Untamed (Beneath The Reign #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

LOLA

Song- Click Clack Symphony, RAYE ft Hans Zimmer

The coffee shop is called Dusty’s, and it has no right being this good. Better than anything I ever had in New York. Perhaps because it’s made with love, not tears of the miserable barista struggling to survive.

I’m tucked into a booth by the window, iced latte sweating onto the table, my phone propped against the sugar caddy.

My best friend, Violet, is across from me, elbows on the table, dark hair piled on top of her head in the kind of effortless knot that takes her approximately four seconds, and would take me forty minutes to replicate.

She’s watching me edit a selfie. And she’s losing patience.

“Explain it to me again,” she says, stirring her coffee without looking at it.

“You moved to Arizona. You drove two thousand miles across the country with me. You gave up your apartment, your stylist, your standing brunch reservation at The Mark. And you’re sitting in a coffee shop in a town that has more horses than cars, editing a selfie for a brand deal that pays you to pretend you still live in New York. ”

I look up. “It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple.” She points at my phone. “You are airbrushing your jawline for a skincare company that thinks you’re in Manhattan, Lola. While sitting in a town where the pharmacist is also the mayor.”

“He’s not the mayor.”

“He might as well be. Everyone here has three jobs.” She leans back. “My point is, why are you still doing this?”

I set my phone down and run my thumb around the rim of my glass. Because the honest answer is complicated. And embarrassing. And involves the words, because my parents will disown me if I stop.

“The brand deals keep my parents happy,” I say. “As long as I’m posting, they can tell their friends at the country club that their daughter is still the face of something. That I’m still on track to become their CEO. Still performing like the heiress of a billion-dollar fashion empire.”

God, just saying that steals my breath. But it also hurts.

“You’re twenty-seven,” she says flatly, her bright blue eyes burning into mine.

“I know.”

“You’re a grown woman.”

“I know, V.”

“So why are you still performing for people who didn’t even offer to help you pack?”

That one lands right in the sternum. Because she’s right. My parents didn’t come to the airport. Didn’t call to make sure I’d settled in okay. My mother sent a text that said I hope this gets it out of your system, and my father sent nothing at all.

Violet watches my face, and her expression softens. She reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. “I’m not trying to be a bitch.”

“Yes, you are. But I love you for it,” I tease.

She grins. “I just think you’re hiding behind the selfies, because you’re scared to post what you actually want to post.”

I pick up my phone and swipe to the other folder. The one nobody sees. The one I’ve been filling since the day I arrived in New Falls two months ago.

Landscapes. Golden hour over the mountains. A weathered fence post with a hawk perched on top. The main street at dusk. A wild horse standing alone in a field, silhouetted against a sky so wide it doesn’t look real.

Every photo taken from the other side of the camera. Where I’ve always secretly wanted to be.

That’s why I’m here. Not because Violet needed company, although she did, and I’d follow that woman anywhere. But because I picked up a camera two years ago at a fashion shoot in Milan, and for the first time in my life, I felt something click. Not the shutter. Something inside me.

I was standing behind the photographer, watching him work, and I realized I wanted to see the world like that—not have the world see me.

And then I went back to New York, and posted another bikini photo because that’s what the algorithm wanted, and my parents needed, and what the brands were paying for.

Two more years of being the product rather than the artist followed, until Violet called to say she was moving to Arizona to take over her Uncle Ray’s catering business. I said yes before she finished the sentence.

Because New York never felt like home. Not really. Not in the way people describe home. New York felt like a stage. And I am tired of performing.

New Falls felt different from the first morning I woke up here. The silence. The sky. I walked outside in my pajamas at six a.m., barefoot on the porch, and I cried. Not because I was sad, but because I could finally hear myself think.

I’ve been filling that camera folder ever since.

“Post the sunset one,” Violet says, nodding at my phone. “The horse. From last night. It’s stunning.”

I turn the screen toward her. The golden hour shot, the mountains, the horse, the light that makes everything look like it’s on fire. I smile as I look at it. “It gets a tenth of the engagement my selfies do,” I say with a sigh.

“So?”

“So the selfies pay the bills.”

“Lola.” She levels me with a look. “You have enough savings from ten years of brand deals to live comfortably for the rest of your natural life. Your parents made sure of that, even if half the money came from deals neither of us wants to think about too hard. You don’t need the bills paid. You need to stop being scared.”

I open my mouth. Close it. She’s right. This isn’t about money.

“Post the horse,” she says. “Set up your photography page. Be the Lola you actually are, instead of the one they built.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

Her grin splits her face. “That’s my girl.”

“Don’t. You’ll make me blush.”

She slides out of the booth. “I need to pee. Do not change your mind while I’m gone.”

“I won’t.”

“Lola.”

“I won’t!”

She disappears down the narrow hallway toward the bathrooms. I lean back in the booth and pick up my coffee.

And that’s when I see him.

Through the window, walking past on the sidewalk.

I don’t notice him first. I notice what happens around him.

