28. Delilah
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Delilah
The headlines are everywhere.
RODEO RIVALRY TURNS CRIMINAL: AIMIE LAWSON ARRESTED AT HOUSTON EVENT
JEALOUSY DROVE DECADE-LONG VENDETTA AGAINST MONTOYA STAR
“YOU STOLE MY LIFE”: SHOCKING CONFRONTATION CAUGHT ON VIDEO
The strangest part? The scandal saved us.
Sponsors who’d been ghosting Lucas for months started calling him back - everyone wanted to stand with the trainer who’d been sabotaged and survived.
We withdrew from Houston competition, and it didn’t matter.
The Montoya name was worth more the morning after her arrest than it had been all season.
The video of our confrontation has gone viral.
Millions of views across every platform.
Everyone heard her confession. Everyone saw the jealousy, the bitterness, the years of resentment that drove her to nearly kill me.
Comment sections overflow with shock and sympathy and the particular brand of righteous outrage that the internet does so well.
Aimie’s trial is scheduled. She’s out on bail but banned from coming within five hundred feet of any Montoya property.
Her career is over before it ever really began - no team will touch her, no sponsor will look at her.
She’s become the cautionary tale every rodeo girl whispers about.
Don’t let jealousy rot you from the inside. Look what happened to Aimie Lawson.
Jimmy took the deal. Turns out Aimie and Jimmy had been involved for months - she’d recruited him with promises and attention, convinced him I was the obstacle standing between her and everything she deserved.
He’s the one who triggered the server reset that wiped the security footage the morning after my fall, and he kept watch near the gate while she planted the debris.
His cooperation means his testimony will bury her.
He’s facing charges too, but the full weight falls on Aimie.
The whole conspiracy unraveled the moment he started talking.
The necklace ended up being a key piece of evidence that proved premeditation. She’d bought it herself shortly after arriving at the ranch. Planned the whole thing - the sabotage, the frame job, the slow takeover of my life. All of it calculated. All of it deliberate.
And she almost got away with it.
But she didn’t.
The second piece of good news came this morning.
The doctor cleared me for riding. Real riding.
Not just walking Storm around the paddock at a careful pace, not just sitting in the saddle while someone else holds the lead rope.
Actually getting back on a horse and riding - the way I was born to, the way I’ve spent my whole life learning to do.
I stand outside Storm’s stall now, heart pounding against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
The morning light filters through the stable in dusty golden beams. The familiar smell of hay and horse and leather wraps around me like a homecoming.
Storm watches me approach, his dark eyes calm in a way they haven’t been in months.
He’s eating again. Sleeping again. Mr. Velez says he’s been calmer since the night of the dust storm.
Since the night Lucas and I kissed.
Since the night something shifted between us that neither of us has named.
And then I see him.
Lucas is already here. One hand resting on the stall door, sleeves rolled up past his forearms - those forearms, still impossible to ignore, muscles shifting beneath sun-browned skin as he adjusts his grip.
Dust coats his cowboy boots like he never left this place, like he’s been here every morning waiting for me.
He probably has been.
The morning light cuts across his face as he looks up. Our eyes catch.
Something drops in my stomach. Hot and immediate and infuriating. The same thing I felt when he kissed me in the dark, the same thing I felt pressed against him on horseback, the same thing I’ve been trying to ignore for months while my body refuses to cooperate with my wounded heart.
I haven’t forgiven him. I still see Aimie’s head thrown back by the stables, still hear the echo of paranoid in his voice, still feel the cold emptiness of those nights alone in the cottage while he slept in our bed.
I should turn around. Walk away. Keep the walls up.
I don’t.
“You sure you’re ready?” His voice is careful. Too careful. Like he’s handling something fragile.
“No.” I take a deep breath. The honest answer. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
Storm watches me approach. His ears prick forward, nostrils flaring as he catches my scent. He’s better now - the hollows in his flanks have filled back in, his coat has regained some of its shine. When I reach the stall door, he steps toward me. Presses his nose into my palm.
My eyes sting.
“Hey, beautiful.” My voice comes out thick. “Remember me?”
He nickers softly. Lips against my skin, warm breath, the particular way he’s always greeted me - like I’m the most important person in his world.
