Chapter 3
3
Essie
Essie:
Hey, remember that time when we were eleven and you couldn’t find your bike and Brax said he didn’t know where it was, but actually he did? You can’t trust people like that.
Jack:
…
What did you do, Essie?
Essie:
I’m just saying, once a liar, always a liar.
Jack:
You stole my bike and crashed it. He only knew where it was because he was fixing what you broke.
Essie:
Yeah, which he LIED about.
When I thought about it, I remembered that Brax hadn’t actually lied. Not directly, anyway. Your bike is around here somewhere. It’ll turn up eventually . That was what he’d said, and of course it had been true. Brax hated lying. Deep down, he was as dishonest as the rest of us mortals, but he preferred the method of withholding information. Easier to defend in court, or some shit like that.
“Mom?” I called as I stepped through the front door of the bungalow we shared. Pirate was still in the trailer, but I wanted to give Mom a head’s up before I settled him into his new home.
“In the kitchen!” she hollered back.
I found her making a pitcher of iced tea, still in her work clothes. “Need help with dinner?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I brought home a potpie. We had an extra, so it was half off, plus my discount. I can pop it in the oven when you’re ready to eat.”
Mom had been working at Sweetie Pie, a bakery on First Street that specialized in pies of all kinds except pizza, for as long as I could remember. Back when I had rodeos every weekend, she pulled ten-hour shifts, four days a week, so she could have Friday through Sunday free to haul me and Buckley to barrel racing competitions all over the South and Midwest. My travel schedule had slowed considerably this past year, but somehow Mom’s schedule hadn’t lessened a bit.
Barrel racing was an almost entirely female sport—with the exception of the horses—and leaned young. By the time they turned thirty, most professional racers had hung up their spurs, married a cowboy, and were hard at work popping out the next generation. I had hung on a little longer, not retiring until last summer. Not because I wanted to settle down. No fucking thank you to that .
I retired because I was bored. I wanted a new challenge. Now I was halfway through an apprenticeship with James Campos at Lodestar Ranch, learning how to train reining horses, which was a hell of a lot different than the fast and furious rides of barrel racing.
I had hoped that with a less-demanding travel schedule, Mom would have changed her work hours to something more manageable. But nope. She was still working the grueling 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift, the only change being that now she often went in on Fridays and Saturdays, too.
“You hungry, honey?” she asked. When I nodded, she turned the dial to preheat the oven. “Good. So am I. You’re home later than I expected.”
“Oh. Right.” I cleared my throat. “You know how Buckley has been a little sad since Atticus died?” Atticus was our goat, who served no purpose on this earth other than to terrorize chickens and keep Buckley company in his retirement.
Mom nodded slowly, her lips pursed like she knew what was coming.
“I found him a new friend,” I said brightly. “So he won’t be lonely anymore.”
“Another goat?”
“A horse.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed. Then she sighed. “You have the biggest heart in the world, Essie.”
I knew she figured I had picked up a rescue from the auction pen, one of the poor animals intended for slaughter in Canada or Mexico, and I didn’t disabuse her of that notion. Brax wasn’t the only one who knew how to withhold.
But I had a good reason. It was one thing to steal a man’s horse. It was another thing altogether to make my mother, the woman who had birthed twins when she was still a kid herself and sacrificed her own dreams to support mine, an accessory to a felony. Hell, no.
“I’ll go get him settled and give Buckley his hay. Give me forty minutes?” I asked. “You should relax a little before dinner. Sit down, have a glass of wine.”
“Maybe I will.” She patted my arm. “Go take care of your boys.”
Maybe it was odd for a thirty-two-year-old to still live at home with her mother, but it worked out well for us. Mom liked having me home, and she had tagged along to rodeos and shows to help out right up until the end. With both of us on the road together so much, it didn’t make sense for me to move out and waste all that money on rent or a mortgage for a place I rarely slept in.
Now that I had retired, maybe it was time to find a place of my own. But I wasn’t in any hurry. I didn’t mind living with Mom and, anyway, my horse was here.
Coaxing Pirate into the trailer had been a piece of cake and backing him out again was just as smooth. For a three-year-old still in possession of his balls, he was surprisingly well-mannered. Of course, that might have been because he was weak and malnourished from his years of neglect with Gaffney. He didn’t have any fight left in him.
But he had heart.
I saw it in the way he lifted his head as I introduced him to his new home and the flare of his nostrils as he caught Buckley’s scent. He was still interested in the world around him.
I gave Pirate and Buckley a moment to sniff each other before I put Pirate in crossties and got to work. He needed a thorough grooming, but that would take at least an hour of hard labor that neither of us were up for tonight. It would have to wait until tomorrow morning. Tonight, I needed to get a better understanding of his feet.
His front hoofs were in decent shape. Overgrown and unshod, but sound. When I propped his left hind between my knees, however, my suspicions were confirmed. A black, smelly, tar-like substance oozed from his frog. Thrush.
