Chapter Eighteen
Teagan set the oil drums thirty-six feet apart because that was regulation, and tonight she wasn't practicing.
Tonight she was showing off.
The compound yard was packed. Every brother who could stand was lined up along the fence, beers in hand, cuts on their backs, the post-victory energy still buzzing through them like a live wire.
The firepit was already lit, smoke curling into the evening sky, and the smell of grilled meat drifted across the yard on a wind that had finally, mercifully, gone gentle.
Teagan mounted up. Ginger felt it—the shift in energy, the crowd, the way Teagan gathered the reins and sat tall in the saddle. The mare's ears locked forward. Her body coiled, muscles bunching under the saddle, every ounce of her fourteen-hundred-pound frame ready to run.
"Show them what you've got, girl," Teagan murmured.
She kicked.
Ginger exploded into the pattern like a bullet leaving a barrel.
First drum—hard pocket turn, inside shoulder dropping, gravel spraying in a rooster tail that reached the fence line.
The brothers whooped. Teagan was already setting up for the second—wider approach, the angle she'd been perfecting in the dark, her body flowing with the horse like water finding its channel.
The turn was tight. Clean. The kind of turn that won money at nationals.
Third drum. Ginger's hindquarters gathered and fired, launching them out of the pocket and into the home stretch. Teagan leaned forward, gave the mare her head, and let her run.
The fence line erupted. Brothers pounded the rails and howled.
Shadow threw his hat. Dawson was yelling something she couldn't hear over the thunder of hooves and the blood rushing in her ears.
She pulled Ginger up at the far end and wheeled around, the mare dancing, snorting, wanting to run it again.
Teagan was grinning so hard her face hurt.
"Again!" someone shouted.
She ran it again. And again. Three full-speed patterns, each one tighter, each one faster, the drums rocking in their places but never tipping. By the third run, brothers were timing her on their phones and arguing about the numbers.
She pulled Ginger to a walk and circled the yard, letting the mare cool down while the applause faded into laughter and conversation. The sun was going down, painting the compound in shades of amber and red, and Teagan sat in her saddle and breathed it in.
This was what it was supposed to feel like. The pattern, the horse, the speed—and people watching who actually gave a damn.
She dismounted, stripped the saddle, and walked Ginger through three cool-down laps. The mare's breathing steadied. Her coat steamed in the cooling air. Teagan brushed her out at the corral, checked her legs—habit, always habit, always would be—and buckled the lightweight blanket over her back.
"You were perfect," she told the horse. "You were absolutely perfect."
Ginger lipped at her pocket, found nothing, and sighed.
"Later. I promise."
The firepit was the heart of the party. Someone had dragged the picnic tables into a ring around it, and the flames threw shifting light across a scene that looked like a painting—brothers eating, laughing, reliving the Childress raid in increasingly loud detail.
The kind of celebration that was equal parts relief and joy, the letting-go that came after the fighting was done.
Jolene and Grace had taken over the food.
Jolene worked the grill with the practiced ease of a woman who fed people for a living—turning ribs, checking temperatures, plating with one hand while directing traffic with the other.
Grace had the side table covered in baked goods—cornbread, biscuits, something that looked like pecan pie and smelled like heaven.
Ramona had a folding table set up as a bar. Three bottles of her own whiskey, a tub of iced beer, and a line of shot glasses that she was filling with the focused precision of a woman who took her craft seriously.
"There she is." Ramona poured a shot and pushed it across the table as Teagan approached. "The cowgirl who rides like the devil's chasing her."
"He was." Teagan took the shot, tossed it back, and set the glass down. "But we burned his house down last night, so I think I'm clear."
Ramona's laugh was loud and warm and drew looks from half the yard. She poured another. "Pace yourself, honey. Jolene's ribs need eating, and you don't want to miss Grace's pie."
"I never miss pie."
Teagan took a plate and let Jolene load it—ribs, cornbread, a scoop of something with beans that smelled like it had been simmering since morning. She grabbed a biscuit from Grace's table and got a soft smile in return.
"That was beautiful riding," Grace said. "I've never seen anything like it up close."
"Come to a qualifier. You'll see sixty women do it, and half of them will be faster than me."
"I doubt that very much."
Teagan found a spot at the picnic table between Diesel and Hatchet, who were deep in an argument about engine torque that she didn't follow and didn't try to.
She ate. The ribs were ridiculous—smoky, tender, the kind of food that made you close your eyes and forget about everything except the next bite.
The cornbread was warm. The beans were perfect.
She was reaching for her second biscuit when a hand landed on her shoulder.
Striker. Standing behind her, his fingers warm through her shirt, his thumb brushing the curve of her neck in a touch that was small and deliberate and entirely for her.
