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west

J ackson was the shadow I didn’t want. I had a feeling admitting my one failed suicide attempt had him fucking spooked in light of everything. I couldn’t blame him for that one, especially after telling him my mother had done it. I was already an alcoholic asshole like my father. Was it hard to believe that I’d follow in my mother’s footsteps too?

Not that I blamed her. It was the only way out for her. I adjusted the leather band on my wrist, running my thumb over the old thing as I thought about her. It was all I had left to remember her by.

“Four weeks,” Jackson was saying into the phone. I did my best to ignore him, but I was also curious. It wasn’t my fucking fault he was having his conversations this goddamn close to me. While I dealt with hooves and horseshoes, he dealt with Amy the pain-in-the-ass agent—his words, not mine. “You have four weeks to find a new goddamn sponsor. Oh, come on! It can’t be that fucking hard.”

He paced up and down the fence line while she said something .

“I’m a goddamn ray of fucking sunshine,” he snapped. I barked out a laugh, unable to stop myself. Jackson paused pacing to glare at me, but I just shrugged. “I’m not old, Amy—I’m not that fucking old.”

I made a sound like I disagreed with him, only prompting his scowl to deepen. Honestly, I didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, but I liked fucking with him.

‘ You’re not helping, ’ Jackson mouthed, and I shrugged. I wasn’t trying.

“There ain’t no fucking way I’m letting Lexington Farms sponsor me,” he snapped. That caught my interest. I knew Lexington Farms. They’d been our biggest competitors since before Jackson and I were fucking born. “Well, you can tell him I said to go suck a—don’t you call me by full name, woman!”

I made a face. I did not want to be her.

“No, I ain’t got time for a fucking meeting tonight. I have a goddamn date,” he said. I cocked a brow, and he gestured between us suggestively. Eh, why the hell not? I nodded. “That’s right. I have a fucking date, and no, I ain’t telling you shit about it. Some things I can keep to myself, Amy.”

“I think he just needs to fucking fire Amy,” I whispered to Bailey as I rubbed my hands down her snout. She let out a huff. “Yeah, you too?”

“There ain’t no way in hell I’m letting Lexington Farms be my goddamn sponsor,” Jackson damn near shouted at me as he hung up the call. The rise in his voice set me on edge, but I kept that shit to myself. He had enough problems on his plate. “Who the hell does Rex think he is anyhow? He’s taken most of my fucking business at this point and now this? Do I look fucking stupid to you?”

“No—”

“No, I fucking don’t,” he raged over me. Yeah, was just going to keep my mouth shut until he was done. “I have four fucking weeks—four fucking weeks, West—before the goddamn season starts. I ain’t got the time to deal with his bullshit. It’s the twenty-second! Is this the next fucking thing he’s going to do to me? Get inside my head and fuck with my career? Was my ranch not enough?”

Panic lanced through me. I heard him wrong. That was all. I’d heard him wrong. There was no way it was the twenty-second.

“It’s what?” I stared at him, breathing hard. I had to have heard the date wrong. “What’s the date? ”

“May,” he repeated as if annoyed that I even asked, “twenty-second.”

Oh…

He kept ranting about something or some bullshit, but I couldn’t hear him. All the blood rushed to my head as my chest tightened painfully.

I’d forgotten the date…

How the fuck had I forgotten the date?

By the time I walked into Lenny’s that night, I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel a fucking thing—physically or emotionally. I could hear the fucking screaming though. Over and over inside my head as my demons clawed their way through me.

I’d fucking forgotten the date.

That was a good thing—it should’ve been a good thing. I was so fucking settled into my situation at the ranch that I’d fucking forgotten. But somehow it wasn’t a good thing. All it did was trigger something deep inside me all that much harder.

I was fucking dying. I barely managed to drag my ass through my daily routine, and I sure as hell didn’t do a good job at any of it. The world swam around me—slow as fuck and painfully loud. My skin crawled, and I couldn’t focus for the life of me.

And the fucking screaming. Every time I closed my eyes it was right there, ripping me apart little by little.

I just wanted to drown.

To forget it all.

To just float away.

I grabbed the stool farthest from Lenny as he glared at me. Yeah, I was back, motherfucker. I threw cash on the bar with hopes that it’d be enough to keep Lenny quiet.

It was.

He swiped up the cash and left a cold beer in its place. It worked in my favor that he fucking hated me. There wasn’t a damn person in the world I wanted to talk to right now.

I just wanted to silence the demons in my head .

That first sip hit the back of my throat, bringing a flood of relief. Any tiny part of me that would’ve felt guilty about breaking my sobriety washed away with it.

I downed that fucking glass—chasing something I couldn’t explain.

Cash.

Beer.

Drink.

Cash.

Beer.

Drink.

Each glass went down faster than the others until my demons were drowning alongside me.