3. Delilah
— ? —
Delilah
The lights blind me.
Thousands of them, blazing down from the arena rigging, turning the night into artificial day.
The crowd roars - voices blending into a single wall of sound that vibrates through my chest and settles somewhere behind my ribs.
I can feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in the nervous flutter of Stella’s muscles beneath me.
This should be my moment.
I’ve trained for this. Months of early mornings and aching muscles and pushing through exhaustion until my body learned to move without thinking.
Stella and I have run this pattern so many times I could do it blindfolded.
Tonight, under these lights, in front of these people, I’m going to prove that I’m still the woman who built this empire from nothing.
But my mind isn’t here.
It’s back at the stables this morning, watching Lucas laugh with Aimie. It’s in our bedroom, feeling him pull away to answer his phone. It’s in the dust of the yard, hearing another woman call herself my daughter’s aunt while my husband stood there and said nothing.
I’m going to be your new auntie.
The words loop through my head like a song I can’t stop humming. New auntie. Like she’s already family. Like she belongs here more than I do.
Stella shifts beneath me, sensing my distraction. I force myself to breathe, to focus, to be present. The gate is right there. The pattern is waiting. All I have to do is ride it the way I’ve ridden it a thousand times before.
“Delilah Montoya!” The announcer’s voice booms through the speakers, and the crowd erupts. “Co-founder of the Montoya Rodeo! Seven-time regional champion! Give it up for the queen of the arena!”
Queen of the arena. The title feels hollow tonight. A costume I’m wearing instead of something I’ve earned.
I scan the stands, looking for Lucas. Looking for my husband’s face in the sea of strangers, needing that anchor, that reminder of why I’m doing this.
I find him in the VIP section, surrounded by investors in expensive suits. He’s pointing at something on a tablet, his mouth moving, his attention completely absorbed by whatever numbers are on that screen.
He’s not even watching.
And then I see her.
Aimie. Standing at his other side, leaning in to look at the tablet, her shoulder brushing his arm. She laughs at something one of the investors says, and Lucas turns to smile at her, and for one terrible moment it looks like they’re a team. A unit. The power couple working the room together.
While I sit here on my horse, waiting to perform like a trained animal.
Something twists in my chest. Something hot and ugly that I don’t want to name.
The flag drops.
Stella explodes forward before I’m ready.
Pure instinct takes over. My body knows what to do even when my brain is spinning somewhere else entirely. I lean into the first turn, feeling Stella’s muscles bunch and release beneath me, her hooves churning the dirt. The crowd blurs into streaks of color at the edges of my vision.
Around the first barrel. Tight. Clean. The pattern I’ve run a thousand times unfolding beneath me like a map I know by heart.
When did I become second place in my own life?
The thought cuts through my concentration like a blade. I shake my head, trying to clear it, but the images keep coming. Lucas turning away from me this morning. His phone more important than my body. Aimie’s hand on his elbow, her laugh ringing through the morning air.
Second barrel. Stella takes it wide - my fault, my distraction bleeding into her movements. I correct, pull her back into the pattern, but I’ve lost precious fractions of a second. The crowd noise shifts, sensing the imperfection.
When did he stop seeing me?
The arena stretches before me, the final barrel waiting at the end of the straightaway.
Tonight the moon is hidden behind clouds, making the arena darker than usual between the pools of artificial light.
Shadows cling to the corners, to the spaces between the barriers, to the far end where the path curves toward home.
I push Stella harder. Feel her respond, her legs eating up the ground, her breath coming in powerful bursts. We’re going to make it. We’re going to finish strong. I’m going to cross that line and prove to everyone - to Lucas, to Aimie, to myself - that I still belong here.
I look up at the stands one more time.
Lucas is still talking to the investors. Still not watching.
But Aimie is.
She’s staring right at me, her face perfectly composed, and there’s something in her expression that I can’t read. Something that makes my skin prickle with warning.
And then I don’t see it.
The debris. A chunk of broken wood, jagged and dark, kicked into the arena where it shouldn’t be. Right in our path. Right where Stella’s front hoof is about to land.
Time slows down.
I feel Stella’s leg connect with the obstacle. Feel the sickening lurch as her stride breaks apart. Feel her scream - a sound I’ve never heard her make, high and terrified and utterly wrong.
And then I’m airborne.
The world flips. The lights spin above me, a kaleidoscope of white and shadow. The crowd’s roar stretches into something distorted, underwater, far away. I’m weightless, suspended, my body moving through space with no control, no direction, no way to stop what’s happening.
I have time to think one single thought: He’s not even watching.
Then the ground rushes up to meet me.
The impact steals everything.
My breath. My sight. My sense of where I end and the dirt begins.
Pain explodes through my leg - sharp, blinding, wrong - and I hear something crack that sounds like a tree branch snapping in a storm.
My shoulder hits next, then my head, and the world dissolves into ringing silence and bursts of white light behind my eyes.
I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t do anything but lie there in the dirt while the arena spins around me and the pain builds like a wave about to crest.
Stella. Where’s Stella?
I try to turn my head, try to find her, but my body won’t cooperate. Everything is wrong. Everything hurts. My leg is twisted beneath me at an angle that makes my stomach lurch, and I can feel something wet soaking through my jeans - blood or sweat or both.
The crowd has gone silent. The whole arena holding its breath at once.
And then I hear it.
My husband screaming my name.
“DELILAH!”
Lucas’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, raw and desperate and closer than I expect. I hear running footsteps, hear the arena staff shouting, hear someone calling for a medic. But all I can focus on is his voice, getting closer, breaking on my name like something inside him is shattering.
“Delilah! Oh God - someone help her! HELP HER!”
I want to tell him I’m okay. I want to open my eyes and sit up and laugh it off the way I’ve laughed off a hundred smaller falls. But when I try to move, my leg sends a bolt of agony through my entire body that steals whatever breath I’d managed to gather.
I don’t cry out. I don’t have the air for it.
Hands on my face. Warm, shaking, desperate.
“Don’t move. Baby, don’t move. The medics are coming. Just - just stay still. Stay with me. Please, Delilah, please stay with me.”
I force my eyes open.
Lucas is kneeling in the dirt beside me, his face pale and terrified, his hands cupping my cheeks like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go. There are actual tears streaming down his face.
“Lucas.” My voice comes out broken, barely a whisper. “Stella - is Stella-”
“She’s okay. She’s standing. Mr. Velez already has her - he’s checking her legs. It’s you I’m - God, your leg. Just don’t move. Don’t try to move.”
The pain is building now, waves of it crashing over me, making it hard to think. I can hear more voices around us, see the blur of paramedics pushing through, feel hands starting to assess my body with professional efficiency.
But I keep my eyes on Lucas. On his tear-streaked face. On the terror in his eyes that tells me more about how bad this is than any diagnosis could.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I don’t know why I’m apologizing. For falling. For failing. For not being enough to hold his attention without breaking my body to do it.
“Don’t.” His voice cracks. “Don’t you dare apologize. This isn’t - you didn’t-”
Someone pulls him back. The paramedics need space. I hear them talking in clipped, urgent tones - fractured leg, possible concussion, need to stabilize before transport. Numbers and medical terminology that blur together into meaningless sound.
I close my eyes.
The last thing I see before the darkness takes me is Lucas’s face, pale and destroyed, as they put him back behind the barrier.
And somewhere at the edge of my fading vision, I swear I see Aimie in the stands.
Watching.
Not moving.
Her face perfectly still, perfectly composed.
Almost like she was expecting this.