Maybe that was Caleb's intention.
It wasn't a secret that he would stop at nothing to win. To beat whatever foe was in his arena — even if it was an invisible one. Or worse — imaginary. He saw people as tools, easily used and replaced. Ryan had to believe he had a reason for this. Something she wasn't seeing. Something bigger. It was too hard to accept that he just hated her that much that he would risk losing everything they had worked so hard to build this year in order to ruin her life.
She took a deep breath and watched Jesse load her bag into the trunk. Then she faced him.
“I refuse to believe this is some comically macabre goodbye,” she said, Caleb entering her peripherals. Her eyes flicked to him and back to Jesse. “This is strategy,” she whispered. “It has to be.”
Jesse nodded subtly, his chest rising and falling with his controlled and steady breathing. “Call me when you get there.”
She smiled sadly. “I will.”
“I'm gonna hug you now. Please don't fight it.”
Ryan didn't have a chance to. Jesse's long arms engulfed her, pressing her against his warmth and his strength. Her sinuses began to burn and she slipped her arms around his waist.
It wasn't as terrifying or invasive as she feared it would be. Probably because she cared for him and he cared for her. And he needed this. Way more than she did.
She closed her eyes, pressing her face deeper into his chest. “Please be okay,” she whispered knowing he couldn't hear her but needing to declare her prayer out loud.
***
Jesse stared after the car long after it had disappeared and the onlookers had dispersed. A hole had opened up right through the middle of him and he wasn't sure how best to proceed.
He glanced down at the book still in his hand and sniffed a humorless chuckle.
White Fang. That girl.
When this whole shitty thing had started, he'd had an arrogant desire to lead her into a better understanding of herself. He'd been so incredibly ignorant. What did he know? Better yet, what could he possibly teach her?
Instead they'd ended up teaching each other. And really, that was the better way.
What was not better, was having them separated. It was asinine. They were an incredible team and their record showed it.
Jesse slipped the paperback into his back pocket and turned on a heel. His eyes landed on Caleb, who was watching him with shadowed interest. Before Jesse could approach him, Caleb closed the gap and stopped a foot away.
“They know she knows, Hart,” Caleb murmured, lips barely moving.
Jesse's spine straightened as those words crashed into him. Caleb broke eye contact to glance around their surroundings.
“So this was to protect her?” Jesse asked through gritted teeth.
Caleb's eyes flashed as they returned to him. “I always protect what's mine.”
“Right.” Jesse's frown deepened and his body coiled tight. Coming from Caleb, those words could mean several different things. Did he, finally, see Ryan as a person who belonged to him? Or was this simply another dismissal of her importance and Caleb's selfish paranoia getting rid of her once and for all?
***
Ryan wasn't going to sit back and be a wounded bird during this. So she got fired. People were fired every day. What concerned her was the timing — and Caleb's insistence she leave immediately.
She had an hour to wait for her flight to board. While she waited, she tried to gather all of her thoughts and apply them in some sort of logical order. Then her phone rang. Not recognizing the number, she answered it cautiously.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Ms. Zacherson?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, this is Trudy from Chase Visa. I'm calling in regards to your outstanding balance and ask if you wanted to pay for that now to bring your account current?”
“What?” Ryan asked, shaking her head and looking down at the carpet, trying to concentrate. “I don't have a Chase Visa.”
“Is this Ryan Zacherson at...” Trudy rattled off Ryan's address and phone number even as Ryan felt her faith in humanity sink to the lowest it had been in since Thanksgiving.
“Yes, that's me,” she replied quietly.
“I'm showing the balance due is from an authorized card under Brenda Spore. Is she an authorized user of your account?”
“No.”
Trudy seemed to think that over for a moment. Or maybe she was just scrolling through the script looking for her next response.
“Okay, Ms. Zacherson, if you would like to report fraudulent activity on your account...”
Add credit card fraud to the long list of things her relatives took part in. By the time she got off the phone with Chase, Ryan was boarding her flight. What a fun mess her life was in at the moment.
On the plane she opened her laptop and the file where she was keeping her notes, deciding maybe if she wrote for a little while, it might help relax her.
She also checked her email.
She frowned in confusion as her inbox displayed more than ten emails in a row from Annie. She clicked on the most recent one.
Ryan-
Why you haven't responded to me is beyond the pale. The only thing I will accept at this point is actual death and/or decapitation.
I'm going to assume you're in Aruba celebrating your best seller status.
Also, I have finished the edits on the second Folding Chair series book.
Please write me back.
Annie
Ryan's stomach did a little flip and she clicked out of the email and went to Annie's first one that came in about a week ago. There she found the links to the articles and the lists and the posts all about her debut novel — Broken Hearts and Party Fouls.
Sullivan Summers had made a best seller list. Two major ones.
