was here. I could tell her that I’m the wrong person for the job.”
“Maybe you could learn to like it,” Wyatt offers.
“Can’t imagine that happening.” I push off from the brick. “I gotta go.”
“You need company?”
“Nope. Just heading out for an errand.”
I climb into my truck, where the flowers have been wilting on the passenger seat since I picked them, and drive toward the cemetery.
My parents’ stone is in the third row from the back, and I crouch down and run my fingers over the Chance name.
Then I take a deep breath, trying to loosen the lasso around my chest.
“Hey, Mom and Dad, it’s Jaxon.” I smile at my foolishness. “Not like I need to introduce myself to you.”
I missed so many moments with my parents because of my career. They couldn’t leave the farm during hockey season, and I didn’t come back in the offseason the way I should have. We lived parallel lives. Theirs was measured in foaling seasons and farm schedules, and mine in practices and games.
I set the sunflowers and zinnias on the ground next to the stone. Two of Mom’s favorites. I remember her face when I’d pick them from the yard as a kid. She’d pretend to be mad, until I held them up for her, and then she’d cave.
“Mom, I don’t know how you did it with four boys and this farm.” I breathe out a soft laugh. “You had the patience of a saint.”
I rest my elbows on my knees. “I wish I could ask you what you were thinking when you put me in charge of Lucky Chance. Mom always told me I was like you, Dad, but I don’t know the first thing about running a horse farm.”
Growing up, all I really wanted to do was drive the tractor. If we finished our chores without complaining, Dad let us go down to the pond. My brothers and I spent half our summers doing chores to earn time to swim.
A memory rolls through my mind of a sweltering afternoon with Summer, both of us sweat-slicked and filthy from chores. We’d been going at each other all morning over whose horse was faster, and by the time we got to the pond, I’d had enough. I needed to beat her at something.
I sized up the rope swing dangling from the big oak. Finally, something she wouldn’t do. “Bet you won’t jump off that into the water.”
She stared at it, her throat bobbing. Without a word, she grabbed it and ran straight off the bank, screaming the entire time. She hit the water, arms windmilling, with an enormous splash that drenched me on the bank.
When she surfaced, she took one look at my wet shirt and barked out a laugh. “And you thought I wouldn’t do it.”
I wiped my face, then peeled off my T-shirt. “I’m going to get you for that,” I warned, right before I jumped in next to her.
We spent the rest of the afternoon there, and I forgot all about keeping score with her. For once, we were two teenagers hanging out at a pond, making what was the best memory of that summer.
But that seems like a lifetime ago.
I glance at their names, the sun warming the back of my neck. “Mom, I know you liked Summer. But working with her again is going to be a problem.” I touch one of the golden petals. “Looks like you didn’t give me much of a choice.”
I stand, taking one last look at the flowers. It’s not that I can’t work with Summer. I can and I will. It’s that every time I’m around her, I want more of something I can’t have.