Two men standing outside the hardware store stop talking mid-sentence. One of them takes a physical step backward. A woman pushing a stroller crosses to the other side of the street without looking up. A group of teenagers on a bench goes silent.

The whole sidewalk rearranges itself around this man like water parting for a stone.

Then I look at him. And my coffee stops halfway to my mouth.

He’s tall. Well over six feet. Built so muscular I’m sure he could pick five of me up with one arm and throw me over his shoulder.

A black T-shirt stretched so tight across his chest and arms that I can see the outline of every muscle underneath.

The fabric strains across his shoulders and biceps in a way that should be illegal in public.

Tattoos are literally everywhere. Crawling up both arms from hand to sleeve, disappearing under the black cotton, reappearing at his neck.

His black cowboy hat is tipped low over his eyes, covered by Aviator sunglasses that reflect the Arizona sun.

A jaw that could cut glass, covered in stubble. My god.

He reaches a massive black F-250 parked at the curb. And then he’s out of sight, and I realize I haven’t breathed.

I set my coffee down. My hand is not entirely steady anymore.

What the hell was that?

I’ve been around beautiful men my entire life. Models. Actors. The kind of men who get paid to look the way they look. And not a single one of them has ever made the air change by walking past a window.

But it wasn’t just the way he looked. It was the way everyone reacted. Respect or fear or something between the two, I can’t tell which.

Who the hell is that man?

Violet slides back into the booth. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she says.

“Not a ghost.” I grab her arm. “V, I just saw this guy walk past the window, and I swear the entire street cleared a path for him. Like, people literally moved out of his way. He was—” I pause, trying to find a word that covers it. “Insane. He was insane.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Insane hot or insane scary?”

“Both. Simultaneously. I didn’t know that was possible.”

She grins. “Welcome to Arizona, babe. They grow them different out here. Cowboys have a reputation for doing everything better, Lola.”

My mouth drops open. The only man I have chasing me around is the guy who owns our apartment building. Reese. He and I went for one drink after we signed the lease agreement, and I’ve been batting off his attempts ever since.

“He had tattoos. Everywhere. And a cowboy hat. And a truck the size of this building.”

“So basically your exact type if you were brave enough to admit it,” she says.

“I don’t have a type,” I tell her, biting my lip.

“You absolutely have a type, and it’s the opposite of every man your mother has ever introduced you to. Which is why you’re blushing right now.” She says with a mile wide grin on her face.

I press my hands against my cheeks. They’re on fire. “I’m not blushing. It’s the coffee. It’s hot in here. This place is like walking in fire every day as it is,” I joke, trying to deflect.

“You’re drinking an iced latte.”

“Shut up.”

She cackles. “So better than our landlord then?”

I run my hand over my face. “I’m not going on a date with our damn landlord, V.”

She wiggles her eyebrows. “No. Because Lola wants a cowboy now.”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“I need to get laid tonight, Lola. It’s been three months, and what if I’ve forgotten how to give a blowjob?”

I burst into laughter, making the couple next to us turn to look at us. “A blowjob is the same as riding a bike. You don’t forget,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t wanna ride a bike. I want to ride a cowboy.”

“Well, then get your game face on for tonight, V.”

And I’m about to interrogate her on whether she knows who this man is when a voice interrupts. “Oh my God. Oh my God. You’re Lola Jackson!”

A girl is standing beside our booth. Probably mid-twenties. Her New Yorker accent catches my attention and tells me she’s a tourist. Her eyes are wide, and her phone is already in her hand.

“Hi,” I say, slipping into the smile I’ve practiced to perfection. The one I’ve worn so many times, it fits like a second skin.

“I bought the dress you posted last week! The green one? With the slit? I wore it to my friend’s wedding, and literally everyone asked me where I got it.” She’s talking so fast she’s barely breathing. “Can I get a selfie? Please? My friends are never going to believe this.”

“Of course.”

She drops into the booth beside me, holds her phone at arm’s length, and we both smile. “Thank you so much! You’re even prettier in person. Like, actually unreal.”

She squeezes my arm, gushes something about my hair, and bounces off to rejoin her friends at the counter.

Violet watches her go and then looks at me. “You hate that,” she says quietly.

I don’t deny it.

Because she’s right. The girl was lovely. Genuinely sweet. And I’m glad she liked the dress. But every selfie, every “you’re so pretty in person,” every interaction that starts with recognition and ends with a camera, it pushes me further from the person I’m trying to become.

I want someone to stop me in a coffee shop one day and say, “I saw your photograph of the mountains. It made me feel something.”

That’s why I’m here. Not running from something. Running toward it.

I pick up my phone. Open the sunset photo again, and I post it. No filter. No caption. No brand tag. No selfie. Just the view from the other side of the camera.

Violet reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “Proud of you,” she says.

I squeeze back.

And I look out the window at the street where a man in a black cowboy hat made the whole town go quiet just by walking to his truck.

Something about this place feels like the beginning of a story I haven’t read yet. And I want to turn the page.