“Not yet. You can't put an unstable animal in the chutes. Especially not for a debut event with green handlers and crowd noise and cameras. Someone could get hurt.” He crossed his arms. “Roman's been with her since yesterday afternoon.”
In the pen, the horse had slowed. She turned toward Roman and faced him, her head low and nostrils wide, like she was getting a read on him. Roman didn't move toward her. He shifted his weight slightly, dropped one shoulder, and waited.
“Is he good?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“He’s the best I've ever seen with a difficult animal.” Slade kept his gaze trained on the horse. “He waits until they decide to come to him. Doesn't force anything. Takes longer, but it sticks.”
The horse took one step toward Roman. Then another.
Roman turned his hand over, his palm up, and let her close the rest of the distance herself. Something tugged in my chest as I watched him. He was good at this. Not just capable, but completely at ease in a way that made it hard to look anywhere else.
I thought about last night. How he’d crouched next to my car in the dark, moving with the same unhurried certainty. Then I thought about the way he'd looked at me. Heat coiled low in my belly.
I pulled my attention back to Slade before he noticed me studying Roman. “What’s the backup plan if Roman can’t get her to settle down?”
“We’ll pull her and find a replacement.” Slade pushed off the fence. “But Roman usually finds a way. That's why I called him in.”
Across the grounds, Roman clipped the lead rope to the mare's halter in one smooth motion. She stood and let him.
I took notes. But my pen moved slower than usual, and I wasn't entirely sure what I was actually trying to record.
ROMAN
The mare had been in the pen since dawn. Hours later, I stood at the rail with my arms loose, watching her make long, restless circles. She was a good-looking animal. Well-muscled, the kind that photographs well and checks every box on a supplier's form. Sixteen hands, five years old, two seasons of documented rodeo conditioning, good temperament noted twice in the evaluation report.
The evaluation report had to be wrong. It wasn’t just one thing that led me to that conclusion. It was an accumulation of little things, like the way she tracked movement at the far fence before it was close enough to matter, the set of her ears when nothing had changed, and the way she held still when she stopped circling. That stillness wasn't her taking a rest. It was her holding her breath.
She wasn't a difficult horse. She was a horse that had learned to expect the wrong thing from people, and the difference mattered more than most handlers ever bothered to understand.
I stayed at the rail. Didn't step in yet.
The morning was cold enough I could see her breath in short bursts. I let her burn through the first hour on her own terms and watched her tell me things the paperwork hadn't. She favored her left side on turns. Spooked at shadows before sound. And when she felt cornered, she swung her hindquarters toward the fence, which told me someone had crowded her before and ignored every warning she gave.
Slade's boots on the dry ground registered somewhere behind me. I didn't turn. She was at the edge of something, that point just before a horse either escalates or decides to come down, and pulling my attention now would cost me at least twenty minutes of reset.
The second set of footsteps was lighter. They stopped beside Slade, quiet for a beat, and I felt her attention land on me before she said a word. I knew who it was without turning around by the way my skin heated under her attention.
The mare completed her circle, cut toward the center, and stopped. She held her head low, her nostrils working, and looked straight at me. That was what I'd been waiting for.
“Hey, Roman.” Slade stopped at the rail about six feet to my left. “I brought someone to see the operation.”
The mare took one step toward me. Then she stopped and reassessed. I kept my hand loose at my side and let her work through it.
“How long has this one been in rotation?” I asked.
“The supplier said two seasons. She was pulled off the circuit last spring, reconditioned over the summer, and cleared for reinstatement in the fall.”
“Cleared by who?” I kept my voice low so I didn’t spook the mare.
Slade paused. “The supplier.”
She took another step toward me. I turned my palm out, kept it low, and waited. The tension she carried was obvious. She had her neck slightly elevated even with her head dipped, like she wanted to relax but hadn't decided if she was allowed to. I let her smell the back of my hand. She pulled back once, then came forward again.
Behind my back, I could feel Rachel watching me. Not the way Slade watched — running timelines, thinking about lineup slots. She was watching the process. Taking it apart while it was still happening.
The mare pressed her nose against my knuckles and exhaled. I ran my hand along her neck, felt her muscles jump, then slowly release. She didn't step back. We were making progress.
“Did she react to the chute?” I asked Slade.