“That’s my boy.”
Lucas saddles him while I stretch my leg, testing its limits. The scar tissue pulls when I extend too far, a tight warning that will probably never fully go away. The doctor said it would always ache a little. A permanent reminder of what happened.
I don’t mind. Scars mean you survived.
The sundress was a mistake. I realize that now, watching Lucas adjust the saddle’s girth.
Soft cotton, the kind I wear around the house on slow mornings, flowing and loose and completely unsuitable for riding.
It moves when I do, shifts and slides against my skin.
I catch Lucas’s eyes on it - just once, just for a moment - before he looks away.
Like he knows better. Like looking too long would be another thing I haven’t forgiven.
“Ready?” He holds out his hand to help me mount.
I don’t take it. Not yet.
“I’ll go with you,” he says.
It isn’t a question.
“No.” The word comes out fast, defensive. “I don’t need you for this.”
“The doctor said to be careful.” He doesn’t step closer.
Doesn’t crowd me. Keeps that careful distance he’s maintained since Houston, giving me exactly as much space as I’ve demanded.
That’s worse, somehow. The space he leaves is loud.
“Your leg. The first real ride back. I’d just stay behind you. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Liar.
I’ll know. I always know when he’s near me - my body tracks him like a compass finding north, some primitive awareness that has nothing to do with forgiveness and everything to do with years of marriage, years of his hands on my skin, years of learning each other’s bodies in the dark.
I should keep refusing. I should swing up alone and take Storm out and remember who I am without Lucas anywhere near me.
But I look at Storm. At the saddle. At the man I married, standing there patient and uncertain, looking like the version of himself I saw in the stable during the storm.
“Fine,” I say. “Behind me. That’s it.”
His jaw tightens. He nods once.
I take his hand.
His palm is warm and rough against mine, calluses from rope and reins and years of work that his business suits hide.
He helps me up, steadies me while I swing my leg over Storm’s back, and for a moment his hand lingers on my hip - just long enough for me to feel the heat of him through thin cotton.
Then he lets go.
The moment I settle into the saddle, something clicks back into place.
Like a puzzle piece I didn’t know was missing.
Storm shifts beneath me, adjusting to my weight, his muscles coiling with familiar energy.
This is who I am. This is what I was born to do.
The leather creaks as I find my balance, the reins comfortable in my hands, my body remembering patterns it never forgot.
Then Lucas swings up behind me.
The air leaves my lungs.
He is everywhere. Chest pressed to my back, solid and warm.
Thighs bracketing mine, the hard muscle of him caging me in.
The heat of his body soaks through cotton like it has a right to, like the thin fabric between us is nothing at all.
His breath stirs the hair at my temple. The saddle was not made for two people, and every inch of him has to choose where to go.
He chooses close.
“Okay?” he asks, and his voice is rougher than it was on the ground.
I don’t trust myself to answer.
“Ride carefully,” he says, his hands finding my waist.
His palms are large. Warm. They span the curve of my waist like he still remembers the map of my body - every dip and hollow, every place that makes me gasp when he touches it just right. His thumbs rest just above my hips. He doesn’t squeeze. He doesn’t have to.
I feel every point of contact like a brand.
Don’t, I tell myself. He left you wet in that bed. He laughed with her by the stables. He is not this. He is not the man who used to-
Storm takes a step, and Lucas’s body moves with mine.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper.
We start at a walk. The ranch unrolls in front of us, gold and quiet in the morning light. Storm’s gait is smooth, a rolling rhythm I’ve known since the first time I sat on his back. Every shift presses me back into Lucas. Into the hard line of his chest. Into the place where his hips meet mine.
I sit as straight as I can. It doesn’t help.
The dress has already begun to ride up my thighs, fabric gathering, useless. I feel the air against my bare skin, feel the rough denim of his jeans where my legs press back against his.
His hands stay on my waist.
They don’t have to. I can ride. I have always been able to ride. Storm knows me better than almost anyone - he would keep me safe without Lucas holding on. But Lucas holds me anyway, like the doctor’s warning is still echoing in his mind, and I hate that I don’t knock his hands away.
You haven’t forgiven him.
Your body doesn’t care.