Rein In (Willow Bay Stables Book 3)

by Anne Jolin

“Lift with your legs, not your back,” I encouraged him as he wobbled back and forth on the spot.

  He scrunched up his nose and started to bend his knees, but instead of bending, they buckled under the weight of the grain, and he fell splat on the paving stones.

  “Idiot.” Josh laughed, and I looked up to see him assessing us with vague and mortified disinterest.

  Kneeling down, I looked at the boy-man sprawled out underneath the feedbag and shook my head. “Are you okay?”

  There was some mumbling before his head poked out from the side of the bag. “Right as rain, baby girl.” He grinned.

  I laughed and took pity on him. Standing, I used my foot and rolled the bag off his chest and onto the ground beside him.

  “Need a hand?” I asked, offering mine.

  He lay there for a moment longer before reaching up and interlocking his fingers with mine. I hauled him up into the air, shocked that he actually weighed so little, probably less than I did.

  “I’m Glitch,” he said, still holding on to my hand.

  Shaking his in return, I smiled. “I’m Aurora. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He let my hand go and dusted some of the dirt from his behind. “I’ve been in worse tumbles than that, baby girl.”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Josh deadpanned sarcastically.

  Flicking my eyes over to him, I scowled. “Five minutes and lunch is over.”

  He grunted and went back to scribbling furiously on the paper.

  “Well, he’s a real peach.” Glitch scrunched up his nose in Josh’s direction and stuck out his tongue.

  I bit back a laugh. “You should see him on a bad day.”

  Glitch shuddered and shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Wiping the sweat from my brow, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My eyes lifted above Glitch’s head to see a man leaning against the outside of the barn.

  I’d never seen him before.

  He was tall, his black jeans so ripped that nearly both his entire knees were exposed. The faded Harvard shirt he wore was cut off at the sleeves and dipped low enough on the sides that you could see some of his chest. He moved smoothly, his arms crossing over his chest, and my heart pounded a little in my head.

  Stubble ran across his hard jaw, and the lean muscles in his arms flexed in the heat. It was hot out, yet he didn’t look sweaty at all. His black hair was still wet and messy, like he’d just had a shower, and his eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviators.

  I felt my pulse skitter in my throat.

  “Who is that?” I blurted.

  Following my line of sight, Glitch looked over his shoulder.

  “Oh, that’s Crow.” His mouth tipped up in the corner on a half-grin.

  “His name is Crow?” I asked, baffled.

  The man bent one of his legs, resting his black motorcycle boot flat on the wall and cocked his head to the side.

  He was definitely studying us.

  Glitch rested his forearms on the edge of my pickup bed and laughed. “’Bout the same as my mom gave me the name Glitch.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So why do they call him Crow?”

  For some reason, I couldn’t help but need to know. The man was a little like an accident on the freeway, you were scared to look but you did anyway.

  I hoped that Glitch wouldn’t read too much into my nosiness.

  “Probably on account of the fact that he don’t talk much.” Glitch shrugged. “That, and he’s only ever wearin’ black and lurkin’ around in the shadows.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured.

  Glitch’s eyes moved from the man in black to me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  His full lips curled up in one corner. It wasn’t a smile or interest, but it was something. Then he pushed off from the wall, and he was gone again.

  Black had never looked hotter in spring than it did on him.

  STILLNESS, IT’S A BITCH.

  You think after eight years behind bars, you’d learn to be still.

  You don’t.

  It’s like a nightmare on repeat, and when you wake up, you realize the world moved on without you.

  I’ve been here almost two weeks and I still don’t feel normal. I’m not sure I’ll ever get the feeling of normalcy back in my bones. When you spend that long locked up, you learn to live that way, in that society of regimented regime and a bedtime. That becomes your normal. So much so that integrating back into the world afterwards seems nearly impossible.

  You forget what life is like for everyone else.

  I’m twenty-five.

