Seven - All My Secrets #2
I tap a little harder, lift my leg higher, hooking my toe into the stirrup with just a hint of weight. Still, my awesome partner just accommodates the pressure, but doesn’t move away.
“Damn, he’s so good today,” I say, unable to keep the smile out of my voice. “Isn’t he?”
Eli smiles too. “He’s sure you ain’t gonna hurt him. That’s the foundation of everything.”
“What now?” I ask from atop the block. “Another round, or do I put more pressure on him?”
Eli’s smile just deepens. “How ‘bout getting on?”
With a question like that, he might as well have punched me in the sternum. I just freeze, blinking stupidly. “Like... on on? Right now? Today?” My voice comes out so pitchy it feels like puberty all over again. Which, for real, just kill me now.
Eli nods, and I know he knows how much a breakthrough like this would mean to me. “It’s time. Y’all earned it.”
Earned it. We did. We worked really hard for so long, just for this moment.
It’s time. Crunch time. Reality check time. Make-it-or-break-it time.
Fuck. I wasn’t this scared to mount ever since I was six.
“Yeah,” I say, voice as steady as it’ll get. “Let’s do it.”
Eli’s eyes linger on me a beat longer than was called for, and I know him well enough to understand he’s not buying my tough guy act.
I’m expecting him to reel it back and abort, suggest we’ll leave it for tomorrow, which would be a million times worse.
It’d give me time to act out all the overly dramatic earth-shattering ways this could tank, all while not eating and definitely not sleeping on it.
Instead, Eli just nods, a hand on Ruin’s head. “I’ll hold him. Take your time.”
I nod too, but at myself. This is fine. Just a normal thing I’ve done all my life. This horse is just bigger, and I saw first-hand how explosive he can be, but he hasn’t acted like that in a long while .
This is the needed step, the actual first one in getting him ready. None of this matters if I don’t get him jumping. And it starts here.
So just get on the horse.
“Okay, buddy,” I murmur, adjusting my footing on the mounting block. “We’re doing this.”
Eli quickly loops the lead rope around Ruin’s head and through the halter over the hook—makeshift reins.
I gather them, take my time making sure they’re short enough and just right on my fist. My legs feel shaky and weird, disconnected from my body.
I curl my toes and clinch my thighs to get them to wake up, then place a boot on the stirrup.
Thousands of times. Literally. I could do this in my sleep, blindfolded, arm tied at the back.
I close my eyes, clench my jaw. Force a breath in and keep it. Just do it! I press my knee to the saddle, hoist up, ready to swing my leg over.
But Ruin sidesteps.
My balance falters. I grab the saddle to steady myself, but he’s already moving away, head coming up, eyes widening.
“Whoa,” Eli says, calm but firm, his hand steady on Ruin’s halter. “Easy, big guy.”
Ruin halts, but his body has tensed, a tremor running through his massive frame.
Fucking knew it.
“He was solid,” I hiss, stepping down from the mounting block. “Literally nothing changed.”
Eli doesn’t answer immediately. He’s looking at Ruin but glancing at me, so I know he knows exactly what’s wrong. And it’s me.
“ You changed,” he says finally. “You’re lying now.”
I frown. “I’m lying ? The fuck does that mean?” I force a deep breath. Not the time to get worked up .
“You’re nervous and trying to act like you ain’t.” His voice is gentle, absolutely no aggression. “Horses don’t understand pretending.”
“I’m not—” I start to push back but stop.
Because he’s right—I am nervous. Of course I am.
Letting me mount is entirely different than prancing around the pen with me, and Ruin has all the time in the world to do whatever the fuck he wants, but I don’t.
And no, he doesn’t either, actually, just doesn’t know it.
But how do you explain deadlines to animals without forcing them inside an agenda? You don’t.
I take a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Fine. What do I do?”
Eli’s smile is small but warm. “Tell him how you feel.”
I stare at him. “Okay, but how? How do I tell him?”
“With words.”
I snort because surely he’s fucking with me. But then I remember who I’m talking to. “What—look into his eyes and confess all my secrets? That I’m scared or whatever?”
“Are you? Scared?”
My chest bursts. Yes, of course. But I don’t say it out loud.
Eli nods like he hears my thoughts anyway.
“Don’t matter if you’re nervous or scared.
Or happy, even—issue is dishonesty. If you’re one thing on the surface, but at the micro level you’re something else, for him it’s a trap.
Takes vulnerability for a prey animal to let anything on their back.
He ain’t letting you on if he ain’t sure about you. ”
I glance at Ruin, who’s watching me with those huge, liquid eyes. Is that true? Can he tell I’m trying to bullshit my way through this?
“Trust works both ways,” Eli continues. “So yeah. Just confess.”
I run a hand through my hair. It goes against everything I know. What leaves my mouth needs to be on brand, PR-approved, but more than that, what’s deep in me must remain there.
No admissions, no confessions. That’s how brands die.
But I know this place is different. That I need to be different here, or all the time and money we’re spending would have no return on investment. Nor would my sanity.
“So I just... tell him? Literally talk to him?” I ask, even more nervous but in a different way, internalized right under my diaphragm.
Eli smiles again, patient. “It ain’t the words. It’s how you say them.”
I look at Ruin again—for real, this time. Into those eyes that see straight through bullshit like it’s air but putrid, unbreathable. And how I owe him more respect than forcing literal shit into his lungs, and then asking him to carry me to victory instead of leaving me down in the dirt.
