A Photo Finish: A Small Town Second Chance Romance (Gold Rush Ranch Book 2)

I LIE on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. Little rainbows dance across the flat expanse from the crystal prisms hanging in the window. Light and pretty. They remind me of the farmhouse, of Violet.

“Does this actually help? Or is it just something people do in movies?”

“I don’t know.” The stacked bracelets on Trixie’s wrist jangle as she holds a hand up dramatically. “But I will say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen you relaxed enough here to lie down. You can’t even see the door from there.”

“Maybe I’ve stopped caring.”

She cackles a raspy laugh. “Is that what you’re doing? Lying down to die? How very Shakespearean of you. Good thing you drove back in for a session.”

I turn my head to glare at Trixie. Sometimes it’s like she thinks I pay her to mock me. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

She smiles back at me, all the wrinkles around her lips creasing in a way that tell years of tales. “Then by all means, tell me what you intended to say.”

“I need to figure out how to cope with watching the woman I love get up on a horse and ride away from me. I need to know how to be happy for her rather than terrified she’ll never come back.”

“Okay. Is this something that has come up between the two of you? What does Violet say?”

I’m grateful she doesn’t home in on the L word, but it also feels good to admit it. Last night talking to Violet outside, the way she reacted, I don’t know why I waited so long. I’ve loved her from afar for years and never said a thing.

I think she might love me too. She didn’t say it. But I can feel it. What woman would wait around for a fucking mess like me if she didn’t love me?

I think we might love each other.

She makes me feel safe, makes me want to take chances, makes me a better me—and if making someone a better version of themselves just by being there isn’t love in action, then I don’t know what is.

I want to do that for her too.

“This is where I fucked up.”

I chance a look over at Trixie. Her face gives nothing away, and she just sits there, staring at me. She’s not disappointed or joking. She’s just waiting.

“She fell off a horse while I was watching, and I crumbled. I had a full-on attack like I haven’t had in years. In the aftermath, I may have implied I couldn’t be with her because of her job.”

“And what was her response?” There’s no hint of judgment in her voice. For some reason, I was expecting a scolding for being such a self-centered prick. I’m always expecting people to see the worst in me.

“In much kinder words, she said something along the lines of fuck you and get your shit together.”

“I do like this woman.” Trixie adjusts herself in her seat and watches me thoughtfully. I can feel the old crone’s eyes on me. I can hear the wheels turning in her head. “Tell me, what do you like about her?”

“What are we doing? Making a pros and cons list here?”

Trixie gives me a look as if to say, Are you done yet? I sigh, feeling lame waxing poetic about a girl on my shrink’s couch. I’m a walking fucking stereotype.

“Okay. Most of all, I like how driven she is. She hit the road on her own, to carve her own path, and has worked her ass off to get it. I admire that. She’s calm and quiet, soothing, but not a pushover. I don’t feel agitated by her, even when she never stops asking questions. She’s thoughtful. She lets me have my issues and doesn’t look at me like I’m a puppy who’s been kicked a few too many times. She just reroutes, like I’m not an inconvenience to her at all. She’s just . . . She’s like sunshine on my face. Warm and bright. I feel like I’ve been living in the shade, in a dark corner, and rather than dragging me kicking and screaming out of it—like so many people have tried to—she’s just shifted over a little bit to share her light.”

I watch the multicolored dots move across the ceiling from the prisms, the pattern swaying slightly as the crystals do. They’re hypnotic. My voice comes out hoarse, “I don’t want to live in the dark anymore.”

Trixie looks up at the ceiling too, her neck stretching out above the big wooden beads of her necklace. “Pretty, aren’t they?”

I swallow audibly, trying to clear my throat before I say anything. “Very,” is what I manage.

“It’s fitting, you know. Those crystals in the window are called suncatchers.” I blink rapidly. “They’re good feng shui.” I snort, but Trixie ignores me. She knows I’m not into that kind of stuff but carries on anyway. “They take the sun’s energy and cast it around, breaking up negative energy. Positive light. Healing light. Brightness and color.”

I know it’s my turn to respond, but I’m too choked up to do it. I just make a gurgling noise. Caught up in what she’s telling me, without really saying it. What are the chances I message Violet? What are the chances we forge a friendship? What are the chances she ends up working for my family? What are the chances I think of her as the sun while I’m staring up at a fucking suncatcher? Everything about us feels so unlikely, and yet so fated. After all the bad things that have happened to me in my life, it’s hard to wrap my head around the universe shoving a gift like Violet in my face over and over again. But it’s too much to ignore.

