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dani

“Dani, I don’t know what we would do without you.” I chuckle at my boss’s declaration.

Aveline Montgomery is the co-owner of Belle’s Bakery in downtown Acton, Colorado. Though “downtown” was putting it strongly, considering it is the only part of town that really exists, and though I technically live in Fall Springs, both towns are basically the same.

“You don’t have to wonder.” Yet , I think as I head out the door. Aveline knows that I’m an equine therapist just waiting for the right job to come along, but she also knows that, for the time being, my options are extremely limited.

I hop in my old pickup truck and make my way to the Trevors’ place. I missed his session with Lady this morning, but I understood why he needed to get his work in early this morning .

With the heat we were experiencing, it was already approaching the eighties by the time eight in the morning arrived. Working your horses in mid to high-nineties temps wasn’t good for anyone.

I pull my truck down the long, winding road with not a soul in sight.

I don’t intend to see anyone. I don’t have another session with Graham for a couple of days to give him a chance to work through whatever emotions riding brought up.

I frown at the thought of him having such a negative reaction to riding.

When we were kids, riding was as natural and as necessary as breathing. I wasn’t close to the Trevors boys until middle school hit when Cade started riding his mom’s mare. Then, because we both had that common interest and were both at the same shows all the time, we’d formed a bond that had naturally stretched to my cousins and Graham. We were all friends.

His mom was the reason he rode at all. Maybe it was mother’s intuition, but she knew something about his skills before even he did.

He had ridden plenty before he started showing. With his family owning and running the ranch for generations, it was natural for all the kids to ride.

I remember overhearing Cade’s parents talking to my folks about it once. Saying that Sadie wasn’t some dumb luck purchase like they’d made everyone believe, but that Donna had done her research and knew Cade could do well with her.

To think that as soon as she went downhill, he stopped competing altogether made my heart hurt.

It’s not what his mom would have wanted.

It’s not your place anymore, Dani.

I sigh at the thought as I park in front of the big red barn and hop out, walking toward the barn. It was just after ten and nearly ninety-five degrees out.

I pat the back of my neck, grateful I was still in a tank, shorts, and sneakers from work this morning. I throw my hair up into a high ponytail as I approach the barn.

I smile as I hear a whinny when I enter. “Hey, pretty girl.” I walk up to my mare and give her head a good scratch. She leans into my hand and rubs. “Oh, did you miss me?”

Another whinny comes from my left, and I see General pushing against the bars of the stall, trying to get attention. I laugh and reach my hands into the bars, simultaneously rubbing them both down.

The stalls are designed to have windows where the horses can pop their heads out away from each other to keep them from biting one another, but I’m pretty confident General would prefer to be able to fully reach me at the moment.

“You’re going to spoil him.” The voice behind me makes me jump, and I turn to see Cade leaning against the door of his tack room. His shirt is sweat-drenched and dirty, his ball cap looks wet, and I can imagine him running it under the sink to wet it down, letting it cool his head.

I look away when I realize I’m staring. “I didn’t know you were in here,” I reply dumbly, not able to come up with anything else to say. We only spoke briefly yesterday morning, and I knew he was trying to work toward something, a friendship maybe, and I wasn’t in the same frame of mind.

I don’t think there is anything more terrifying to me than being Cade Trevors’s friend.

“How was she today?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “She really doesn’t like that flag against the wall.”

I let my expression drop, along with my shoulders, and I look back at Lady. “Didn’t go well, huh?”

“Not yet. I still have some things I’d like to try,” he tells me, taking a few steps forward as he nears me, his spurs clanking against the ground. I can feel the tension between us and will it away, wishing I could just ignore it. Ignore him, ignore our past, ignore all the hurt that we’ve felt. “You’re sure you don’t know what happened?”

I look over at him sharply, my glare becoming prominent and my wall that was threatening to crumble moments before built back to its sturdy foundation. “What are you asking?”

“It’s just…” He rubs a hand over his beard that graces his jaw. I’ve never seen him with such a big beard, but it’s just another sign of our distance, of how little we know each other now. Physically, I can see his changes while mine just fester around my chest cavity. “If I knew the root cause of the problem, I’d have a better chance at fixing it.”

“If I knew, I would have told you.” I shrug. “The trainer I had her with before?—”

“Smith.”

I glare at him. “Who—” Realization dawns, and I sigh, shaking my head at the beams in the roof of the barn. “Logan.”

“Yeah,” he admits, not ashamed that he was caught gossiping in the least. Typical Cade .

“Right, well…” I shrug. “When she was at his place, I couldn’t be there for every single session. I had work.”

His expression softens, and I look away. “I understand.”

“Then I started to make it more of a point to be there. I noticed her acting a little funny, like, I don’t know, less happy?” I frown as I look at my mare. I run a hand over her head, and she leans into me. “Her demeanor was off whenever I’d come to see her, and it was always after he rode her. Then I heard another client whispering about how Tommy was upping doses of anxiety meds before training sessions.”

I see Cade’s jaw clench, and he shakes his head. “For training at home?”

I nod solemnly. “Yeah, so I realized then why she was acting so funny. Why she never seemed to have energy or perk up when I showed up.” I scratch her nose, my eyes heating with both angry and sad tears. I feel like I let her down.

“He must have used quite a bit for her to still be feeling the effects once you arrived.”

“That’s what I assumed too.” I shake my head. My horse being drugged unnecessarily makes my blood boil .

It isn’t illegal to give a horse medication for anxiety, but it wasn’t exactly ethical to overdo it and not even mention it to the owner. “He let us store our trailers at his place if we trained with him, so I went and hooked mine up, told him I was leaving and left. I never went back.”

“Good, Tommy is a no-good piece of shit,” he spits, unable to mask his anger toward the other man. “I don’t know why you didn’t go to someone else.”

Feeling defensive and already vulnerable, I glare back at Cade. “I didn’t have a choice. I needed someone local, and he was there.”

“Still! He has a bad reputation.”

“I didn’t realize how bad it was!” I raise my voice, stepping away from Lady so I don’t spook her unnecessarily. “It wasn’t like I could count on you!”

Cade flinches and takes a step back. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” I agree. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t come and ask for your help, that I didn’t feel welcome here, to a place I used to think of as home.” I pause to catch my breath and shove away the angry tears that threaten to take hold of me. “That we were so fucking destroyed that nothing will ever repair what was done.” I don’t mean to bring it up, but the words have been waiting to be unleashed for years, waiting for a time when I could finally say them. I may have been terrified—sick at the thought—of confronting him before, but there he was, accusing me of not doing the right thing and standing there like he’s never fucked up, and I can’t hold back any longer.

“Dani,” he starts, coming toward me, his fists clenching at his sides. “I was in a bad place.”

I bark out a sarcastic laugh. “You think I don’t know that? I loved you, CT! And you threw away our entire future without a blink or a second thought for how that would feel for me. I am…” I close my eyes, my hand going to my chest while I gather a breath. “So sorry that you lost your mom, CT. I loved Donna, she was a second mom to me, but it doesn’t excuse the way you treated me. You acted like I was not the woman you loved, I was an object you could discard without a thought.”

When I look into his eyes, I see them glisten with unshed tears, and a sharp pain pierces through my chest. I glance away.

I can’t do this.

Unable to handle it any longer, I spin around and head back toward my truck, the sound of him calling my name melts away in the heat of the sun, and I don’t let myself falter at the sadness in his tone.

He made his bed.

Now we both have to lie in it.

There was only one thing I knew for sure. I couldn’t handle another heartbreak from Cade Trevors.