Page 22 of Roulette Rodeo (Jackknife Ridge Ranch #1)

GHOSTS IN THE SMOKE

~RED~

T he darkness isn't really darkness—it's smoke.

Thick and sweet, curling through my consciousness like fingers through hair, pulling me deeper into something that isn't quite sleep but isn't quite waking either. My body feels heavy, weighted down by invisible chains or maybe just exhaustion so complete that gravity has tripled its hold on me.

But my mind...my mind is floating.

The first scent hits like a memory made manifest: cherries, leather and gun oil, rain on hot concrete.

Shiloh.

The smoke shifts, solidifies, and suddenly I'm standing in what looks like a military barracks.

Everything is precise, ordered, beds made with corners sharp enough to cut.

But there's dust on everything, like this place has been abandoned for years.

Or maybe it's just a memory of a place that no longer exists.

I can feel him here, even though I can't see him.

His presence fills the space like atmospheric pressure before a storm.

There's a photograph on one of the footlockers—four men in tactical gear, faces obscured by shadow and distance, but I know he's one of them.

The one standing slightly apart, watching the perimeter even in a photo meant for memories.

This is loneliness, I realize.

This scent, this space—it's what isolation smells like when you've chosen it as armor.

The smoke swirls again, and the barracks dissolves.

New scent: ink and electricity, ozone and copper.

This has to be one of the others.

I'm in what looks like a cage—no, a fighting ring.

The kind hidden in warehouse basements where men go to prove things that can't be proven in daylight.

Blood stains the canvas despite someone's attempt to clean it.

The ropes are frayed, repaired, frayed again.

This is a place where violence is currency and pain is punctuation.

But there's art here too. Graffiti covers the walls, beautiful and savage, depicting angels falling and demons rising and everything in between. One piece draws my eye: a heart wrapped in barbed wire, bleeding liquid gold. Underneath, someone has written "TALON" in sharp, aggressive strokes.

The amber-eyed one who vibrated with barely contained energy.

This space smells like rage given form, but also like creativity born from destruction. Like someone who breaks things because it's the only way he knows how to create.

The smoke pulls me away before I can look closer.

Next: old books and whiskey, cedar and secrets.

A library materializes around me, but not a public one. This is private, personal, filled with medical texts and case files and newspapers with headlines about missing persons. Red strings connect push-pins on a massive board, creating a web of connections that makes my head spin trying to follow.

There's a desk in the corner, and on it, a half-finished letter that begins "Dear—" before trailing off into nothing.

Corwin. The hazel-eyed gentle giant.

This space feels like guilt. Like someone trying to solve puzzles that have no solution, fix things that are already broken. The kind of persistent hope that's almost more tragic than despair.

The smoke thickens, and I know what's coming before the scent hits.

Expensive cologne failing to mask disappointment. Ice and ash and something bitter, like medicine you have to take but hate the taste of.

Rafe.

The room that forms around me is all sharp edges and cold beauty.

A office maybe, or a boardroom, everything in shades of grey and blue like color has been bled from the world.

There's a portrait on the wall—a blonde woman with sad eyes and a smile that doesn't reach them.

Fresh roses sit beneath it, but they're already dying, petals falling like tears.

I turn to look closer and catch my reflection in the polished surface of a table.

But it's not me—not adult me.

I'm eight years old again, drowning in a dress my mother bought before she got sick, my hair in pigtails tied with ribbons that match nothing because I did them myself. My child-face stares back, confused and a little scared, and when I open my mouth to speak, a child's voice emerges:

"Why are you so sad?"

The room doesn't answer, but I can feel Rafe here, feel his presence like winter wind through cracked windows.

He's watching from somewhere, always watching , never participating.

The perpetual outsider in his own life.

I turn away from my reflection, and the cold room dissolves into sunshine.

The transition is so sudden it makes me gasp—or eight-year-old me gasps, the sound high and sweet like I'd forgotten children could sound.

I'm standing in an open field, wildflowers up to my child-waist, and the air smells like summer and hay and home .

Not the home I'd known with my father, full of bourbon and strange women and broken promises.

This smells like a field of paradise I'd imagined, the one from my mother's stories about her childhood.

