Ruby
Four months later
“What did you say to me?”
Damn, I thought it was quiet enough he wouldn’t hear. He’s stupid enough not to, his brain two-thirds cotton wool between his ears. On second thought, I don’t know why I’m trying to hide my feelings.
“I said you’re. An. Asshole.” There. Maybe that was clear enough for him.
A smirk curves up the right side of Scott McTavish’s thin lips, like he’s caught me with my fist in the cookie jar. God, I hate him.
“That’s it. You’re fired, Ruby.”
I take one step forward, enough that it shocks the hell out of him, and he steps back. I get perverse pleasure in watching the fear grow in his eyes.
“Too fucking bad, McTavish. You don’t get to fire me. I quit, you moron.”
Once he decides there’s no imminent threat, he straightens himself. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m finally free of your crap, and I don’t have to put up with you trying to rub your tiny dick against me every chance you get—”
He scoffs hard. “You’re off the team. You’re off the yard. What’s more”—his grin turns decidedly more evil—“your visa is voided. No visa, no international trips. Nothing.”
For the splittest of a split second, I weigh up my options.
Playing polo has been my dream since I was a little girl, when I fell in love while watching my first game. A weird sport to get into for a twelve-year-old living in Iowa, but I was flicking through the sports channels one afternoon when it came on the TV. I was mesmerized from the get-go.
Other girls I knew were getting into barrel racing, but after five minutes of watching eight riders charge around a field, I was obsessed with learning more.
There’s something about the speed and the skill of a polo match that’s unmatched.
It’s the equine equivalent of Formula One, being in control of a million-dollar Ferrari, knowing there’s a hairsbreadth between winning and crashing.
Experiencing half a ton of muscle between your legs, controlling a wild animal with little more than a squeeze of your thighs, while also trying to hit a ball between two goalposts—yeah, barrel racing wasn’t going to cut it for me.
A week later was the Iowa State Fair, where, lo and behold, a real-life polo match was being played by two teams based near Des Moines. It was even better in real life, and I stayed in the stands until the last pony was off the field.
From that day on, I begged my mom to take me to a club I found near the city to watch more, but convincing her to make the five-hour round trip proved hard.
In the end, on a day my dad and brothers were out at a cattle sale, she agreed.
We saw four matches all played by statewide teams, and it was everything I thought it would be—thrilling, exhilarating, and break-your-neck fast.
On the way home, my mom told me that lessons were too expensive. I had a few skills from the times I’d tried barrel racing—I could safely maneuver around obstacles—so I decided to teach myself with one of the horses on my parents’ farm and a bunch of videos I found on YouTube.
Safe to say, my ability was rudimentary at best. But I wasn’t to be deterred, and as soon as I was old enough, I began writing to the polo clubs around the state, begging to come and ride with them.
If you can believe it, polo clubs aren’t too keen on unskilled players joining their teams, and the best they could offer me was a job as a groom.
I leaped at it, figuring proximity to players would get me closer to my goal.
My parents tried to discourage me every chance they got, but I don’t have my dad’s stubborn streak for nothing and paid them no mind.
I soon learned there’s a pecking order on a yard, and I was at the bottom.
Any chance I thought I’d get to waltz in and show them my self-acquired skills was swiftly dashed.
They also weren’t going to loan me one of their very expensive polo ponies, so my only option was to practice on the wooden horse in the hitting cage between my duties.
But a wooden horse is only going to get you so far, and I’d move onto a new yard with new hopes of getting the chance to play for real. I washed, rinsed, and repeated this for four years before I finally got an opportunity I knew in my heart would get me where I wanted to go.
Santiago Torres—rising star of the USPA and polo’s hottest property—offered me a role. It was still as a groom, but this was a bona fide, high-goal, international player with an elite yard and horses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was one step closer to my dream.
The following weekend, I traveled to Palm Beach, Florida.
It took three days because the bus was five hundred dollars cheaper than a last-minute airfare. I passed the time watching every match I could find on YouTube that Torres had played in, winning tournament after tournament for the gloating billionaire patron who owned the team.
It was rumored he was being paid over two million dollars for this season. Considering his team was now in the final of the England’s Cup, thanks to Santiago Torres’s record goal scoring, I’d say he was worth every dime.
