Page 13 of Ride Me Reckless

She followed me inside, her boots echoing on the concrete. I opened the tack room door, and she stepped in, fingers drifting across the clean saddle pads, bridles, and gear neatly hung on pegs.

"Smells the same," she said. "Leather and cedar."

"Still me underneath all the polish."

She smiled faintly, brushing her hand along a folded blanket. "You always liked horses better than people."

"Horses don't pretend," I said. "Don't twist things up."

Her gaze met mine. "Neither did I."

I swallowed that down.

"I've been training a new gelding—Windstorm," I added, needing to shift the air. "Local girl's got big plans. Kid's got potential."

Tessa nodded. "You still helping others chase dreams?"

"Gotta do something with all the money, right?"

She looked around once more, then back out toward Biscuit in the pasture.

"Nice barn," she said. "Feels like…you, but grown up."

"Million-dollar dirt still smells the same."

That got her to laugh, the sound cutting through something I didn't know I'd been holding onto.

For the first time in years, the silence between us didn't ache so bad.

I didn't plan on showing her the loft.

But when she lingered in the tack room, hand trailing over a bridle like she was brushing time itself, something tugged at me. Something old and worn but still stubborn as hell.

"Come on," I said. "There's something else."

She followed me up the narrow wooden stairs to the loft, boots creaking on each step. The afternoon sun slanted through the barn's upper vents, catching dust in the air like flecks of gold.

I crossed to the far corner and pulled back a faded tarp.

There it was. Same battered trunk I'd carried through two moves, a busted shoulder, and one long stretch of forgetting how to breathe without her.

I popped the lid.

Inside: rolled-up rodeo posters with her name splashed across the top in bold lettering. A few old programs with her photo, mid-turn, reins tight in her fist, and fire in her eyes. One newspaper headline—Montana State Finals, 2014. And near the bottom, half-buried in a flannel shirt, a cracked photo frame. Us at nineteen. Young, wild, and stupid enough to think forever was simple.

Tessa didn't say a word. Just knelt beside the trunk and picked up the photo, her thumb tracing the crack that split us clean down the middle.

"You kept all this?" she asked, her voice paper-thin.

I shrugged, crouching beside her. "Wasn't ready to forget."

She blinked fast but didn't look at me. Just stared into the past like it might tell her something she'd missed.

I stepped closer to the loft window, catching a glimpse of the winding road through the trees. "Why do you still have your trailer parked over at your mother's house? Thought you'd be long gone by now," I said quietly. "Didn't expect you to still be around."

Tessa's eyes were fixed on the photo in her hands without giving me an answer.

A beat passed before I asked, softer this time, "You never did say… why'd you name your dragsterReckless?"