"Come with me."
She set the biscuit down—regretfully—and followed him away from the firepit, past the corral, around the back of the garage where the floodlight didn't reach. The noise of the party faded to a murmur behind them.
Striker stopped. The ground in front of her was different.
The scrub grass and loose gravel that had occupied this stretch of the compound was gone.
In its place, the earth had been cleared and leveled—scraped flat, raked smooth, a rectangle of prepared ground stretching out in the dim light.
And at each corner, driven into the dirt with precision, were wooden stakes connected by bright orange string.
She stared.
"Regulation dimensions," Striker said. "I measured with a tape last night before we rolled out. A hundred and thirty by two hundred and ten feet. Had Diesel bring the tractor around this morning to scrape and level it."
Teagan walked to the nearest stake and crouched.
The string was taut, the stake driven deep.
She followed the line with her eyes—one side, then the turn, then the next side.
The rectangle was true. She could tell without measuring, the way a horseperson could tell a square pen from an oblong one by the way the corners sat.
She stood and walked the length. Her boots scuffed the prepared earth—loose on top, packed beneath, the kind of base that would take amendment well. At the far end, she turned and walked the width. Her stride count matched the regulation she'd had memorized since she was sixteen.
She crouched again and grabbed a fistful of dirt. Rubbed it between her fingers. Let it fall.
"The soil's good," she said. "Clay base under the topsoil. It'll hold moisture and pack well." She dusted her hands on her jeans. "But it needs sand mixed in for proper traction. Pure clay gets slick when it's wet, and a horse making barrel turns on slick footing is a horse with a blown tendon."
"How much sand?"
"Thirty percent blend. Two inches deep across the whole surface." She was already doing the math—square footage, volume, the number of dump truck loads it would take. "You'll need about forty tons."
"I'll have it here by Friday."
She looked at him. He was standing at the edge of his staked-out arena, hands in his pockets, watching her the way he always watched her—like she was the most important thing happening in any room, in any yard, in any corner of West Texas.
"You built me an arena," she said.
"I built you a dirt rectangle with string on it. You're going to build the arena." His mouth curved. "I just did the digging."
"You did the digging before you drove forty miles to kill a man."
"I wanted it ready for when we got back." He shrugged, but his eyes were serious. "You said you wanted to qualify from here. I told you I'd build it if you made the finals. But I figured—why wait? You're going to make the finals. I'd rather have the arena ready than scrambling to catch up."
Something swelled in Teagan's chest—big and warm and terrifying in its certainty.
This man. This impossible, violent, grinning man who planned an arena with the same precision he planned an assault.
Who measured regulation dimensions with a tape before riding out to war because he wanted her future ready when she got there.
She crossed the distance between them and kissed him. Softer than usual. Slower. The kind of kiss that was a thank-you and a promise and something she didn't have words for yet.
"Sand by Friday," she said against his mouth.
"Sand by Friday."
They walked back to the party with his arm around her waist and her head tipped against his shoulder. The firepit had grown—more brothers, more noise, Ramona's whiskey supply dwindling. Someone had dragged out a speaker and country music competed with the conversation.
Teagan grabbed her abandoned plate and two fresh biscuits and led Striker to the corral fence. They sat on the top rail—her spot, their spot now—with the plate balanced between them, sharing ribs and cornbread while the party rolled on at their backs.
Ginger ambled over from the far side of the corral, drawn by the smell of food or the sound of Teagan's voice or the simple curiosity of a horse who'd figured out that humans near the fence sometimes meant treats.
The mare stretched her neck over the rail and nosed at Striker's shoulder, pushing against him with the insistent familiarity of an animal who'd decided he belonged to her.
Striker reached up and scratched behind her ears. Ginger leaned into it, her eyes half-closing, her lower lip going slack.
"She likes you," Teagan said.
"She likes that I'm between her and the biscuits."
"No." Teagan watched her horse press into Striker's hand, saw the way the mare's body relaxed at his touch—the same way Teagan's did, for the same reasons. "She likes you. She doesn't let just anyone touch her like that."
Striker looked at the horse. Then at Teagan. The firelight caught his face—the silver at his temples, the faded tattoos on his knuckles, the grin that had been softer all evening than she'd ever seen it.
"The feeling's mutual," he said.
Teagan leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder, sharing warmth and a plate and a fence rail while Ginger nosed at his pockets for treats she wasn't going to find.
The party hummed behind them. The stars came out overhead—big and bright and endless, the way they only got in the Panhandle, the way they looked from every fairground and parking lot she'd ever slept in.
But tonight, for the first time, she wasn't looking at them from a borrowed spot.
She was looking at them from home.