“Is this the part where I throw up?” she asked out loud. The man sitting beside her shifted nervously away in his seat. She didn't care.
She was a bestselling author.
Who'd just been fired and was in danger of paying thousands of dollars for a credit card she didn't know she had. But still.
People were reading her book... people were liking her book.
What. The. Hell?
Big day for Ryan.
twenty-three
“Don't worry about how long the drive is. It will take the time that it takes. It's not about the time.”
Keeneland Race Course
Lexington, KY
Bluegrass Stakes
April
Jesse punched the stopwatch with his thumb and stared at the time.
Fuck, his colt was fast.
And ready.
More than ready for this week's race. The last one before the Derby.
Truthfully, they didn't need to run him in this one, he'd acquired more than enough points to qualify. But Jesse knew his colt. And he stayed hungry the more often he raced. A lot of other teams had pulled their qualified colts and fillies in order to avoid the risk of injury before the big race.
But not Team Zacherson.
And that had been at Jesse's recommendation.
It had been three weeks since Ryan had left the road and Jesse missed her every single day. But Caleb had been considerably more relaxed since her departure. Not coincidentally. Whether or not Caleb had made her leave to protect her, he had become much more reasonable. He listened to Jesse, he took Doc's requests seriously. He kept his nose out of the training and let the team do what the team needed to do.
He acted like a normal human being. A respectable owner.
The first week of Ryan's absence had been the hardest. On both him and Red. They both had a couple of emotional outbursts before becoming withdrawn and sullen. Until Jesse decided to let Red just run during his workouts. No restrictions, no pulling back, no strategy.
That changed things.
For the most part.
One thing remained — Red withheld affection. He'd lost a bit of his sweetness. It had left with Ryan
, no doubt.
It was all right, though. He still had his heart and his desire to win.
Jesse slid his phone out of his pocket and sent a text to Ryan with Red's updated time. He kept her in the loop, regardless of what Caleb would otherwise want. Jesse needed that connection with her, even if it had to be from miles away.
She was the kind of friend that you do everything you can to stay in contact with.
***
Ryan's phone buzzed in her pocket, and since she was on break, she went ahead and checked it. Her supervisor, Chelsea, glared at her from behind the register and Ryan hid her smirk.
The past three weeks had been shitty.
Not the shittiest of her life, but not fun.
Getting thrown from the Road to the Derby had left her disoriented for the first few days. She hid in her house and made cake and tried to write, but mostly she checked her phone every five minutes for an update from Jesse.
They talked every day on the phone. It helped. It helped a lot. It was still weird to wake up in the morning in her bed and not have to take care of a giant colt first thing. To not have to shovel breakfast in on the run, to share her coffee pot with zero people.
It's not like Ryan didn't have anything to do. She had gotten to close all of her financial accounts and start over, for example. See, it hadn't taken much digging before Ryan discovered that Brenda and Vic didn't have access to just one credit card account. They had somehow gained access to all of them. They even used her Amazon account to buy bulk products like toilet paper and facial tissues.
Ryan decided not to let them know what she'd discovered. She'd turned everything over to Kelly and they'd set up some secure accounts for her to use. But to close the accounts, she'd had to pay off the balances. And thanks to Vic and Brenda's liberal use of household items and weird addiction to owning every television series ever made on DVD and Blue-ray, she was kind of broke at the moment.
Her inheritance hadn't been released by the courts yet and since she didn't know when that would happen, she'd decided to get a job.
At Victoria's Secret.
The good news was her book was still selling like crazy. In about two more months, she'd have a secondary income to help her get caught up.
Until then, she worked at a lingerie store.
It. Was. Awesome.
Well, the discounts on the fabulous underwear and bras were awesome. Her supervisor was kind of a bitch, though. (Or perhaps Ryan just rubbed authority the wrong way.)
Ryan had never gotten into the whole undergarment thing. She saw bras and panties as being necessary and expensive but not exciting.
After her discount kicked in and she went crazy buying basically one of everything in the store, she realized that addiction definitely ran in her blood. But she really did need new undergarments and why not get what she wanted, she justified.
She resolved to be more careful in the future.
Jesse's update about Red's time made her happy and sad at once. She was happy because her colt wasn't restricted anymore. Sad, because she couldn't be there to see it.
Sometimes life just sucked. It was that simple. It didn't matter how hard you worked or how good you tried to be, there was always going to be a boss that was a dick, or a family member that thought they were entitled to a chunk of your life.
She tapped out a reply to Jesse.
The Derby, the Kentucky Derby, was in two weeks. Maybe she should just go. As a spectator. To support her guys.
With her income coming in from books sales, she could even justify buying a fancy hat. Which was good, because you couldn't go to the Kentucky Derby without a fancy hat. It would be profane.
***
Jesse finally released the breath he was holding as Red flew across the finish line — eight lengths ahead of the second place colt. His first win since having the ban lifted by Caleb and his first race since Ryan's departure.
