Page 39

She's right, same as she usually is. Filling my bed with strangers hasn't made that receipt weigh any less in my glove box. If anything, it's added a layer of shame on top of the ache, two separate things now instead of just the one. And I'm not sure which of them is heavier some nights.

I tell myself I'll stop. I've told myself that before, plenty of times since September. It's never once stuck past the next Friday when somebody decides I look like I need company.

But sitting there in the dark, thinking about my mother's face when she told me about the receipt, about Mason's attempt to help me, I mean it a little more than I have the other times.

I go to sleep telling myself that tomorrow's the day I'll be done thinking about her. For the first time in a long time, I fall asleep fast, but it doesn't last long. My phone rings, and I sleepily answer it. "Hello?"

Dad's voice comes through and demands, "Get out to the east paddock. Now."

"What happened?"

"Lightning spooked the horses. Renegade and Two-Step went straight through the gate trying to get away from it. Mason found them tangled up in what's left of the fence."

My stomach drops straight through the floor. Renegade and Two-Step aren't just horses. They're the two futurity colts I've spent three years building into something worth racing. They're the ones I bred myself off my granddad's old broodmare line. I've poured more money and hope into them than anything else on this ranch that isn't cattle.

I close my eyes, "How bad?"

"Bad enough Mason's already got Roy on the phone. Get out here."

I'm in my truck inside of ninety seconds, driving too fast down the two-track dirt road with rain coming sideways against the windshield. My stomach tightens with dread I haven't felt since the morning after New Year's when I found my empty apartment.

By the time I get to the ranch, the barn's lit up bright, and Roy Boone's already got both horses in cross ties. He runs his hands slowly and carefully down each of their legs while Mason holds Two-Step's halter and murmurs to him in the low, steady voice he uses on anything scared.

Renegade's favoring his left hind so hard, he won't put weight on it at all, and Two-Step's got a gash along his shoulder that's already been cleaned and wrapped. But he’s shifting his weight funny too, like something deeper than the cut is bothering him.

"Talk to me," I say, coming up alongside Roy.

"Renegade's torn a suspensory ligament in that hind leg. Bad one, from the feel of it. He's not racing again this season, maybe not next either, depending how it heals."

"Fuck," I mutter.

Roy straightens up, wiping his hands on a rag hooked through his belt loop, his face grim in the barn lights. "Two-Step's luckier. Soft tissue damage in that shoulder and some bruising through the stifle, but nothing torn clean through. He’ll need aggressive rehab, though. Cold laser, stretching, the whole program. And somebody who actually knows what they're doing with performance horses, not just a vet who shows up once a week and calls it good."

"Whatever they need. I want them both racing again, and I don't care what it costs to get there. Whatever you want to charge me, charge me," I state.

Roy quiets a second. Complication crosses his face.

I don't have the patience to read what that means at one in the morning with rain still hammering the barn roof. "Roy?"

"There's something else I need to tell you, and I hate that it's tonight, on top of all this."

"What?"

"My dad had a heart attack Tuesday. Down in Dallas." He says it plain, the way men say things they haven't fully let themselves feel yet. "He's stable, but he's gonna need somebody around for a good while during recovery. My mother can't manage him and the house both. I've got to move down there. Probably by the end of the weekend."

The news lands sideways. Guilt climbs up under the worry over my horses, because Roy Boone's worked this ranch's rehab program for six years. Standing here and demanding he fix my colts while his own father's laid up in a hospital bed feels like exactly the selfish I need to stop being. I take a breath and genuinely offer, "I'm sorry, Roy. Family comes first. Go take care of him."

"I appreciate that." He glances at Two-Step, still favoring that shoulder, and his expression sharpens back into the professional focus he's always had about this work. "I know a woman who can handle this. She's younger, but she knows all the newest techniques. Surprisingly, she's the best equine rehab tech I've ever worked alongside, bar none, and I've worked with plenty over the years."

"Then get her out here."

"It's not that simple." Roy shakes his head, half smile pulling at his mouth. "She's built her own practice from the ground up over the last year, and it's already thriving. She's got a full client roster three counties wide and a waitlist. Getting her to take on a new client, especially one this far from her usual territory, is going to take more than a phone call and a handshake."

It's not even a question in my mind. "We'll pay her whatever she needs to clear her schedule. I don't care what it runs. These are my horses, Roy. I've got three years and more money than I want to admit tied up in that colt alone, and I'm not losing him or the other one because I was too cheap to bring in the best person for the job. Whatever she charges, we pay it. Whatever it takes to get her out here, we do it."

Roy studies me for a long moment, like he's weighing something he isn't sure he should say. Then nods, and some of the tension eases out of his shoulders. "I'll reach out first thing in the morning. Fair warning, she's going to want to see the horses herself before she commits to anything. She doesn't take a case unless she thinks she can actually help. And I'd offer her one of your guesthouses."

"Fine by me. Tell her to name her price and her schedule, and I'll make it work."