“You fell in love with that woman’s drive. Her passion. Her spark for life. Her light. What if, rather than throwing that all away, you became her suncatcher? Take that light and amplify it in every way you can. Bask in it. How wondrous to have found it!” She claps her hands excitedly. “But light is tricky. It slips through your fingers. It’s fleeting. It comes and goes. We never get to possess it; you can’t hold it in your hand. We just get to enjoy it. And if you can figure out a way to just let go and enjoy it, well, Cole, you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”

Lucky. I’ve never considered myself to be lucky. My dad, my leg, my engagement, my mental health. Money doesn’t matter when everything else around you is shit.

I can’t hide the crack in my voice when I respond, “And what if something happens to her?”

“But what if nothing happens to her, and you spend the rest of your life missing out on all that light?”

One voice in my head screams out louder than all the other ones. All the doubting ones. All the hateful ones.

I don’t want to live in the dark anymore.

ONE STEP I need to take with getting my life back is rekindling some sort of relationship with my baby brother. Trixie only confirmed this for me as our conversation went on this morning. Which is why I’m here, sitting on the front step of his cottage while he’s not home, waiting for him to get back. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. Hey, want to sit down and drink a bottled water while I tell you about how I’ve been pretending not to be an amputee for the last six years? Cool, right? Super normal, I know, thanks.

I groan and cross my arms, kicking at a rock before me. I’m frustrated. I’m impatient. I want this all fixed now. Yesterday.

I want Violet back now.

How did I let this get so far out of hand?

I’m ready to jump into berating myself when Billie’s truck pulls up to the house. Great. Just what I need.

“Hey, big bro!” she calls as she hops out, just perpetually in a good mood or something. “Good to see ya.”

I eye her speculatively. I’d have thought Billie was mad at me for the shit I’ve pulled with Violet. But she’s acting totally normal instead. Annoying. She’s acting annoying.

“Do you call me that specifically to annoy me?”

Her brows knit together as she approaches the front porch. “No. I call you that because we’re going to be family, stuck together until we’re old and gray and wrinkly, and I’m going to soften you up eventually. I’m very likeable. You’ll see.”

Her ponytail swings as she stomps past me in her signature Blundstone boots. She enters the cottage saying nothing else to me, leaving me with my thoughts about how she just automatically assumes we’ll be family for the rest of our lives. Like it’s a fact, an unavoidable truth. I wish I had that kind of optimism where permanence is concerned. Nothing feels very permanent to me most of the time.

“Here.” She startles me as she reappears, dropping to my right on the step, and handing me a cold, brown bottle of beer.

I take it from her and trail my thumb across the condensation forming on the outside. “I don’t drink much.”

“Be a lot cooler if you did.”

I snort. “Dazed and confused. That’s me these days for sure.”

She chuckles and takes a swig of her own beer, staring out at DD’s paddock. The black horse is munching on his hay, swishing his tail happily. A multimillion-dollar pet. I shake my head.

“Beer isn’t healthy,” I continue, trying to qualify my statement—and mostly just change the subject.

She outright laughs now, waving her hand over my body. “Neither is whatever you’re doing to your blood pressure right now.”

A sigh whooshes from my mouth, and I take a deep gulp of the beer. She’s right. Billie is perceptive like that. She’s smart. People smart. The kind of smart they don’t teach you in school. I remember setting Vaughn straight when he almost blew it with her. She knows right from wrong, and she taught my little brother a lesson in that.

I like them together.

“You must think I’m a real dick.”

“Nope.” She still doesn’t look my way. Thoughtful eyes stare at the hills beyond the paddock, the ones that lead to the barn—to Violet. “I think you’re doing the best you can with the shit hand life dealt you. Just like the rest of us.”

Okay. That’s not what I was expecting. But then, I know Billie has her own share of family drama. Her own set of daddy issues to contend with. Maybe we’re more kindred than I ever realized.

She drinks again, looking thoughtful. “The shitty thing is, Violet’s out of your league.” I just grunt. And then drink. Because she’s not wrong about that either. “The good thing is, she’s too fucking angelic to see it that way.” She inclines her head toward me and holds her beer up in a silent cheer. “So, you’ve got that working for ya.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, sis.” I figure if she’s going to dish it out, I might as well give it right back.

Her lips tip up in a small, satisfied smile. “What you need to do is level up. It’s not about Violet. It’s about you believing you’re worthy of her.”

“You know I pay someone to help me with these types of revelations.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Okay. Cash or check is fine.”

I chuckle. I can’t help it. I hate to admit it, but Billie is funny.

“What would make you feel worthy of her?”