What a fantastic colt.
Nothing could stop them now.
They were ready for the Derby.
They were ready for anything.
twenty-four
“Every heartbeat is a blessing. Even the scary ones.”
Churchill Downs
Louisville, Kentucky
Kentucky Derby
May
Some days are so, so perfect. Sunny and bright, and you just know everything is going to be amazing.
Some days are better remembered for their good weather.
***
Jesse ran a hand over Red's smooth coat and smiled faintly. The big horse bobbed his head, his nostrils sucking in the air outside the stall with curiosity, filling his large neck and lungs. He knew it was almost time.
Never in his life had Jesse met a colt so ready to win.
“I can say with absolute certainty,” Jesse murmured to his prize colt. “That I have done everything in my power to prepare you for this day. The rest is all you, buddy.”
Red said his own version of “good luck” or maybe “thanks,” his nose pushing against Jesse's shoulder with a grunt.
Jesse chuckled and pushed back. “There's the love.”
“It's time.”
Jesse turned, his eyes connecting with George, Red's loyal groom, before swinging all the way over to see Caleb standing at the stall's door. He nodded, heart picking up speed. Then he joined George and Caleb in the walkout to the Kentucky Derby.
***
She didn't have terrible seats, she didn't have great seats. It was a seat and it was at Churchill and she was just thankful that she could be there. She checked her phone as start time drew ever nearer.
Nothing.
Which was good. That meant the team was focusing. They were preparing for the biggest races of their careers. Jesse didn't know she was there. She decided he wouldn't need one more thing on his mind, and so she kept her trip a secret.
Besides, she would see him after the race in the Winner's Circle.
Ryan grinned out at the field before her. The mud was perfect, the weather was lovely, the infield was buzzing. The announcer called loudly over the speaker, drawing attention to the horses and owners starting the walkout.
A shiver passed through her body as the crowd responded to seeing this year's racers make their approach to the Churchill paddock for saddling.
Names flashed through her memory as she identified the colts and fillies in the lineup. Red had already beaten a couple of them. Some were international champions. A couple only ran west coast races and hadn't been matched against their team. She'd been following the stats of the points leaders all season long and now, taking in the competition, she knew it wasn't going to be an easy race.
Then she spotted Caleb and Jesse, one on each side of Red's big head, leading him to the biggest race of his life. For his part, the colt looked completely ready.
Tears welled in Ryan's eyes at the sight. He looked good. He looked primed. Damn, but she'd missed her colt. He stood a great deal taller than the other contenders, at least by two hands. But he was relaxed, practically swaggering over to the paddock.
Ryan's gaze flickered over her father. Tense, broody, perfectly poised as usual. She had to consciously unclench her jaw at the sight of him.
And then there was Jesse.
Her heart flipped at the sight of his handsome and determined face.
Maybe it was because they had been working together every day and had more than enough distractions to keep them busy, but somewhere along the way she'd forgotten what a good looking guy he was. After having not seen him for several weeks, the reminder was staggering.
She swore she could see the periwinkle tint in his otherwise indigo eyes from her seat. His perfectly square jaw was more pronounced than usual and she tsked under her breath at his seriousness.
But it was the ache of missing that really pulled apart her insides. She didn't realize how important he'd become to her until she was met with the overwhelming desire to go to him. She would tell him. As soon as she could. She wou
ld tell him that he was important to her.
She kept her eyes trained on her team, wishing and hoping with everything she had all of the good feelings and successes on them.
“I should be there,” she muttered under her breath, feeling the kick in her stomach that never really dulled with the passing of time after her termination. It wasn't like losing a regular job. She had invested so much of her heart and hope into that colt that it felt like she'd been excommunicated from a faith. Was that too sacrilegious? She looked around at all the Derby goers. Mint juleps runneth over. So did the bourbon. Their lit expressions, their anticipation for this event tangible — and decided that it wasn't even close. This life, this race, was everything to them. She could feel the weight of the history surrounding her, radiating out of the Churchill spires.
At least she was wearing her team colors today. Her white dress was patterned with black and green flowers that matched their jockey's racing silks. It was a retro rockabilly style dress that came to just below her knee and had a sweetheart neckline. She had even added a petticoat to give it that extra flair. A pair of black Mary Janes and floppy hat and she was set.
The band in the infield began to play “My Old Kentucky Home” while the people around her sang along. Ryan's shiver turned into a rush of goosebumps.
This was it.
They had made it.
The fastest horses in the world were lining up in the gate. And her colt was with them.
Ryan tried to prepare herself to witness one more miracle.
***
“And they're off!”
***
The Kentucky Derby was a mile and quarter. It took less than two minutes to complete.
But it was the longest of Ryan's life.
Stubborn Hearts Page 17