Page 15 of Saddle and Scent (Saddlebrush Ridge #1)

THE WEIGHT OF LETTING GO

~CALLUM~

T he truck's engine turns over on the third try, coughing to life like it's got a personal vendetta against the rain.

I ease it out of the muddy rut, wheels spinning before finding purchase, and the whole time I can't stop thinking about how she looked standing there—soaked through, defiant as hell, wearing my flannel like armor against the world.

My Rebel Bell, even if she doesn't know that's what I've called her in my head for the better part of a decade.

The wipers screech across the windshield, fighting a losing battle against the downpour, but I barely notice.

I don't make it more than a hundred yards down the drive before my brain does that thing where it replays every nanosecond of the last ten minutes in high-def, slow motion, refusing to let me focus on the present crisis for even a second.

All I can see is the way that soaked white tank top molded itself to Juniper Bell’s body, the cotton gone translucent as a moth’s wing, hugging every curve with indecent abandon and leaving not a single line of her soft, stubborn frame to the imagination.

Her nipples— don’t think about them, don’t —but of course I do, the way they pressed out, tight and unashamed beneath the fabric, daring anyone with a pulse to look and then deal with the consequences.

She didn’t flinch from it, either. That was the thing about Bell: even when the world tried to drown her out, she stood her ground and let herself be seen.

I remember the moment I first caught sight of her out in the downpour, standing in the open like a challenge while the sky opened up and the wind whipped her hair back from her face.

It was that silver-violet ombré job she started in high school and never once gave up on, not even when the PTA moms and the ranch hands and the town pastor all agreed it made her look like a goddamn comic book villain instead of a proper Omega.

She never cared about being a proper Omega, though.

She was always more wolf than lamb, more thunder than rain, and in that instant, with the mustangs breaking wild all around us, she looked like she belonged to the storm itself.

I’d been closer to those mustangs than I’d planned, and when the first crack of thunder sent them tearing down the fence line, it was pure muscle memory that had me wheeling my horse around and yelling for Beckett and Wes to fan out and cut off the lead mare.

We were all too busy wrangling to notice what the chaos was doing to Bell, stranded by her rustbucket of a truck with nothing between her and two thousand pounds of raw horseflesh but a coil of stubbornness and a rain-slick, boot-sucking pasture.

I should’ve been watching her.

I should’ve been ready.

Instead, by the time I’d bullied the herd back through the open gate and looked up, she was already out there, bare-armed and determined, eyes flashing like green glass under that furious sky.

That was what undid me. Not just the body, shivering and wet and so delicate it begged for protection, but the look she gave those horses—a look that said she’d go toe to toe with any beast, man or mustang, if it meant getting her way.

That was the Bell I remembered.

Not the one who tiptoed around town with her chin tucked down and her voice barely above a whisper, pretending not to hear the snickers and the comments about her bloodline and her “temperament.” I missed the fighter.

The loudmouth. The girl who’d once thrown a wrench at my head for suggesting she couldn’t rebuild an engine better than I could.

Even now, after years of distance and all the careful lines we’d drawn, that version of her was still somewhere inside—buried under grief and grit and a double helping of pride, but there.

So when she caught me staring, when she squared her shoulders and cocked that eyebrow like she’d just dared me to say something about her state of undress, I knew I was in trouble.

And I was.

I’m still in trouble, because with nothing but my own goddamn thoughts for company, the memory of her is so sharp it physically hurts.

I can feel every inch of her in my hands if I close my eyes—her skin, hot and slick where I’d caught her elbow to keep her from slipping in the mud, the bones of her wrist bird-fragile but so stubbornly strong she’d nearly yanked herself out of my grip.

I can smell her, too, and that’s the real problem.

Adrenaline and rain and that unique sweeter aroma underneath, something wild that’s always hovered at the edge of her signature scent.

She used to wear it like perfume, a dare for any Alpha within a mile radius.

Now, it’s buried under layers of self-control, but every so often, it breaks through, and it makes me insane.

No point pretending otherwise.

