10. Delilah
— ? —
Delilah
The stable is dark and quiet. Just me and Storm.
Storm lifts his head when he sees me, ears pricking forward. He nickers softly - a greeting, a question, an acknowledgment of my presence in a world that has stopped acknowledging me at all.
“Hey, boy.” My voice sounds foreign in the darkness. Rough. Like I’ve been crying, though I don’t remember tears. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
I lean against his stall door, letting the familiar smell wash over me. This is where it all started.
Lucas found Storm at an auction in Mexico. Everyone told him the horse was too far gone, too damaged to save. But Lucas saw something in those dark eyes. Something worth fighting for. I spent hour after hour in this barn, just sitting and waiting, showing him that not all humans meant pain.
“He’s not the only one you saved,” Lucas had whispered. “You saved me too.”
I believed him. For years, I believed him.
“He used to look at me the way he looks at you,” I whisper to Storm now. The horse nuzzles my hair, patient and understanding. “Like I was worth saving.”
The memory hits me without warning - our wedding day. The way Lucas’s hands trembled as he held mine. The way his voice cracked on his vows.
“You’re my partner in everything. Always. In the arena and out of it. You’re the only one I trust with my heart.”
Lies. All lies.
Or maybe not lies. Maybe just words that stopped being true somewhere along the way, while I wasn’t paying attention. While I was too busy building his dream to notice him drifting away from me.
Storm’s breath is warm on my face. I open my eyes and find him watching me, those dark eyes full of something that looks almost like concern.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask him. “How am I supposed to fight for something when I’m not even sure it still exists?”
He doesn’t answer. He just stands there, solid and steady, the way he’s always been.
I’m so tired. Tired in my bones, in my blood, in the deepest parts of my soul. The gala took everything I had, and I came back empty. Hollowed out. Like someone reached inside me and scooped out everything that mattered.
I don’t hear the footsteps until it’s too late.
“Delilah?”
I spin. Too fast. My bad leg buckles, and I grab the stall door to keep from falling.
Aimie stands in the doorway, her silhouette backlit by the security light outside.
She’s changed out of the red gown into something simpler - jeans and a button-down shirt - but she’s still wearing heels.
Still perfectly put together while I’m in the rumpled dress I wore to my own gala, my hair tangled, my makeup probably smeared from the crying I don’t remember doing.
Her face is arranged in an expression of concern. Soft. Sympathetic.
I don’t trust it for a second.
“I thought I heard crying,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
She comes closer anyway. Her heels click on the concrete floor, each step deliberate, measured. She stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell her perfume - something floral and expensive that doesn’t belong in a barn.
“You left the gala early.” It’s not a question. “Lucas was looking for you.”
The lie lands like a punch. Lucas wasn’t looking for me. Lucas was too busy dancing with her to notice I existed.
“Was he?”
“Mmm.” She leans against the opposite stall door, casual, like we’re just two friends having a chat. “He was worried. You know how he gets.”
I don’t respond. I just watch her, trying to read what’s behind that careful mask.
Storm shifts in his stall, restless. He doesn’t like her. I noticed it weeks ago - the way he pins his ears when she walks by, the way he refuses to take treats from her hand. Horses are better judges of character than people. I should have listened to him from the beginning.
“You know,” Aimie says, her voice light and conversational, “Lucas and I were talking earlier.”
My heart stutters. “About what?”
“About the future. The business.” She examines her nails, perfect and manicured. “He’s thinking of making my position permanent. Even after you heal.”
My lungs stop working.
“He’s been so impressed with my work,” she continues, still not looking at me.
“The sponsorships I’ve brought in, the competitions I’ve won.
He said the investors love me.” Now she looks up, and there’s something glittering in her eyes.
Something sharp. “He just thinks it’s better for the brand.
Someone fresh, you know? Someone who can still compete at the highest level. ”
The words hit me like physical blows, each one leaving a bruise.
