The compliment landed heavier than it should have. I didn’t answer, just watched him walk away, the back of him framed by the orange light bleeding across the arena.
Somewhere, a loudspeaker blared the next rider’s name, the crowd’s cheer rising again. The world continued to move as if nothing had happened.
But everything inside me was shifting, old walls cracking open, letting light and pain in the same breath.
And deep down, under all of it, was one steady truth I didn’t want to face.
No matter how far I’d run, Lincoln Felder still had a hold on me.
CHAPTER TWO
LINC
Ishould’ve walked away. Hell, I should’ve stayed in the damn stands like everyone else. But the second Lady started to slide, I was already moving. The sight of her hooves losing purchase, the brief panic in her eyes, hit something instinctive. I didn’t think. I reacted. Every muscle in my body knew where to go before my mind caught up.
She’d told me to leave. She’d pushed me away like I was some stranger. But watching her limp away, shoulders stiff with pride and pain, felt like reopening a wound that had never healed. The distance between us wasn’t measured in feet; it was years stacked on top of old mistakes.
Three years have passed. Three years, and she still has the power to gut me with just one look.
After I made sure Lady was okay, I knew Kristin wouldn’t be in any condition to get her ready for travel, so I walked Lady back to the trailer, removed all her tack, brushed her down, and left her with food and water. The mare’s sides were heaving, foam streaked with dirt, but her eyes were calm again. I kept my hands steady, talking to her in low tones that barely rose above the whir of generators from nearby trailers. Horses settle whenyou give them confidence, and right now, I needed to borrow a little of that myself.
Kristin hadn’t come out of the trailer when I came back, and I hoped she was resting. The thought gnawed at me. She hated being fussed over, hated letting anyone see her weak. I wasn’t surprised she’d refused to go to the medical team. At least if she was still feeling rough when she got back to Everton, she could see Jake.
As I stood by the trailer belonging to the Diamond, I closed my eyes, but all I could see was the accident. Lady’s wild eyes. Kristin’s calm face did not register what was happening until it was too late. The whole world had narrowed to that one stupid, awful second, the way the reins went slack, the flash of the rail, the sound that never quite left me. I could still feel grit in my palms, taste blood at the back of my throat. The echo of that noise followed me everywhere, a reminder that control was an illusion we liked to pretend we owned.
“Really, Lincoln?” The voice beside me was sharp, female, and way too familiar.
I turned slowly. Tanya.
She was all red nails and designer leather, like a splinter of a city that didn’t belong in the paddock. Sunlight hit the amber in her hair, making her impossible to ignore. The scent of her perfume, sweet and citrusy, cut through the air thick with hay and dust. Her nails dug into her hips as she glared up at me, her stance loud in a place built for quiet grit. We’d spent two months together, a bad decision born of whiskey, boredom, and the kind of loneliness that feels like static under your skin. She’d made it clear she wanted more. I’d made it just as clear she wouldn’t get it.
“Not now,” I muttered, the headache already starting at the base of my skull.
“Oh, it’s now,” she said, stepping closer, eyes flashing with the satisfaction of someone who wants a scene. “You disappear on me, then I find you throwing yourself into the dirt for her? The same woman who left you in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye?”
The accusation hung between us, sour and slick as spilled feed. People moved in lazy, oblivious orbits behind her, grooms hauling buckets, a kid weaving through on a scooter, someone laughing near the wash rack, but it all blurred. The world beyond us became muffled, like a radio left in another room. Here, in this pocket of heat and dust, it was only Tanya and me and the ghost of what Kristin had once been to me.
I stiffened, jaw locking until my teeth ached. “Watch your mouth.”
Tanya laughed, a sharp and ugly sound that bounced off the trailer walls. “You think she’s gonna suddenly wake up and love you again? She hasn’t wanted you in years, Lincoln. But you’ll risk your neck, your damn reputation, for her?”
Her words cut straight to the point. Not because they were new, but because they echoed the same doubts I’d been struggling with since Kristin hit the dirt. She had always been the clear-cut between what I wanted and what I deserved. That echo, the one telling me I was a fool, grew louder with every word Tanya threw at me.
But under the anger, something darker twisted in my gut, desire, regret, that same damn pull I’d never shaken.
I should’ve told her to shut up. I should’ve told her to go, that this wasn’t about her. Instead, I hesitated. Old habit. Old cowardice. Like checking a wound to see if it still hurts, I let her voice test the edges of something I should’ve buried long ago.
“You’re a good time, not a long time, Tanya. That’s all it’s ever been. Don’t mistake it for anything else,” I said, leaning in close, my voice dropping to a growl meant for her alone.
She flinched, but her glare didn’t waver. “And what is she then? The woman who already crushed you once. Do you really want to hand her the knife again?”
Knife. The word landed hard, sharp enough to slice air. I could taste iron, salt, and something sweeter, the memory of Kristin’s hand in mine, the weight of her trust before everything fell apart. What I didn’t say was that the knife had always been inside me, from the moment she took her first step away.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because the truth was simple, Kristin already had the knife. She’d always had it.
“Don’t play like you’re noble,” Tanya said, her voice softening just enough to twist the blade. “You’re not a hero, Lincoln. You’re stubborn. You’re sentimental. You’re a mess who likes to romanticize the past because it makes you feel alive.”
Unfair. But she wasn’t wrong. Stubborn, sentimental—words I’d heard my whole life, the kind that branded me as the man who stayed too long, cared too hard, and kept fixing things that should’ve been left broken. She was right about the last part, though. When everything else in my life went flat, Kristin, or the idea of her, lit something inside me that still felt like living.