  I have no bank account. I have no vehicle. I have no friends. I have no real home.

  My life is not normal by any of the defined standards.

  I’m a freak.

  What I have is a job provided to me through court-sanctioned parole and someone else’s roof above my head. They say most people go to jail because they are a danger to society or they need to be taught a lesson, and the average person would think those years spent in a parallel universe are hard. Some might even call it hell. What they don’t know is that the real hell begins when you get out.

  Guilt twitched in my bones. Anxiety rattled in my flesh.

  Sundays belonged to me. They were my day off, but I could never seem to sit still. This would be the second Sunday in a row I found myself wandering the grounds.

  Glitch, the only other parolee who lived in The Shed along with me for the last two weeks, was shuttling two men toward me across the parking lot.

  One was an in-shape black guy who looked to be maybe early thirties. The other was a rough-cut, trailer-park looking kid who I put at about the same age as Glitch.

  “Crow,” Glitch hollered at me.

  I nodded and quit the forward momentum of my boots. They were the only thing from my original life that I still wore every day. I’d rummaged through the boxes of clothes Grant had left out and found a few shirts and a second pair of jeans that fit. The shirts weren’t so bad once I took a pair of scissors to them, and the jeans stayed up without a belt, which worked for me.

  “This here is Fun Bobby.” Glitch pointed to the black guy in a tight blue shirt.

  The man reached out his hand, and I shook it.

  “And this is—” Glitch started to introduce the trailer park boy but he cut him off.

  “Name’s Dirt.” He half-smiled, and I noticed two of his teeth were missing.

  He didn’t reach for my hand, so I didn’t offer mine.

  “These are the final two parolees for the summer,” Glitch said with a grin.

  He was about as harmless as a house cat, though I once read somewhere that the average house cat would devour you whole if you died before anyone ever found the body.

  There wasn’t a lot to read in the prison library sometimes.

  From what I’d been told, Glitch had held up a liquor store a few years back with his little brother, and it wasn’t the first time, either. The judge had made an example out of them both. Far as I knew, his brother was still locked up.

  “What kind of name is Glitch anyway?” Fun Bobby smirked.

  “They call me that on account of me bein’ a fuck-up.” Glitch shrugged. “Couldn’t even rob a liquor store without gettin’ caught.”

  “You’re the glitch in a plan,” Fun Bobby finished for him.

  Glitch shrugged again. “Somethin’ like that.”

  Turns out, Fun Bobby had been locked up on distribution charges. He clocked the cop who arrested him and got an extra two years added on to his sentence for assaulting a police officer.

  Dirt was a resident in the pen since his early teens on multiple accounts of grand theft auto. He hit someone crossing the street in the last car he boosted, got attempted manslaughter added to his jacket.

  Turns out I hadn’t been wrong after all; Glitch was the housecat in this bullshit band of misfits.

  “What’s his story?” Dirt looked at me, his Edmonton Oilers jersey looked like it was busti
ng at the seams. He was a big guy.

  Glitch had taken to answering for me over the last two weeks. “Crow don’t talk much...”

  He was interrupted by the sound of a convertible pulling into the space next to us. The speakers were blaring some kind of racket that made my brain feel like I was going to have a seizure.

  Some guy folded out from behind the wheel, and Dirt nearly choked on his chew at the sight of him.

  He looked like an asshole with his pink sweater folded over his shoulders and one of those Polo shirts that looked like it belonged to a rowing club. When he rounded the hood of the car, Fun Bobby’s upper lip curled in disgust. I fought back a grin. This ass hat was wearing loafers.

  “Morning, baby girl,” Glitch hollered over the sound of the car stereo.

  I let my eyes follow his and land on her blonde hair in the passenger seat. It was light, almost white in the sun, and so long that it fell well past her shoulders.

  The loafer guy held open her door and long legs stretched into my line of vision. She wore those cut-off jean shorts, the kind a girl in a country song would wear, but hers were more tasteful, covering the round curves of her ass completely but not hiding them either.