“You understand,” she adds.
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. The stable walls feel like they’re closing in, the air thick and suffocating.
Aimie pushes off the stall door and takes a step toward me. “You know you don’t have to hate me for this,” she says, her voice sweet as poison. “It was your husband who made this decision, not me. He was in his office just now-”
“Yes.” The word comes out strangled, but it comes out. “I think I might go to his office and talk to him.”
Something flickers across her face - surprise, maybe, that I’m not collapsing into tears. That I’m not giving her the satisfaction of watching me break.
I move faster than my crutches should allow. My leg has gotten better - the doctor says healing’s on track - and right now, the adrenaline is burning through the pain like wildfire.
I push past her without another word, leaving her standing in the barn with Storm, who pins his ears and stamps his foot as I go.
The main house is quiet when I reach it. The gala must have ended because the ballroom lights are off and the parking area is empty.
My crutches echo on the hardwood as I make my way to Lucas’s office.
The door is open. Strange, since he’s usually meticulous about keeping it closed.
“Lucas?”
The room is empty. His desk lamp is on, casting warm light across the leather chair and the stacks of paperwork I know he’s been buried under for weeks. He must have stepped out - bathroom, maybe, or the kitchen.
I’m about to leave when something catches my eye.
A flash of gold against the dark wood of his desk.
I move closer, and my heart stops.
A necklace. Delicate gold chain with an elegant pendant - simple and stunning, the kind of understated luxury that screams expensive. Beside it, a Cartier box sits open, the white satin interior cradling nothing because the necklace has been removed.
Not my style. I hate gold. Lucas knows I hate gold.
I’ve told him a hundred times - I prefer silver, white gold, platinum.
Anything but yellow gold. It washes me out, makes me look sallow.
He bought me a gold bracelet once, years ago, and I thanked him and wore it exactly twice before it migrated to the back of my jewelry box and never emerged again.
So who is this for?
My hands are trembling as I pick it up. The gold is warm from the lamp light, the pendant heavy and real in my palm. I turn it over, looking for an inscription, an initial, anything that might tell me what I’m looking at.
Nothing. Just beautiful, anonymous jewelry that my husband definitely didn’t buy for me.
The question sits heavy in my chest as I set it back down. My hands won’t stop shaking.
I hear footsteps in the hallway.
Panic seizes me - stupid, irrational panic, like I’m the one who’s done something wrong. I step back from the desk, moving quickly toward the bathroom next door, my heart pounding so loud I’m sure whoever’s coming can hear it.
I close the bathroom door behind me and stand there in the dark, listening.
The footsteps pass. A door opens and closes somewhere down the hall.
I stay frozen for another minute, two, three. Staring at my reflection in the mirror, trying to find the woman I used to be. The woman who trained Storm. Who built this business. Who stood in arenas across the country and commanded attention with nothing but skill and determination.
She’s gone. That woman is gone, and I don’t know how to get her back.
When I finally open the door, the hallway is empty. Lucas’s office door is now closed - probably one of the staff, making their rounds.
But that’s the least of what I think about as I make my way back to my room.
The image of that necklace burns in my mind all night.
I lie awake in the guest room bed - my bed now, I suppose, since Lucas hasn’t once suggested I come back to ours - and I stare at the ceiling and I think about gold chains and Cartier boxes and the way my husband laughed on that dance floor.
Who is it for?
I already know the answer. I think I’ve known for weeks.
But knowing and having proof are different things. Knowing and accepting are different things.
And until I see that necklace around her throat - until I have evidence I can’t explain away or rationalize or pretend doesn’t exist - I can keep telling myself I’m being paranoid. Jealous. Childish, like Lucas said.
Sleep doesn’t come. The night stretches on, endless and dark, and I watch the shadows move across the ceiling and I wait for morning.
When it finally arrives, gray light creeping through the curtains, I’m still awake.
Still thinking about gold.