Luckily, I was prepared. I had been planning for Pirate’s arrival for a week now, so the empty stall was clean and ready for him. Thrush was a common enough problem in horses that the medication was available at any feed store, and I had some on hand. It was absolutely fixable, but if left untreated, it could cause permanent lameness. After cleaning off the mud and ooze, I doused both hind feet with medicine.
“Colorado State Code title thirty-five, section forty-three,” a deep voice rumbled behind me.
I damn near jumped out of my skin. Whirling around, my hand on my throat, I found Brax leaning in the doorway. That flat tire hadn’t slowed him down as much as I’d hoped. Damn his competent ass.
“Any person who commits theft of, or knowingly kills, sells, drives, leads, transports, or rides away, or in any manner deprives the owner of the immediate possession of anyhorses, commits a class four felony and shall be punished.” He smirked, like he relished the thought of it. “Do you know what the punishment is, hellion?”
“Brax,” I gritted out.
“Yes?”
“Shut the fuck up. ”
He did not. “Two to four years imprisonment and a two thousand dollar fine,” he supplied. “That’s the punishment for horse theft. Plus return of the horse to the owner, of course.”
I growled.
“Fortunately for you, I don’t think the owner intends to press charges. Maybe he’s as crazy as you are.” His hard blue gaze latched onto mine like a tractor pull. “What the hell were you thinking with this goddamn Gadarene quest? Did you stop to think for even a second what you were going to do with Pirate once you had him? You can’t show a stolen horse.”
Gadarene . I didn’t know that one. I tugged my phone out of my back pocket and typed it in.
“It means disastrous.” Brax knew exactly what I was up to. “Fucking foolish. Like in the Bible, where the pigs of Gadara run themselves off a cliff.”
“I hate you,” I said, but there was no heat in my tone.
The truth was I loved his big words and lawyer vocabulary. Got a nice little spark every time he gave me a new one. A quick hit of adrenaline. You spent your whole life hearing the same words over and over again. Him, her, apple, no, because. It got boring. I had never been a big reader, which meant the opportunities were few and far between, but damn, did I love being hit with an unfamiliar word when I wasn’t expecting it. The strange sound of it jerking me to attention. And then the thrill of using it myself for the first time, of making it mine.
It made his lectures almost tolerable.
Almost .
“What’s the plan, Essie?” he pushed. “What are you going to do with Pirate?”
I shrugged. “Haven’t really thought past saving his life and getting him healthy and sound again.”
Brax’s gaze cut to the colt and he frowned. Pirate shifted his weight between his hind legs, giving each hoof a break in turn, clearly uncomfortable as he munched his hay. Brax didn’t live and breathe horses like I did, but he had a fondness for the animals and hated any kind of cruelty and suffering.
“What’s the damage?” he asked gruffly.
“Bad case of thrush, in both hind feet. He’s too sore for bleach and water, but I have medication for him.” Like he knew we were talking about him, Pirate lifted his head. I raised my hand to rub his white face, then retreated slowly when he flinched. I didn’t take his reaction personally. My beautiful boy hadn’t been treated well.
Brax’s frown deepened. He wrapped his large hand around the wood beam above his head, like he was checking its sturdiness. “It’s a good barn, but we didn’t build it with a stallion in mind. What if he doesn’t get on with Buckley when he regains his strength? He needs more space. ”
I didn’t particularly enjoy the reminder that my backyard barn existed thanks to my ex-best friend. Back when we were thirteen and I was just starting to get attention at rodeos, Brax had wrangled his brothers, his dad, and Jack into building me a two-stall barn. I might never have been able to afford to keep a horse of my own if he hadn’t done that.
“He’s a sweet baby,” I protested, even though I knew as well as he did that that was likely to change.
“He’s three. If Pirate needs to be gelded, it has to happen soon. The decision needs to be made one way or the other.”
Brax was right. Bloodlines alone didn’t make a horse worthy of keeping his balls. Pirate’s sperm would be downright useless if he couldn’t prove himself in the ring, and that came down to training and temperament. He needed discipline and an eagerness to please. And stallions? More often than not, they were assholes. A stallion that had been abused for most of his life?
Well.
The odds were not in his favor.
Prevailing wisdom was to lop off the balls before a colt showed stallion-ish behavior because once that behavior was there, it often didn’t go away again, even when the testosterone did. That behavior generally reared its head somewhere between ages two and four. Pirate had just turned three .
But just because Brax was right didn’t mean I had to tell him so.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” I said. “I literally stole this horse, Brax. The only person who has any right to voice an opinion about Pirate’s balls is his owner, and I don’t see him standing here, do you?”
His grin was a slow, dangerous thing that had my stomach flip-flopping before he said a single word. He leaned in, the muscles of his forearm tensing as he gripped the beam overhead.
“You’re looking right at him, hellion.”