Chapter Five
Layla
FRIDAY MORNING I SKIPPEDbreakfast.
I'd been up since five. Dressed, boots on, lenses cleaned, memory cards sorted. I'd wiped down the dresser and the little table and the windowsill, which had never been wiped in the two years I'd lived here and didn't need it now. I was keeping my hands busy because my hands were the only part of me cooperating.
The rest of me was still standing at the corner of the garden wall with my camera raised, watching a picture develop that I couldn't undevelop.
I poured coffee from the pot on my dresser and sat in the chair by the window. The yard was bright and still, the dust baking white under a sky that had no use for clouds. I could hear guests heading for the Lodge, the clatter of the dining hall gearing up, a horse calling from the stable yard. A normal Friday. The ranch didn't know anything had changed.
I'd looked at the shot twelve times. I'd zoomed in. I'd checked the angle, the light, the spatial relationship between his body and hers, because that was what I did. I read frames. And everytime I read this one it told me the same thing. His hand on her arm. Her body against his. A composition so clean it didn't leave room for a second interpretation.
Wednesday night he'd stood in the Saloon and told me I was beautiful and I'd believed him with my whole body. Two days later I was sitting in my cabin with cold coffee, running the same frame over and over, and the woman pressed against him wasn't me.
I caught my reflection above the dresser. Freckles and tangled hair. My curves hidden under a mint blouse I'd grabbed because it was closest. I looked the same as always, which had been fine until forty-eight hours ago when I'd let someone convince me it was better than fine.
I picked up my camera bag and headed for the stables. Horses were honest. They either liked you or they stepped on your foot, and both options were easier to read than Wade Bishop.
The stable yard was quiet. Most of the horses were already out for the morning trail ride, and the barn smelled of hay and old leather and the particular dusty sweetness of a building that had been absorbing Texas summers for decades. I found Bonnie in her stall, the old bay mare who'd been at Wild Vista longer than I had, and let myself in. She flicked an ear in my direction without lifting her head from the hay net, which by Bonnie’s standards counted as rolling out the welcome mat.
“Hey, girl.” I set my camera bag on the hay bale outside the stall and picked up the brush from the hook. Bonnie stood still while I worked, her coat smooth under my hands, her breathing slow and even. I fell into the rhythm of it. Long strokes, shoulder to flank, the dust catching the light from the high window. This was the part of ranch life I never got tired of. The physical, uncomplicated reality of caring for an animal who asked nothing from you except that you show up.
I was on my third pass down Bonnie’s right side when I heard the heels.
Heels. Clicking on the concrete aisle between the stalls with the deliberate tempo of someone who had never walked into a barn by accident.
Crystal Harmon appeared at the stall door in a white sundress and wedge sandals and a smile so warm it could have been on a greeting card. She had a to-go cup of coffee in one hand and her blonde hair was curled and pinned in a way that suggested forty-five minutes with a mirror. At seven-thirty in the morning. In a barn.
“There you are,” she said, as if we’d had plans. “I was looking for you. You weren’t at breakfast and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The concern in her voice was flawless. Soft, genuine, sisterly. If I hadn’t watched her assess me from scarf to boots in under a second yesterday with the clinical speed of a woman sorting laundry, I might have believed it.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just getting an early start.”
“Of course you are. You work so hard.” She leaned on the stall door, casual, holding her coffee at chin height. Bonnie swung her head toward the visitor and Crystal took a half step back from the mare’s nose with a smile that didn’t waver. “I just — I feel terrible about yesterday. I know that must have been awkward for you.”
I kept brushing. Long strokes. Shoulder to flank.
“I mean, walking up and seeing me with Wade like that.” She shook her head with a rueful little sigh. “I tried to talk to him about it, actually. I told him it wasn’t fair to you. A sweet girl like you, filling in with the band, getting swept up in the attention. I get it. I’ve been there. Wade is very charming when he wants to be.”
The brush stopped. I didn’t mean to stop it. My hand just quit moving.
“He does this,” Crystal said. Her voice dropped to a confiding register, intimate and sorry, the voice of a woman sharing a hard truth because she cared. “Every small venue, every guest ranch, every little festival gig. There’s always a girl. Someone sweet, someone local. He makes her feel special for a few days and then the bus leaves and she goes back to her regular life. I’ve watched it happen so many times I stopped counting.”
Bonnie shifted her weight and nudged my hip. I started brushing again.
“I’m not saying it to be cruel,” Crystal added. She touched her collarbone. “I’m saying it because I’ve been that girl. I know what it feels like when Wade Bishop turns all of that” — she gestured vaguely, encompassing the concept of Wade — “on you. It’s a lot. And it’s real while it’s happening. It’s just not real after.”
She waited. I could feel her waiting, the way you feel a lens pointed at you. She wanted me to crack, or cry, or ask questions. She wanted engagement. Something she could work with.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said. My voice was steady. My hands were steady. I kept brushing Bonnie and did not look at Crystal Harmon. It was the hardest thing I’d done all week, and I’d sung on a stage.
“Of course, sweetie.” She patted the stall door twice, a little dismissive rhythm, and her heels clicked back down the aisle and out into the bright morning.
I stood in the stall with my hand flat on Bonnie’s warm side. The mare turned her head and lipped at my elbow. Outside, a mockingbird was singing. The heat pressed through the high windows and the dust hung pale in the shafts of light.
Every word Crystal said had landed exactly where she’d aimed it. Not because she was convincing. Because I’d alreadyconvicted him before she opened her mouth. I had the evidence. I’d shot it myself.
