Chapter 19
She tacked Sundancer in the early morning quiet of the lodge barn, taking her time with it and moving through the familiar routine, glad to be doing something with her hands that had nothing to do with what she was actually thinking about.
Cole was in the yard when she led her mare out, leaning against the fence and watching her with the same expression he’d been wearing all morning.
He didn’t say anything. He had already said what he needed to say on the deck this morning.
They had covered everything they needed to discuss, and she figured he knew her well enough by now to realize that going over it again wouldn’t change her mind.
He just watched her mount and said, “Call me when you’re done.”
“I will.”
He nodded once, and she turned Sundancer toward the trail.
The morning was cool and still. She knew the way to Frost Pocket by heart, as did her mare.
It was one of her favorite trails. She had ridden it alone on quiet mornings or evenings when she needed to think, and with Cole on warm summer evenings when Beckett was sleeping and the neighbor was watching him.
She knew where the trail narrowed after the second rise, where it dipped sharply down a tree-covered slope only to open up again to a patch of wildflowers, and how far to ride before reaching the junction to Chase’s Lake Road.
She knew this area well, and that all mattered more to her this morning than she’d expected it to.
By the time she reached Proceeding, she’d already run into a few riders who greeted her with cheerful waves and the purposeful energy of a fun mini vacation still in full swing.
She passed two groups heading out and was passed by one on the way back, and each time she felt the quiet relief of having people around.
She’d told Cole she wasn’t worried, and that she was trained enough to know the difference between a situation that warranted genuine concern and one that didn’t.
But she was also honest enough with herself to admit that the low, complicated anxiety sitting in her chest wasn’t just nothing.
When she reached the turnoff to the Frost Pocket, she pulled Sundancer up and waited.
The mare stood quietly on a loose rein, her ears flicking in a relaxed manner, occasionally dropping her nose to examine the grass at the trail’s edge.
A few more riders passed behind them on the main trail.
First, a younger couple, then a solo rider on a flashy paint who nodded at her as he rode by.
She checked her phone, which had no signal worth speaking of out here, and put it away.
Ashley was seven minutes late, which was unlike her.
Finally, she heard hooves on the trail behind her. She turned to see Ashley approaching through the trees on a compact Appaloosa with a deep chest, a short back, and the coiled, forward energy of a horse that had somewhere to go and strong opinions about the delay.
“Sorry I’m late.” She didn’t say anything else.
Just gathered her horse and looked over at her.
“There’s a clearing about ten minutes up the trail.
It’s small, just off to the right. We can tie them there and talk.
” She glanced at her horse’s ears, which were moving in quick, restless arcs.
“I’d better get him moving again, or he’ll be a nightmare. ”
The trail was wide enough for two at the start, then narrowed after the first rise into the single-track that most of these mountain trails eventually became.
They saw a few more weekend riders, passing or being passed by them in the first ten minutes, a fact she noted with quiet relief each time.
Wherever Ashley was taking them, there would be people.
The Appaloosa fussed and sidled all the way, snatching at his bit and swinging his hindquarters whenever another horse passed too closely.
Ashley rode him with the automatic, seat-of-the-pants competence of someone who had done it so long it required no conscious effort.
Her hands followed his movements effortlessly, and her body absorbed his energy the way a tree absorbs wind.
Still, she didn’t talk, just kept her eyes on the trail and her focus on the horse.
Sundancer continued at her usual easy pace, interested but relaxed, occasionally flicking an ear toward the Appaloosa with gentle, polite curiosity.
About ten minutes into the ride, Ashley veered onto a small, unmarked trail barely visible from Frost Pocket.
She had passed it many times before, thinking it was just another deer trail, but a few steps in, a tiny grassy opening appeared on the right exactly where Ashley had said it would be.
She quickly swung off her horse and tied him to a low-hanging branch, then stepped back to give him room to settle on the end of his rope.
He used the rope to pace in a small, nervous circle before finally dropping his head to nibble at the grass.
