Page 66 of Catching Mr. Right

Twenty-Six

CASPER

“Come on, Soldier. Get your ass in the trailer.” I yank on his harness.

He shakes his big head and plants his front hooves more firmly on the ramp. His brown eyes study me under thick gray lashes. I swear he’s got something to say about leaving this town. Or maybe leaving her. Mandy.

“Come on.” I growl in frustration. “We have to go. We’ve reached the end of the road here.”

He sucks in his wide barrel chest and blows a hot snort of breath from both nostrils. Then he tosses his mane again. His hooves echo in the dark as he steps back not once, but twice.

“Fuck you too,” I mutter at him. “Now get in the trailer before I sell you for dog food.”

It’s an empty threat and he knows it. He barely pricks his ears up at the turn our conversation is taking. Juliette would have laughed at me, and then she would have marched right up to him, pressed her face to his and crooned to the big baby. He was the real love of her life. The two of them were inseparable, they were conquering their world, and I got taken along for the ride. She was never going to give that up to come home with me. Just like Mandy would never give up on chasing her idea of Mister Right because I happened to have fallen for her.

I take his big head between my hands and press my forehead to his. His coat is soft and warm against my skin and smells like sunshine and comfort. “You are all I have left, Soldier. It’s just you and me on this ride now. Our Juliette’s gone. Mandy doesn’t feel about me like I feel about her. Moira wants to take you away from me. There’s nothing else to do but to move on. Now can you please, please, please get in the trailer?”

He blinks those long horsey eyelashes, and doesn’t move a muscle. Not a fucking one.

“Damn it, why can’t you do what I’m asking?” I stare him down. “We have to go. Now. We need to get loaded up and on the road before Moira finds out you’re here. And you can’t wait for Mandy to say goodbye. She’s not coming. She doesn’t care about us like that. She’s got her own plans. We’re not part of them.”

Soldier takes another step back. The ramp shifts under our feet. The chains that hold it in place rattle.

I can’t handle any more. Can’t stand being so close to where Mandy is. Not when I can’t stop imagining her with Sam. The two of them together.

“Why are you being such a fucking asshole?” I yell at him. “What do you want me to do? She’s going to be happy with him. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?” He doesn’t make a noise. Simply stares at me while I rant. I can practically hear him telling me I’m being an idiot. The tension falls away and I’m choked with hopelessness. “This is how it is. I told her how I felt. She wasn’t interested. What else do you want me to do?”

I turn my back on him and stalk up the ramp. I need a moment. A minute. I need to catch a breath. “Christ, why can’t you behave like a normal run of the mill pony? You’ve got five minutes and when I come back you better get on the trailer or I am going to—”

“Why are you threatening the poor boy?” Mandy asks, hopping up on the ramp and comforting Soldier. He snorts softly and his sides move with his breath as he mouths the hand she uses to pet his nose. Still dressed in silver, her hair hanging loose down her back, she addresses him. “Don’t mind Cas. He’s extra grumpy tonight. Things didn’t go the way he would have liked them to. You see, I don’t know French. Unless you count ‘croissant.’ I suppose that would have to actually be a French word, right? Ooh, and Brie? Maybe Camembert.”

“What are you doing here?” I drink her in, from the tip of her silvery halo to the dust on her bare feet. In one hand she carries her strappy shoes and matching purse from earlier. “Where’s your boyfriend? Where’s perfect Sam? How’d you find us?”

“He couldn’t stick around.” She shrugs, not taking her gaze off Soldier as he lifts his nose to the sky.

“What do you mean Sam couldn’t stick around? Did he leave you? If you tell me he took you back to his place and then left I’ll kick his ass.” I start forward, bunching my fists at my side even as my heart takes notice of the fact that she’s here, and she’s alone.

“No.” She smiles. “We’re friends, he and I. We’re supposed to be friends. We got some help from Razer, and Dylan and Gabe. Then we split up the closest stables until we found you. Sam called to tell them we’d tracked you down when he dropped me at the top of the drive. Do you think Soldier can smell rain? There’s supposed to be a storm to break the heat later tonight.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I glance up at the sky. It’s dark. Surprisingly starless, and there’s a heaviness to the air, an oppressive humidity that suggests she’s right. “That’s beside the point. What happened with Sam?”

“It wasn’t him,” she says. “Getting what I wanted wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. It turns out I don’t much care for it the way I thought I would.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was odd,” she says looking at me for the first time as she walks up the ramp. “I was there with Sam. In his restaurant. And we were kissing, and all I could think was, Cas would be hungrier, he’d be more demanding in the way he kissed me and touched me. He’d mean it more, feel it more. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about how you kissed someone else, and it hurt so much to watch. I couldn’t stand there and see you do it, which doesn’t make any sense, you know, because we’re nothing to each other, right?”

She stops in front of me, and I clear my throat. Maybe she’s not here without Sam because she wants me, but I have to try and tell her that I wish she’d choose me. But she puts her hand over my mouth as I go to speak. “And then Sam told me I would be easy to love. That anyone could fall for me. And all I could think was, Not Cas. He could never feel like that about me, and I started crying, and I couldn’t stop because I could feel that way about you. Knowing I might never see you again. I couldn’t bear it. Logically I had everything I’d wanted and planned on my whole life in the palm of my hand, and I was already miserable because Sam isn’t you.”

“You couldn’t stand the idea of me kissing someone else?” I raise my eyebrows, really take in her expression. The sadness that mutes the green of her eyes and makes them closer to gray. The indent of her teeth on her bottom lip as though she’s been worrying it half the evening. I want to soothe her, but at the same time part of me likes that I’m not the only one struggling with my emotions. That she understands how I felt every time she kissed Sam.

“I know it’s not fair to tell you that after how I’ve behaved with Sam. When we were only pretending. When the whole thing was a sham. I have no right to feel the way I do about it. It just made me so jealous. It stung that you could do that.”

I peel her hand away from my mouth, unable to hide this buoyant feeling growing inside me. “I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shakes her head, talking quickly as though she can’t bear to relive it. “I don’t care that you did. I don’t want to rehash the stupid idiotic moments of this fake relationship. Especially when they were mostly mine. And I don’t expect you to forgive me for my behavior tonight. You probably don’t even want—”

“Can you please shut up a moment?” I growl as I step forward. She jumps, her gaze widening. “I swear, you are going to have to learn to listen if we are going to make this relationship work. I did not kiss another girl. I pretended to because you wanted me to break up with you and make it convincing, but I couldn’t go through with it because I am head over heels in love with you, you little minx.”

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