In the distance, a ranch sprawls across the horizon. Not fancy, not modern, but solid and real with white fences and red barns and horses grazing in the afternoon sun.

And there, standing between me and the ranch, is my mother.

She's wearing a white sundress that catches the breeze, her auburn hair— the same color as mine —loose and flowing around her shoulders. But most importantly, impossibly, she's healthy .

No hollow cheeks, no bruises from IVs, no grey pallor of illness eating her from the inside.

She's whole,vibrant, and alive.

"MOMMY!"

The squeal tears from my throat without thought, and my little legs are running before I make the decision to move. I'm flying across the field, flowers parting before me, my dress billowing behind me like wings.

She drops to her knees just as I reach her, arms open, and I crash into her with all the force an eight-year-old can muster.

She smells like vanilla, lavender, and sweet cherries — like a hug of safety, love, and everything good in the world.

"My sweet girl," she murmurs into my hair as she stands, lifting me with her.

I weigh nothing in her arms—or maybe she's just strong here, in this place that can't be real but feels more real than anything has in years.

She spins us in a circle, and I shriek with laughter, my arms tight around her neck, my face buried in her shoulder.

Is this what love feels like when it doesn't hurt?

When she stops spinning, I lean back to look at her, my small hands framing her face like I need to make sure she's really there.

"You're not sick, Mommy," I whisper, wonder coloring every word.

Her smile is radiant, the kind I only saw in photographs from before I was born.

"I'm all better here, sweetheart."

All better here . Wherever here is.

This place that smells like her childhood and looks like every dream she ever shared with me about the life she'd wanted for us.

I look around, taking in the ranch, the horses, the endless sky that seems bluer than any sky has a right to be.

"Where are we?" I point at the ranch with one chubby child-finger. "Is that where we live now?"

"This is Grandpa's," she says, setting me down but keeping hold of my hand. "The last time we get to come here."

"Why?" I demand, because eight-year-old me has no filter, no careful control. "Why is it the last time?"

Her face does something complicated—sad but trying not to be, the expression I remember from when she'd try to explain why Daddy wasn't coming to my school plays.

"Well, Daddy wants us close to him and not so far. He wants to make sure we're safe."

I huff, the sound ridiculously cute coming from my child-body but filled with very adult frustration.

"Daddy doesn't care. We should run away here. Just you and me, Mommy. We could ride horses and grow flowers and never have to smell bourbon again."

The last part shouldn't make sense—eight-year-old me shouldn't know what bourbon smells like; shouldn't associate it with danger.

Mother pulls me into another hug, her hand stroking my hair the way she used to when I couldn't sleep.

"I'm not strong enough to do that," she whispers into my pigtails.

I pull back, indignant on her behalf even at eight years old.

"Mommy is the strongest omega ever! Why not run? Daddy doesn't even love us anymore."

The words tumble out, harsh truths in a child's voice.

Her eyes fill with tears she's trying not to let fall, and seeing them makes my own eyes burn.

"That's not true—" she starts.

"It is!" I insist, shaking my head hard enough to make my pigtails whip around.

"I know Daddy doesn't care. He brings weird ladies to the house when you're in the hospital and calls you a w.

..wench?" I stumble over the word, not quite getting it right but knowing it's something mean.

"I don't know what it means, but it makes him laugh in a mean way. "

The sadness on her face deepens, but she tries to smile.

Always trying to protect me from truths I already knew.

"I'm just...not allowed," she says finally, and there's defeat in it.

"But here!" I throw my hands up, gesturing at the ranch, the field, the impossible blue sky. "Here you're allowed, right? This is Grandpa's ranch. You can do whatever you want here!"

This time her smile is genuine, warm like summer sunshine.

"I guess I can," she admits, and kisses my forehead. The touch feels like a blessing, like protection, like goodbye.

"Maybe he'll feel pity for me and I'll get to leave it for you, sweetheart."

I pout, my bottom lip pushing out in that way that always made her laugh.

"Why would you leave it for me, Mommy? You'll be here with me. Forever and ever, right?"

She laughs, but it's the kind of laugh that's half sob.

"You're right," she says, even though we both know that it's a lie wrapped in love. "Forever and ever."

She hugs me again, tighter this time, like she's trying to memorize the feeling. Her voice drops to a whisper, urgent and desperate: