SWNOVELS The Front Runner: Chapter 3
Death sucks. This is something I already knew, but watching something so young and innocent die is different. It’s just wrong. It makes me feel almost nauseous. All the prepping, all the money, all the knowledge. None of it matters when the universe shits on you.
I stand and pat the sweet broodmare, whose eyes are fluttering shut with exhaustion. “You did good, pretty girl,” I say as I slide a hand down her face. “You did good.”
And then I walk woodenly to the bathroom to wash some of the blood off myself. I’m a goddamn mess. I look like Carrie on prom night, and as much as I hate to admit it, I feel like I could cry.
I haven’t cried in years. I’ve become far too closed-off for that. And I’m sure as hell not going to do it in front of Dr. Thorne. It would probably just give her something to run back to all her annoying friends with. Something to mock me about.
I’m not stupid. I know they think I’m terrible. I’m not oblivious to the fact that there are almost certainly jokes made at my expense around Gold Rush Ranch. Did I resort to questionable tactics to buy their championship-winning stallion out from underneath them? Yes. Did I hire a jockey who may have set out to harm their horse and rider? Yes. Did he also turn out to be a sleazy predator? Yes. But I had no knowledge that he was going to do that. And I never would have instructed him to do so. I might not describe myself as a “good man,” but I’m not morally corrupt enough to actually hurt someone. Plus, I’m not finished with him. He’ll get what’s coming to him if it’s the last thing I do. There’s a special place reserved in hell for men who hurt women, and I plan to ensure he gets there. At any rate, the last thing I need to do is give them ammunition to take me down when all I want is to succeed in this business.
Making my way to the top has been my singular focus for years now. I’ve done what it takes to get ahead. To establish myself. I promised my mother on her deathbed I would take her dashed dreams and make them a reality. So here I am, trying my best and not all that concerned about making friends along the way.
I watch the dark pink water swirl down the drain until it runs clear before drying myself off and heading back to the stall. Dr. Thorne is in there tending to Farrah, the mare who just lost her foal. She’s hooked up to fluids and who knows what else. Mira has wrapped the filly in a blanket and moved her out of the stall.
“Is she going to be okay?” I ask as I lean on the doorjamb.
Mira’s dark, fathomless eyes shoot up to mine. She looks serious. She looks tired. Blue smudges beneath her eyes mar her beautiful face. Mira Thorne is alluring, and I’m not immune to it. Black hair and similarly dark, almond-shaped eyes. A slight smirk always on her lips, like she thinks she’s smarter than everyone around her.
And she just might be right. Though I’m sure I could give her a run for her money if I wanted to, but I don’t. Out in Ruby Creek, the pickings for veterinarians are slim, and Dr. Mira Thorne is damn good at her job.
“Yeah. I’m just going to get her hydrated, get some antibiotics through the system, just in case. We’ll have to keep a close eye on her for the next while.”
I just nod, feeling the sadness of the lost filly like a weighted blanket across my chest. I feel responsible. Like I could have done more. Should have hired better people. Should have called Mira sooner. Should have had my own on-site veterinarian. Should have done something.
Like she can see my turmoil, Mira looks at me, her expression perfectly sincere. No trace of that smirk she’s usually giving me. “Hey, you did everything you could. More than most people would. This isn’t on you.”
In moments like this, I feel distinctly out of my element. I wasn’t raised on a farm, and I don’t have a background in this industry. I just waltzed in with a checkbook and a keen mind and set myself to learning, as well as hiring and buying the best. Maybe she’s just being nice. Maybe I could have done more.
I watch Mira work quietly and gently beside the mare, mumbling things to her I can’t quite make out. She has a way with the animals that I admire. I could use a little of her gentleness sometimes. I recognize the way I’ve gone about doing things has rubbed some people the wrong way. But I don’t concern myself with their opinions. Instead, I think of my mother, who, after years of protecting me, got taken out by the asshole she married. The one who got off on knocking her around. I think of her, hooked up to tubes and wires after that plane crash, telling me she never should have left Ruby Creek.
A place I’d never heard of.
Telling me she should have stuck around and trained racehorses.
A part of her life I’ve never known.
Then she dropped a life-altering bomb on me.
And then she died.
He died, too, but he took my mom with him. In his stupid, small private plane, the kind that rich people have a bad habit of dying on. One final “fuck you” to the son he never liked. She never could quite leave him, so the plane crash took them both. So bitter and so sweet all at once. And I missed out on so many years with her while she shipped me off to private schools to keep me safe and away from him, my supposed dad.
She was battered and bruised, and so damn injured. With her hand in my hand, she took her last breath, and I promised to bring her back to Ruby Creek. A small town on the other side of the world. And then with all the vast amounts of cash that asshole left behind, I set out to making her dying dreams come true.
Life isn’t fair, and neither am I. Especially not when I have a promise to fulfill.
I storm through the barn and grab a shovel on my way out the door. It’s dark and cold, and it’s raining again, but I don’t care. I’m a mess already.
Shovel in hand, I head down toward the small lake on my property. The one that separates my house from this barn.
The one where I spread my mother’s ashes. And beneath the big weeping willow to the east of the water, I dig a hole.
This place is about to become a cemetery for everyone I can’t manage to keep safe.
“Stefan, sit down.”
I barely hear her silky voice over the rush of the rain falling. I shake my head and keep throwing dirt back into the hole. When I retrieved the foal’s body, Mira looked at me sadly. I don’t want her pity. I don’t want her to look at me like that. I just want to bury the foal and then carry on with my day like this shitty fucking night never even happened.
I freeze when I feel her hand come to rest on my back again, her slender fingers laying across the expanse between my shoulders, heating the skin beneath through my soaked shirt.
Her touch is warm. But her voice is not. “Sit. Down.”
“I can’t. I need to finish filling this hole.”
Her other hand shoots out and wraps around the wooden handle of the shovel. “No. It’s my turn.”
I stand up straight now and peer down at her. “This isn’t what I pay you for.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but yanks on the shovel. “Don’t I know it. But I’m going to do it. So back off.”
“You look tired,” I say, looking her up and down, her stern face peeking out from beneath the hood of her raincoat.
Her gaze scans me, and that signature smirk touches the edges of her lips. “I guess I’m in good company.” I get distracted by her mouth for just long enough that she yanks the shovel right out of my hands. I expect some sassy comment, but she just turns around and starts shovelling scoops of heavy, wet soil into the big hole.
My feet root to the ground as I watch her work, misty rain falling around us as the sun comes up over the Cascades, casting a blue glow across the valley. It’s eerie and beautiful all at once, and suddenly I feel just as tired as Mira accused me of looking.
I sink to the ground right where I am, not caring about how wet or muddy I might get. I’m past that point. It feels like I’m having an out-of-body experience—that’s how tired and stunned I am.
“Why are you helping me?” I blurt out to the woman in front of me, who I could have sworn is completely indifferent to me but is going out of her way to help me right now. At the very least, her friends hate me. Helping me would probably be a crime in their books.
She doesn’t look up. The shovel clinks and rasps against the small pebbles in the pile of silty dirt. It smells fresh and earthy between the soil, and the lake, and the rain.
“Because you needed help,” she eventually responds.
“What are all your friends going to say about you doing this?”
She stops now, jams the shovel into the ground, and puts one booted foot on top of its edge as she looks down at me. Intelligent eyes and pink cheeks, her chest rises and falls with the exertion of digging. “Not sure. I don’t usually ask their permission to do what I think is right.”
I scoff and stare at the upturned tip of her nose, the way a droplet of water drips off it. Leave it to the woman who saves lives for a living to be all morally superior when I’m so clearly morally gray. I wonder what she really thinks of me.
“You know what they say about assuming, Dalca. And you definitely shouldn’t make assumptions about me.” Mira glares at me so hard that I drop my eyes. I’m not in the mood to face off with anyone right now. So, I sit, lost in thought, getting soaked to the bone while my veterinarian finishes covering the grave. I don’t even bother interrupting her to take the shovel back. She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who needs my help.
Plus, I’m probably no gentleman as far as she’s concerned.
When she’s done, she drops the shovel on the ground and comes to stand over me. Her warm breath puffs out in front of her as she speaks. “I’ll be back later today to check on Farrah. You should get some sleep.”
“Are those the doctor’s orders?” My tone is condescending—it’s kind of my default mode, I sometimes talk that way without even meaning to. I sound like a spoiled, rich kid with mommy issues even though I’m thirty-four years old. Adorable.
She puts her hands on her hips and quirks one shapely brow in my direction, scolding me silently. “Never believed you were quite the dick people make you out to be. But when you talk like that, I can see it.”
I clench my jaw, working my teeth against each other, internally berating myself. When I finally look up to offer her an apology, she’s walking back toward her Gold Rush Ranch truck, hips swaying with a gait that defies how exhausted she must be right now.
I should have thanked her. She helped me. In the dark. In the rain. And I acted like a sullen little prick.
Her friends call me Dalca the Dick, but right now is the first time I’ve actually felt like one.