Chapter 9
ROMAN
The grounds had been humming since before dawn.
I'd been up since four, checking feed schedules and running my hands down legs that needed to be sound by the weekend.
The first official Mustang Mountain rodeo was only a few days away.
Months of planning had resulted in this.
Now every bit of it was bearing down on us, and every seam felt ready to split. Everything felt like it might.
I worked through the holding pens methodically.
Ropers first. They were calm, predictable animals that did their jobs without drama.
Then the barrel horses boarding temporarily in the east stalls.
Then the broncs. My broncs. The ones I'd spent weeks conditioning, testing, evaluating.
I knew their rhythms by now. Knew which ones needed space in the morning and which ones settled faster with a hand on their neck.
Days had passed since I'd told Rachel everything, and something had been building between us in the time since that I didn't have a name for yet.
Solid and real, it was something I hadn't let myself have in a long time.
She'd been careful with what I'd given her — hadn't published anything, hadn't tipped her hand.
Just kept gathering, quietly, the way she did everything else.
I trusted her. That was the part that still surprised me when I turned it over. When had I started? And how would it end?
I was thinking about that when I stopped in front of the sorrel in pen six.
I'd flagged this horse a week ago. It was the third animal from the same supplier as the clay mare and the buckskin.
On paper, it looked sound. In practice, something lived behind its eyes that didn't belong in an arena full of noise and bodies.
I'd recommended pulling it. Slade had listened on the mare but pushed back on this one.
He said they couldn't lose another bronc without cutting the event short.
I stood at the rail and watched.
The sorrel paced the back wall of the pen in tight circles, head high, ears pinned flat. When one of the hands entered with a feed bucket, the horse didn't just spook, it charged. Two strides, fast and committed, teeth bared.
The hand dropped the bucket and threw himself sideways over the rail. He hit the dirt on the other side hard, rolled, and came up white-faced with his hands shaking.
I was already moving. “You hurt?”
He shook his head. “Fucker came at me. No warning.”
There'd been plenty of warning. I'd given it. Repeatedly.
I looked back at the horse. It stood over the spilled grain, its sides heaving, with that flat, dead look in its eyes. It wasn’t fear or fight-or-flight. There was something broken deep underneath.
“Stay away from that horse.” I kept my voice level. “Nobody enters that pen. Nobody.”
The hand nodded, picked up his hat from the dirt, and walked toward the water station on legs that weren't quite steady.
I pulled my phone out and texted Slade. Two words.
Me: Pull it.
The reply came in thirty seconds.
Slade: I can’t reshuffle now.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds, then shoved my phone in my pocket, hating the familiar weight of knowing something was wrong while watching people choose not to fix it.
That's when I saw her. Rachel stood near the main gate with her journal open, talking to a guy on the gate crew.
She wore those boots I'd pulled off her twice now, jeans that fit her like she'd been sewn into them, and my flannel shirt.
Her hair was down today. It made her look soft in a way that I knew she wasn't.
She glanced toward the pens. Toward me. Then her gaze shifted to where the hand sat on an overturned bucket, his face still pale, flexing his hands.
I watched her clock it. The dropped feed bucket inside the pen, the sorrel still agitated, the hand shaken, me standing between all of it.
She wrote something in her journal.
My chest went tight, and not because she was wrong to notice. But because she was right. And being right, here, today, with five thousand people expected through those gates in a couple of days… Being right could blow this whole thing open in a way that couldn't be contained.
I crossed the grounds without rushing, keeping my stride even and my face neutral. People moved around me — handlers, construction crew finishing last touches, volunteers in matching t-shirts. Nobody looked twice.
Rachel saw me coming. She closed the journal but didn't put it away, just held it against her chest like a shield she didn't need.
“Walk with me.”
She fell into step next to me. I led her past the concession stands still being stocked, past the announcer's booth, around the back of the bleachers where the noise dropped enough to talk without being overheard.
I stopped and turned to face her.
“What happened over there?” she asked before I could speak.
“Nothing that concerns your story.”
Her chin lifted. Those brown eyes locked on mine. “A handler almost got trampled by a horse you flagged days ago. That concerns my story.”
“Your story is the rodeo. The event. The community. Write that.”
“Roman—”
“Rachel.” I stepped closer. Close enough to see the flecks of gold near her pupils, the slight tension in her jaw.
For a second, I almost reached for her. Almost said her name the way I had that morning in her cabin.
Then I shut it down. “Not today. Whatever you're building, whatever you think you're close to — not today. This is me asking.”
Rachel's fingers pressed white against the journal cover. “You don't get to do that. You don't get to hand me a map and then tell me to stop walking.”
“I didn't hand you anything.”
“Three horses from the same supplier. Records that don't quite line up. A rider dead three years ago because nobody spoke up.” She counted each point on her fingers. “You told me all of it. In my cabin. In my bed. And now you want me to look the other way because opening weekend is almost here?”