And I was going to work for him.
By the time I arrived in Florida, Torres’s team had won the England’s Cup, but without Santiago Torres. He’d been involved in a collision with an opposing player and given a red card.
The following week, he was handed a two-year suspension from playing polo, and the job I’d left my home state for no longer existed.
I was jobless and homeless.
Luckily, Palm Beach is awash with polo clubs, and I picked up work quickly enough on a small, amateur yard. But that was almost two years ago, and I haven’t had a similar job prospect since.
It was also Palm Beach where I found Maverick—a feisty thoroughbred ex-racehorse.
He’d been abandoned and labeled uncontrollable after he bucked off a patron too stupid to realize that using a crop on him wasn’t going to get her what she wanted, not to mention severely underqualified for riding a horse of his caliber.
I figured I was pushing my luck but begged them to let me have him anyway.
To my surprise, they agreed.
I expected the guy to change his mind, but he never came back, and the yard manager delivered the news that Maverick’s ownership had transferred to me.
But it was a busy yard, and Maverick went from being a paid guest to the groom’s horse.
We stayed six more months until it was time to move on. Next stop—Aspen for winter polo.
Another stint of groom-surfing followed, moving around different yards and picking up work where I could.
I didn’t even have the luxury of narrowing it down to polo yards alone.
I had to take anything, as long as I could keep Maverick with me—private homes, local riding stables, summer vacation camps—until finally I was offered a role as a member of the McTavish team.
The sliver of hope I’d been holding on to that I might finally one day make it to playing polo for real began shining again.
But that gives this asshole way too much credit.
Scott McTavish is the worst kind of billionaire. Slippery, weaselly, and gross. There’s not an un-entitled bone in his body.
He offered me a job on his yard, luring me in with promises of traveling around the world—first stop Argentina, followed by a summer of polo across Europe. I heard the word visa and forgot everything else. My excitement was too high.
Such a dumdum.
The first week, he was super friendly, but by the second week, he made it clear opportunities would open quicker if I got on my knees and sucked his dick. Or on my back in the hay I’d freshly laid for the ponies that morning—he wasn’t fussy.
I escape by playing dumb, keeping my head down, and waiting for the visa he promised me, because the European summer tournament schedule is fast approaching. I stay because I refuse to admit the alternative is returning to Iowa and a family who’ll say “I told you so” for the rest of my life.
I’ve put up with him staring at my ass .
. . my tits . . . you name it. I’ve swallowed down my outrage and waited for the day my visa would arrive.
In the six months since he took me on, I’ve taken the best care possible of his ponies, and in my spare time, I practice for the day I’ll finally be able to prove myself.
I get up an hour earlier than everyone else, warming up on the wooden horse in the hitting cage, practicing my swings, and building muscle memory. Maverick and I have become a slick, unbeatable team of two. We’ve run drills until my muscles ached, and we were both exhausted.
Today would have been much of the same up to five minutes ago, when I realized something.
“If I thought you’d actually filed for my visa, it might be a different story. You’ve done nothing but lie to me. So like I said, you’re an asshole.”
His eyes flare, and all my fears are confirmed. I’m so fucking gullible it’s embarrassing. I’ve busted my ass for absolutely nothing.
“I told you, these things take time.” His gaze drops to my chest, heaving with pent-up rage. “But if you want me to look into speeding the process up—”
He finishes his sentence with a bloodcurdling shriek, collapsing to the floor and cupping his balls.
“You sound like a little girl, McTavish.”
“You’re never going to get another job, Ruby.” He wheezes. “I’ll make sure of it.”
I peer down at him, curled in the fetal position. “Go fuck yourself.”
“You’re a troublemaker. I should have fired you after that stunt you pulled on Miles Burlington. I know it was you, and I’m going to make sure everyone else knows it too, including him.” He scoffs, and it turns into a groan. “You’ll never work again, Ruby—the first of your many stupid mistakes.”
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth move. Miles Burlington. Just hearing his name is enough to turn my rage back up to nuclear.
“No, the first of my stupid mistakes was believing you. The rest pale in comparison.”