So despite the fact that my jeans are currently doing their best to cut off circulation to my entire lower half, I can’t stop thinking about how close I came to losing it out there.

Or how close I came to pressing her against the cold metal of her rundown truck, and seeing if she’d still look at me with that same challenge in her eyes when I kissed her breathless.

But that’s not how we do things. Not anymore. Not after the way we ended.

What’s worse, I can’t even blame the rut or the Alpha bullshit that’s supposed to make us predictable. This isn’t a chemical reaction.

This is just me, helplessly, pathetically hooked on the one person I can’t have.

I squeeze the steering wheel harder and try to shake it off, but it doesn’t help.

I’m still wired, still dying to speed up this fucker so I can chase her up that hill to her new sanctuary home and haul her inside by the waist, wrap her in every flannel I own, and just once, god, just once, let her see how much I want her.

But she’s made it clear— without words, but loud as a gunshot —that she doesn’t want that.

We fucked up the first time and she isn’t allowing just anyone to get back into her saving grace.

Which means I get to sit here and stew in my own misery, doomed to relive every second of the last hour on infinite loop, until either the storm passes or I finally lose my goddamn mind.

Fuck.

I grip the steering wheel harder, knuckles white, and force myself to focus on the road.

But focusing is a joke when her scent is still clinging to the cab—that intoxicating blend of honeysuckle and frustration, undercut with something darker, something that screams need even as she fights tooth and nail against it.

Ten years.

It's been ten fucking years since we pushed her out of this town, and the whispers still haven't died.

That's Saddlebrush for you—memories longer than the winter, grudges nursed like newborns.

When you leave, you're marked. Branded a traitor, an outsider, someone who thought they were too good for the roots that made them.

But Juniper?

She was never just another townie with wanderlust. She was the only Omega in a town full of Alphas who didn't know how to keep their hands to themselves.

Keeping her here would've been like leaving a lamb in a wolf den and expecting it to end well.

We knew what would happen—hell, we were already living it, the three of us circling her like satellites, unable to stay away but knowing that claiming her would destroy everything.

So we did what we thought was right. We pushed. Hard.

And she ran.

The truck lurches over a pothole, jarring me back to the present.

Rain hammers the roof, a steady percussion that matches the throbbing in my temples. I navigate the familiar roads by muscle memory alone, every turn etched into my bones from years of late-night drives trying to outrun the ghost of her.

The thing is, I'd imagined her return a thousand different ways.

Sometimes she came back with a pack of city Alphas, all pressed suits and soft hands, the kind who'd worship the ground she walked on without understanding the first thing about what made her wild.

Other times, she'd have kids clinging to her legs, proof positive that we'd fucked up our chance at something real.

Each scenario was its own special brand of torture, but at least in those fantasies, she was happy.

Whole. Complete without us.

Instead, she came back alone, walls so high you'd need a fucking ladder just to see over them. And the worst part? She's dimmed somehow.

That fire that used to burn so bright it could light up the whole valley—it's still there, but banked, controlled, like she's afraid of what happens if she lets it rage.

I hate it.

Hate the careful way she measures her words now, the way she bites back responses that would've flown free before.

My Rebel Bell used to be loud, opinionated, ready to fight the whole world if it meant standing up for what she believed in.

She'd argue with me about everything from the proper way to shoe a horse to whether the town council was full of corruption — it was, still is.

Those arguments usually ended with us pressed against the barn wall, her hands fisted in my shirt, both of us breathing hard for reasons that had nothing to do with anger.

But that was before…

Before we realized what we were doing to her.

Until that last night when everything went to hell.

The memory hits like a sucker punch, vivid and merciless.

Her face in the moonlight, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.

The way her voice cracked when she asked why we kept pushing her away, pulling her close only to shove her back again.

And me, standing there like a goddamn coward, telling her it was for her own good.

That she needed to leave, find a life somewhere that wasn't poisoned by small-town politics and Alpha posturing.

I'd watched her chin come up, that stubborn tilt that meant she was about to tell me exactly where I could shove my opinions.

But instead, she'd just nodded.

Turned around and walked away without another word.

By morning, she was gone…