The words landed exactly where she meant them to, heavy enough to crush my chest. “That's not what I'm saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw. The scar pulled tight with the motion, the way it always did when my teeth were clenched too hard. Behind us, someone tested the PA. The speakers whined, followed by a burst of static.
“I'm saying five thousand people will be walking through those gates soon. Families. Kids. People who've been waiting over a year for this. If this breaks open today, it won't be a controlled story. It'll be a mess.”
“And if that horse hurts someone, what is it then?”
I had no answer for that. She knew it.
Rachel stepped closer. Not backing down. Never backing down. “You showed me the pattern, Roman. You told me about the last time this happened and what it cost. Do you think I can just sit on that?”
“Yes.” The word came out harder than I'd intended. “That's exactly what I think. For a couple of days. That's all I'm asking.”
“And what happens in a couple days if something goes wrong?”
“I won't let it.”
“You can't control everything in that arena.”
“I can control more than you think.”
She studied my face with that look she had — the one that took apart everything I said and weighed it against everything I didn't. I hated it. I craved it. Both at the same time.
“This isn't about protecting the rodeo.” Her voice dropped. “This is about protecting yourself.”
The air went still between us. She was wrong. And she was close enough to right that the distinction didn't matter.
“You don't understand what you're stepping into,” I said. “People cut corners. They always have. Not everyone running stock is careful, and when something slips through, it doesn't just stay contained.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t.” I stepped back, needing space before I said something I couldn’t take back. “You think you’ve got it mapped out because I gave you pieces. But it’s never as clean as it looks on paper.”
I stopped. My hands had curled into fists at my sides without my permission.
Rachel's expression shifted. It wasn’t fear. It was something worse… understanding. “You're scared for me.”
“This isn't your fight.”
“You made it my fight when you knocked on my door.”
“Then I shouldn't have.”
The words hung between us. I watched them hit her. Watched the slight recoil and the straightening of her spine that followed, like she absorbed the blow and immediately refused to show it.
“You don't mean that.”
I said nothing. Let the silence do what silence does.
Rachel's jaw worked back and forth. Her knuckles had gone white against that journal. When she spoke again, her voice was steady, but the warmth was gone. “You can't give me the truth and then take it back because you got scared. That's not how this works.”
“Then maybe it doesn't.”
The PA crackled again. A voice called across the grounds. Jace shouted something I couldn't make out. Then again, louder, with an edge that cut through everything.
“Maddox! West pen, now!”
I turned toward the sound. Two handlers ran past the bleachers, a gate banged open somewhere, and underneath it all came the unmistakable sound of hooves on metal. The rhythmic, violent sound of a horse kicking the hell out of a panel.
“Roman—”
“Stay here.”
I didn't wait for her to reply. I was already moving, my boots eating dirt as I crossed back toward the pens.
The noise built as I got closer. Metal rang, men shouted over each other.
By the time I rounded the corner, I could see what happened.
The sorrel had broken through the interior divider into the adjacent pen and both animals were panicked.
The second horse, a quiet bay that had never given anyone trouble, was throwing itself against the far rail trying to escape.
Jace stood outside the fence with his hands up, keeping two younger handlers back. “He went through the panel. Just blew it apart.”
I vaulted the rail without thinking about it. The bay saw me first. Its eyes were white, flanks slick with sweat, and it pressed itself into the corner. The sorrel circled in the center, head low now, breathing hard, adrenaline still rolling through its body in visible waves.
I planted myself between the two animals and drew myself up tall. I didn't move, didn't speak. The sorrel's ears flicked toward me and held. I breathed. Counted. Let the silence work.
It took four minutes before the horse stopped circling. Six before its head came up to a neutral position. Eight before Jace could get a gate open on the far side and separate the bay.
By the time both animals were secured in individual pens, my shirt was soaked through and the light had shifted, morning burning toward afternoon. The grounds buzzed with voices analyzing what had happened, what it meant, whether the schedule would hold.
I leaned against the rail and pulled out my phone. Typed the text to Slade again.
Me: Pull. It. Now.
This time the reply took longer. Three minutes.
Slade: Done. Cutting it from the lineup.
I put my phone away and looked back toward the bleachers. Rachel was gone.
Good. That was good. That was what I wanted — her away from the pens, away from compromised horses, away from people who would notice her noticing things. Away from me and the wreckage I kept dragging her closer to.
I told myself I'd done the right thing. Drawn a line. Kept her out of it before it got worse. And I actually believed it for almost thirty seconds.
Then the quiet settled in, the kind that follows a thing you can't take back, and I stood there in the middle of the chaos I could manage — the horses, broken panels, ruined lineups — and felt the absence of the one person who'd looked at all of it and chosen not to look away.
I'd spent three years telling myself silence was safer. Now I knew what it cost.