  Stretched over her chest was the token white volunteer shirt. She was here to work.

  When she stood in front of him, she slung a backpack over her shoulder and waved in our direction.

  If you’d ever seen an angel after a bad dream, it felt like that in the air when she smiled.

  He pulled her into his chest by her upper arm and dove into her mouth.

  My chest rumbled, and Glitch widened his eyes in my direction.

  I hadn’t seen or felt a woman since I was a teenager, and it almost hurt my heart to look at her. She was the picture of all the years that I gave away. She was a breathing memory of everything I missed out on.

  Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I let loafers live his dream against her lips.

  What did I have against the puke anyway? Let him be happy.

  With idle hands and nervous feet, I moseyed to the place that still didn’t feel like home.

  There were some books in The Shed. Not many, but a few. I tried reading, but my mind became restless and again fought against the stillness. There was some hatred burned in my gut that just wouldn’t leave me be in this place. It nagged and cut at my back until finally my resolve caved, and I found my boots moving to walk the grounds for the second time this morning.

  I was the only parolee with Sunday as a day off in the rotation. Each of us was given different schedules. My guess was that it was because it did not allow us much time to converse outside of work. It was looked down upon for fellows to be friends in this world.

  Wandering through the trees, the sound of two voices trickled through the leaves.

  “Heels down, Josh,” the female voice said with authority and encouragement.

  There was some male grumbling from what sounded like a boy, and I paused at the clearing when I saw them.

  “Heels down, shoulders back,” the blonde girl said to the boy.

  She was standing in the center of the riding arena, and the boy who I’d seen her with before was bouncing around on the back of a horse in circles around her.

  He looked miserable.

  I fought back a grin as I watched them.

  “You’re going to fall off if you don’t keep your heels down,” she told him.

  Yanking back on his reins, the horse slowed to a stop, and the boy clung to the saddle as he slid down to the ground.

  “What are you doing, Josh?” she asked him. She was frustrated, but she hid it well in the tone of her voice. “We still have twenty minutes left of your lesson.”

  He ignored her, leaving the horse standing in the ring as he stormed toward the gate.

  “Josh!” Her pitch rose as she called after him.

  Now, just a few paces from his clear exit, he stopped and spun on his heels to face her. “You are such a bitch!” he roared.

  The blood in my veins began to move slow and hot.

  “Josh, come on,” she pleaded with him. “You’re so close to getting it.”

  He took a step toward her and bared his teeth. “This is stupid and you’re a bitch.”

  My frame exploded from the clearing, muscles and bones battling with each other.

  “Josh, please.” She sighed.

  She was patient and kind. More than the boy deserved.

  “No!” he screamed.

  She moved toward him and he jumped back like she was the lick of a flame and he was dry paper.

  The boy, Josh, clocked me but she didn’t.

  My boots met the railing of the riding arena, and I hauled my body over it, slamming into the dirt on the other side. He looked at me and took a step backward. I shook my head and he stopped.

  Her long legs extended into a pair of brown cowboy boots, and her long hair was pulled into a ponytail at the top of her head. Just as I settled to a stop behind her, she followed Josh’s gaze and her body trembled with a tremor when it landed on me.

  “Uh, hi…” she stuttered. “Crow, right? Hi.”

  She was looking at me, eyes bluer than any water I’d seen in any dream or read in any book, but my eyes were on the boy.

  He scoffed, but it was fake, only bravado that a man like me could tell in the way his body flinched with the sound.

  She took a step away from me and toward the boy.

  “Apologize,” I growled.

  Her step faltered at the sound of my voice. and the boy shrunk in size.

  He looked from me to her then back to me, and a sound rumbled in my throat when he did.

  “Sorry, Aurora,” the boy blurted out.

  The sound of blood pumping in my ears reversed to a dull ache, and I nodded at him. In the corner of my eye, I saw her lips part but I turned away from them.