“That’s a great fucking question. I . . . don’t know.”

“What’s holding you back? This?” She taps her finger to my temple. “Or this?” She taps my prosthetic.

I pause, turning my head slowly to stare back at her. Bright feline eyes regard me inquisitively. “How did you know about that?”

“If you’re asking if Violet told me, the answer is no. But I watch people and horses for a living. I think I see things that other people don’t. Body language. Ticks. Clues. Is a horse scared? Uncomfortable? Where can I diagnose a problem? I’m constantly assessing. And you . . . you hide it well. But your gait is just a little off. You always wear long pants and high socks, no matter the temperature. You massage your leg without even noticing. I put it together a while ago.”

“And you just haven’t said anything?”

Her nose wrinkles up in confusion. “Why would I say something? First, it doesn’t matter to me. Second, it’s not my business.”

“Does Vaughn know?”

“Nope. You once told him that my secret was a conversation to be had between me and him. And my feelings on this are the same. That’s for the two of you to talk about.”

My chest caves in a little. “Do you think he’ll forgive me?”

She shakes her head absently, looking back at her horse. “Forgive you for what? He’s your little brother. He loves you.”

My eyes sting with the simplicity of her statement. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. The most natural. I hate how badly I’ve failed Vaughn.

“What about Violet?”

“Same question: for what? You plan on breaking her heart?”

I bristle. The thought of causing Violet pain causes me pain instead, like a heavy punch to the gut. Shrapnel to the leg. “Not if I can help it,” I grumble.

“Okay, good. So, what’s the hold up?”

I tap my temple, mimicking the way she did it before. “Everyone thinks I’m fucked up from the war. But I’ve worked on that. I’ve got that part under control, for the most part. It’s the sight of my dad falling to his death on the track that haunts me. It’s what I see every time I watch Violet race. It’s what I worry about every day when I know she’s up on a horse. What if it happens to her, too? It’s the question that plays on repeat in my mind. I want to be her biggest fan in one breath, and in the next, I don’t want her on a horse at all. Which I know is a dick thing to admit, but it’s the truth. I need to figure out a way around that.”

Billie spins the bottle in her hands. She looks like she’s completely ignoring me, and she’s quiet for long enough that I seriously question if she even heard me blabbing about my feelings.

“Okay. So . . . are you afraid of losing Violet, or are you afraid of horses?”

“I’m . . . ” My knee-jerk reaction is to say that of course I’m not afraid of horses. I grew up around them. But something stops me as I mull over the question. “No one has ever asked me that before.” Am I? Afraid of horses? Does my fear stem from not understanding what she does more than my fear of losing her? Fuck. “Can I be both? I used to ride with my dad, and I wasn’t scared then, but I don’t know anymore.”

“Yeah, man. You can be whatever you want to be. Except her number one fan, because that’s me. You’ll have to fight me for it. But if you don’t fight me for it, some other guy will. Is the risk of her maybe, possibly, improbably, one day dying worth having to watch that? The family, the wedding, the babies?” She groans. “Ugh. Violet will probably make the cutest babies.”

What. The. Fuck? Leave it to Billie to drop the most devastating emotional truth bombs possible. I feel my cheeks heat and my heart pound. That blood pressure? It’s right back up where it started. “No fucking way. No chance. That can’t happen.”

Billie smiles and leans her elbows back on the step behind her, looking so damn smug. “Good. Ready to put in some work? Because I have a plan.”

A Billie plan? I am equal parts invigorated and terrified. As she lays it all out, that terror turns to dread. I’m not sure I’m up to it, but I’m sure as shit going to try. She only stops talking when Vaughn pulls up in his stupid sports car.

“Everything okay? Did someone die?” he asks, looking concerned as he steps out quickly.

I guess from his perspective, it’s weird that Billie and I would have a beer together when we’re usually like water and oil.

“Everything is great, except for the fact you continue to insist on driving that car out here. You look like a total tool. A hot tool, but still,” Billie quips back quickly, earning a sly grin and brow waggle from my brother.

As he approaches us, Billie stands and hands me her empty beer bottle. “I need to, uh . . . go talk to Mira about the construction on the clinic.”

Bullshit. She’s clearing out so that I have to talk to Vaughn. She saunters up to him, ignoring the suspicious look on his face—apparently, he’s not buying it either—and plants a quick kiss on his lips before slapping his ass and continuing to her truck. These two are perfect for each other.

“Hey, man,” he says to me as he approaches. “Want another beer?”

I see my micro and macro counts go out the window, but it’s not every day you have this conversation with your little brother.

“Sure. Why the fuck not?”