The next chukker is even worse for him. Every time he touches the ball, I'm there. Every time he tries to position, I'm blocking. Every time he thinks he has an opening, I shut it down with a precision that borders on violence. I'm not just playing polo anymore—I'm hunting.
"What the fuck is your deal?" he finally explodes after I bump him hard enough that he nearly loses his seat. He’s sweating, and his face is red with fury.
I circle back, positioning Santiago nose to nose with his mare. "You," I state simply.
The single word hangs in the air like a threat. I'm not going to give him the luxury of a heads-up, not going to spell out exactly what I know. He didn't give Asha any warning before he shoved his tongue down another girl's throat. Besides, getting in his head is working. I can see it in the way his grip tightens on his mallet, the way his jaw clenches. He's unraveling, playing defense in his own mind. He'll lose tonight. He's already losing. He just doesn't know yet how much more he's about to lose when this is all over.
"Whatever, Hale," he grinds out, but there's something uncertain flickering behind his eyes now. "You want to play dirty? Let's go."
I lean forward slightly, my voice dropping low enough that only he can hear over the thundering hooves around us. "I'm not playing dirty, Hadley." A cold smile touches my lips. "I'm playinghonest. You should try it sometime."
His face goes momentarily blank as he tries to piece together the true meaning behind my words. "Fuck you," he spits.
"No," I say, backing Santiago up and spinning away. "I think you've already fucked yourself."
In the final thirty seconds of the game, we're up by five. Penn's teammates have stopped passing to him, but he's still trying to salvage something from the wreckage of his performance.
The ball comes loose near midfield, and Penn makes a desperate play for it, overextending, his mare already tired from his erratic riding. I see the opening he's too tired to defend and go in for the kill. I don't even have to do much. Just crowd him as he swings wild for the ball. His mallet catches air instead of leather, and the momentum throws him off-center, causing his mare to sidestep hard to avoid Santiago.
It happens almost in slow motion. Penn's foot slips from the stirrup. His hand grasps for the reins, and for one suspendedmoment, he's neither on the horse nor off it, just falling with his arms flailing and his eyes wide with the realization that he's lost control. Then he hits the ground. Hard.
The game whistle blows at the exact moment Penn lands in the dirt, flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him.
I slow Santiago to a stop and look down at him from my saddle. He's gasping, stunned, staring up at the sky as players from both teams circle. His perfect white uniform is streaked with mud and grass stains. His hair, which is always so carefully styled, is now a mess.
"You alright, Hadley?" I ask, my voice carrying just enough false concern that he'll know it's deliberate.
He turns his head to glare up at me, still struggling to breathe, humiliation burning in his eyes brighter than any physical pain. I don't gloat. I don't need to. The scoreboard says everything: 12-6. And Penn Hadley is exactly where he belongs, in the dirt while everyone watches.
I turn Santiago toward the stables, and that's when I see her. Asha is standing by the fence with her camera lowered, no longer shooting. Just watching. Our eyes meet across the field, and for a moment, everything else falls away: the crowd, the noise, even Penn groaning behind me. I don't smile, don’t nod. I just hold her gaze, letting her see that I know. I know what he did to her and that he paid for it.
I've just finished untacking Santiago and preparing him for transport back to Ridgewood when I spot Asha sitting on top of the wooden fence that surrounds our team's tent. She has the lens pointed toward the scoreboard, which also happens to be beside Crestview’s tent. She slowly lowers it, and my eyes findthe source of her distress. Penn Hadley has spotted her. If he didn't know she was here before, he does now. From the way his face drops, I'm certain this is the moment everything is coming together for him.
"You could kiss me," I say, announcing my presence.
Her pretty brown eyes find mine, her eyes dancing with entertainment. "Why would I do that?"
I shrug and take a step closer. "Let him see. Make it hurt."
She lets out an amused huff. "It wouldn’t hurt him. Clearly, he wasn’t that into me."
Earlier, she was upset. I may not have seen her phone in her hands, but I'm certain those messages are hers, and if that's not enough evidence, the annoyance written all over her face when I walked over was, but now I'm not sure what I see. Her anger seems to have morphed into something else.
"I disagree. If he was stepping out, it’s because he needed his ego stroked. It has nothing to do with you. Standing next to a strong woman isn’t easy," I say in a rare moment of vulnerability. We don't exchange compliments, only underhanded jabs, but even those are starting to feel like a form of love language. She wants to leave her mark on me.
Her eyes narrow as she tries to determine my intent, waiting for a trick because this isn't us right now. "You really want me to kiss you?"
I pull off my gloves slowly, one finger at a time, and feign nonchalance even as my pulse hammers against my ribs. I can't lay all my cards on the table. Not yet. Not when she could still walk away. "Kiss me or don't…" I say, closing the distance between us and placing a hand on either side of her as she sits atop the fence, caging her in. "I just figured I'd offer, you know, since you hugged me the other night."
Her eyebrows shoot up, and fire returns to her eyes. "See, this is why you are so infuriating. I wasn't hugging you, and you know it. I was checking for broken ribs."
"Semantics," I hiss, my voice dropping lower as my eyes drag lazily from her mouth up to dark eyes. The air between us crackles. "You know you can still hate me and kiss me, right?"
The words hang there, suspended in the inches between us. The rise and fall of her chest quickens with each breath, and my jaw clenches. Neither of us moves, both refusing to be the one who breaks first, but the want is written across every tense line of our bodies, in the way her fingers are curled and white-knuckled against the fence rail, and how I haven't backed away despite every instinct inside of me screaming this is dangerous territory.
The silence stretches between us, heavy and charged, and I sigh, leaning back to give her an out. Hell, to give us both an out before I do something we can't take back. But her hands shoot forward and fist in my shirt, yanking me back with a force that catches me off guard. My palms slam against the fence on either side of her hips to catch myself, caging her in.
Our shared breaths mingle, uneven and desperate. Her lips are mere inches from mine, so close I can feel the warmth radiating off her skin and see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat.