  My boots found the path in which they’d come from, and I left them behind me.

  It was even harder to find stillness after that. The flicker of remorse tugged at my consciousness, and I grew more anxious with each lap of the grounds. I’d lost a few hours reading, but as the clock snuck up on the evening, I found myself in the parking lot off the barn just in time to see that convertible pull in.

  She ran to it, tossing her backpack in the back and pulling her hair up on top of her head, the same way it had been this afternoon. Her boyfriend rested an arm on the top of the door and flicked his hand up in my direction.

  “Later, bud,” he hollered over the sound of his stereo.

  I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses until they bounced off the back of my skull and didn’t move a muscle.

  He was the kind of boy a man like me wiped his ass with.

  Aurora, the boy Josh had called her, climbed into the passenger seat. I could feel her eyes on me. They burned over my skin like the sun did. It made me restless for the shadows and yet still, I watch as the loafer guy assaulted her mouth before she’d even buckled up.

  She kissed him back and my gut twisted.

  I watched him reverse quickly, her laughing in the wind at the surprise of the engine. They seemed happy, I guess, but as I watched his taillights, she watched me in the side mirror.

  Seeing her go felt a little like watching the sun set, and I didn’t know why.

  “I REALLY WOULD PREFER THAT you stay the night, Aurora,” Grant insisted.

  I frowned into the darkening evening outside the window to his office. It was the final Sunday in May and just prior to the end of my volunteer day, there was a power surge and the entire property went dark.

  “The power is out for miles,” he continued.

  It was a three-hour drive back home to Willow Bay, and with the entire city in the dark, I had to admit, it would be a long and traffic-ridden drive.

  Grant was leaning back in the chair behind his desk with a concerned frown so deep that I worried I was causing him to have more wrinkles.

  “Let me call my dad and see what he says.” I cov
ered his hand with mine on the desk. “If he thinks it’s best, then I’ll stay.”

  Grant nodded and I pulled the iPhone from the back pocket of my jeans. Pulling up his number on speed dial, I waited and he answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, AJ.” My father’s rough voice came over the line.

  He was the only one who called me that. It was short for my first and middle name Aurora Jane, and I adored that it was a special thing between us.

  “Hey, Daddy.” I smiled into the receiver. I was nearly a grown woman, yet there was very little that made me smile as wide as the sound of my father’s voice. “The power’s out for miles out this way,” I told him.

  “I heard it on the radio just now. Do you need me to come on out and pick you up?” he asked, and my heart swelled.

  My father was a good man, the best.

  “That’s sort of why I called.” I looked up at Grant, who was waiting patiently. “Grant suggested I stay the night in the main house and drive home when it’s light in the morning.”

  There was a hum and a grunt on the other end of the line before my father’s voice started again. “I’d have to say I’m in agreement with Grant.” I gave Grant the thumbs up, and he smiled. “Tell the old man thank you, and give us a call when you’re on your way back in the morning.”

  “Will do.” I shook my head as I laughed. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too, AJ,” he answered, followed by a click.

  “He called me old, didn’t he?” Grant frowned.

  I bit my lip and shoved the phone back in my pocket. “Nope,” I lied.

  “You’re a bad liar, my dear.” He shook his head, a wide smile on his face. “I’ll call up to the house and have Taylor prepare the guest room a few days ahead of schedule.

  Taylor was Grant’s housekeeper and long-time friend. She was also the woman putting together the suite I’d be staying in when I started my new position next week. That and she made a mean apple crisp. One which I’d begged her countless times to give me the recipe to, but she’d never budged.

  “Thank you, Grant.”

  He waved me off in the manor that indicated he still had some work to do, so I stepped out of the office and shut the door behind me. It was closing in on nine o’clock in the evening. The other volunteers and youth had long since gone. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be the last person there, aside from Grant and of course now, the four men who lived on the property.