Jewel found a tree a little farther in and tied Sundancer, giving her room to graze and stay safely away from the Appaloosa. Then she turned back.
Ashley stood with her arms crossed, not looking at her but at the trees on the far side of the clearing. She seemed like someone who had rehearsed a speech and was now trying to remember the words.
Jewel walked closer. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
That’s when Ashley finally looked at her, her face and posture bracing as if what she had to say would hurt no matter how she said it. “I’m seeing Robert. Your ex.”
Around them, the clearing was silent, with only the sound of the bay tugging at the grass and Sundancer breathing. Somewhere in the canopy above, a woodpecker was working on something with single-minded purpose.
“I know.”
Ashley blinked. “How?”
She kept her voice in that even, neutral tone she used in interviews when she wanted to give nothing away. “It doesn’t matter. Why are you telling me now?”
Ashley uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again in a small, restless motion.
Her words were nearly a whisper. “Because I’m starting to worry.
He’s different. Kind of scary. In the last few weeks, he’s changed, and I don’t—” She paused, took a breath, and kept going.
“He’s getting harder to read. Harder to understand.
He wants me to do things I don’t want to do.
And when I push back, he gets cold. He becomes very mean. ”
Ashley looked at her with an expression that lacked the usual confident certainty that often lit up her face. What was beneath it was younger and much less sure of itself.
“In the beginning, it was just fun. When he first came onto me, I was just going along with it. I was using him the same way I figured he was using me. I told myself I’d play along and be a spy for you, but that wasn’t really why I did it.
I thought maybe he could help me even the score with Cole.
I’ve been so angry at him that I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t.
” She let out a short, humorless laugh, then looked at Jewel as if expecting her to say something.
But she stayed silent. It was no secret that Ashley was mad at Cole. Maybe she would finally find out why.
“You know, when Cole first came back here, I was the first one to become friends with him. We even went out once. Before Vivian. Before anyone else. I had a thing for him right from the start, before she ever met him. She knew that. I told her. And then she met him and started flirting anyway. She moved in on him. And once he saw her, she was all he could see. I told myself it was okay. She was my best friend, she was happy, and I’d get over it.
I really thought I had, but then she disappeared, and I thought…
” Ashley swallowed hard. “I tried to let him know how I felt. I made it as clear as I could that I was still here, and that I’d always be there for him.
But he looked straight through me like I didn’t even exist.”
Her horse had stopped pacing and was grazing now, his earlier agitation subsiding in the quiet of the clearing.
Ashley looked down, her eyes clouded. “And then you came along. And he looked at you the same way he’d looked at her.
” She pressed her fingers briefly to her forehead.
“I was so angry. I wanted him to stop looking at you. I wanted him to look at me that way. So when I met Rebecca, and she wanted me to give you a hard time, I was okay with it. And then she wanted me to meet her brother, and I thought, fine. I mean, why not? Spite is as good a reason as any to go out with someone.”
“But then you fell for him.”
Ashley’s jaw tightened, and she didn’t deny it.
“He can be extraordinary when he wants to be. But you already know that. You were married to him. He made me feel like I was the only person in the room—like everything I thought and said mattered to him. He listened to me. He remembered things.” She closed her eyes.
“He spoiled me. Really spoiled me. Nobody’s ever done that before. ”
Jewel looked at this woman who had been her antagonist, her friend, and her dead end for months, and felt a kind of sympathy move through her. “And now?”
Ashley’s voice grew quieter, the performance gone.
“Now he’s someone I don’t entirely recognize.
I don’t like all the things he asks me to do, or the way he talks about you and Cole.
He wants me to help him get even with you, but I don’t really want to.
It’s Cole I was mad at, not you. And now he’s so cold to me. ”
Ashley’s eyes showed pure desperation. “I need to know if he’s truly capable of caring about someone. I need to know if what I felt between us was real, or if I’m just fooling myself.”