Never crossed my mind that a horse would feel vulnerable under a rider. If anything, riders are supposed to be responsible for the horse under them, like a driver is responsible for the car they’re driving.
And I think that’s exactly the problem. That I keep comparing horses to vehicles when they’re living, breathing creatures.
Fucking Riverlight. Out here checking biases I didn’t even know I had.
It doesn’t get less frustrating, though. But Eli doesn’t deal in bullshit, so if he says this matters, it’s because it does.
I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck. Then Eli steps aside, and I take his place, standing directly in front of Ruin, his massive head at chest height. I finger-comb his fringe to the side.
God, I feel stupid. Couldn’t I just get naked and recite poetry to the chickens behind the cafeteria kitchen? Would hurt less on my pride. But Eli is watching, and Ruin is watching, and fuck it—there’s no way out but through .
“I’m nervous. Kind of scared, yeah,” I tell Ruin, but it’s a whisper—can’t say it louder.
I focus on my fingers scratching under his jaw, eyes down on his muzzle since his eyes are impossibly pure.
“No, not kind of.” It’s an admission that stings between the ribs, but it’s the truth, so I won’t take it back.
“It’s not even that you’ll throw me, I don’t think.
Just… everything else.” If this doesn’t work.
If we don’t make the deadline. If all of this has been for nothing.
Ruin’s ears flick forward, catching every syllable.
“But I’m also... really excited. Because you’re amazing.
” My thumbs stroke the soft hair around his muzzle.
“Fuck, do you even know? When you run, you fly. And when you jumped that time…” My head shakes, recalling the memory—Eli on him, bareback over the fence.
A horse that for sure never got to jump over anything in his life, ever. “You’re braver than I am.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. I swallow. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not ready. We can wait. I’ll wait for you.”
And what gets me, what wakes me up with surprise despite the words being my own, is that I genuinely mean it. No matter what my sponsors, or the press, or Mom have to say. I’d shield him from that pressure with my own back, take that weight on my shoulders so he’d have his time to heal.
And I don’t think I’d ever felt that way about anything. Was so sure I never would.
Ruin blinks at me. Breathes in, taking my scent. And then, so subtly, his head lowers. Just a tiny dip, barely anything, but it feels seismic down to my bones.
Is this what Eli sees all the time? This wordless language between species that should never be able to communicate?
I glance at him. He’s smiling so big, his eyes so soft, I have to look away not to envision him closing them as he leans in to kiss me. I can’t, and this is about Ruin, not me. It’s about giving him what he needs.
But then I jolt. Eli’s hand on my back.
And for once, I wish it. Wish that he was touching me because it was impossible not to. That he needed this touch to keep breathing, to keep from going insane. And not because he’s just a good, kind man praising me for something hard.
I wish it, because that’s how it feels for me.
The next second, it’s gone. The hand, not the wish, like he remembered my skin burns and yanked himself off before it got serious.
When I glance again, he’s not smiling, even though he pretends he is. His eyes are soft in the opposite direction, looking inside himself instead of out at me.
And I hate that I’m his sadness. That I make the most honest man I’ve ever met keep checking himself just so I don’t fall for him.
Without even knowing it may already be too late.
But I can’t. I can’t hate it. This is how I keep our key from turning.
“You did good,” he tells me, voice coarse, trying so hard to look me in the eyes but failing. “Try it now.”
Good. I did good. Did I?
At least now I don’t feel so nervous. Just depleted.
I nod regardless, letting my hands fall from Ruin’s face. He follows my movement with his eyes as I head back to the mounting block. Eli takes my place, touching the halter.
I climb up, the wood creaking beneath my boots.
I take the reins, then clamp tighter, not to mask how my hand is shaking, just to make sure it doesn’t fly off—hopefully Ruin knows the difference.
My eyes get stuck on the scar on my wrist, peeking from under my glove, and I need to breathe a few times through the acid burst in my lungs.
“You’re okay,” Eli says, peeling my eyes off that fucking C- shape. I thank him with a nod.
I don’t think. Don’t even look down at my hand again. I do it on instinct, just like I did with Vivaldi before winning the Grand Prix, the last time I got on a horse.
Before today.
Toe on the stirrup. Knee to the saddle. Lean over, leg up, softly down over the flank.
And it’s done. I’m on Ruin.
Fuck, am I hyperventilating? No. No, just excited. It’s fine.
He feels enormous.
I feel… complete.
Eli moves closer, beside Ruin’s shoulder, holding the lead loose. We grin at each other, nodding because we hear what the other isn’t saying. Yeah, we did it—this—the three of us. And it’s mostly nothing, not even a step forward yet, but it feels like fucking everything.
“Keep breathing,” Eli says quietly. “Wanna try a few steps?”
“Fuck yeah,” I blurt. He chuckles as I lean gently to pat Ruin’s neck. “We’re ready, right, partner?”
Ruin’s answer is a couple of unglamorous ear flicks our way. For sure, I’m ten times more excited than he is, but I don’t need him excited, just relaxed, exactly like this.
Eli clucks softly, tugging the lead with gentle pressure, not pulling but not loosening either. And my fantastic beast, my Ruin... goddamn moves.
Holy. Shit.
“How does it feel?” Eli asks, smiling up at me.
“Like people should either flee or bend the knee,” I say. He laughs, but I’m not even joking. My chin is up high, my chest puffed out, naturally, like I need a fucking crown on my head and trumpets blaring as I pass.
I feel the power. Ruin’s power.
Can’t wait until we’re jumping.