Page 7 of A Photo Finish
I shake my head at him sadly. Because when it comes down to it, that’s what I feel when I see him, when I think of him. Sad.
“Seems like you mistook Pretty in Purple for a doormat.”
I look at him just long enough to see the forlorn look on his face, the crack in his cold exterior, before I turn and walk away. The spear to my damn heart. Golddigger85 is just as lost as he was before, just as complicated. Just as broken. And I’ve already decided I won’t tolerate the way he lashes out.We all make choices.That’s what he told me once, and he wasn’t wrong.
It’s why I moved on. It’s why I disappeared without a word. It’s why this awkwardness between us now is on him, not me. My head knows exactly what choices to make where Cole Harding is concerned.
But my heart?
It’s not so sure.
4
Violet
“Cole moved in today.”
I shove my foot into my boot harder than necessary, grunting as I do, and then busy myself polishing it with the rag from the step stool beside me. Basically, I’m trying to ignore Billie, who is grinning at me like a maniac.
“You’re not going to say anything?”
I side-eye her and shrug. Because the answer is, no, I’m not going to say anything. Billie Black, my boss and the head trainer at Gold Rush Ranch, has become one of my best friends over the past year. And I’ve come to know her well. She’s like a bloodhound with a scent, she’s smart and intuitive, and anything I say she’ll stock away in her crazy memory vault until she unpackages it and extrapolates her data. And then she’ll figure out how I know Cole.
Which means I won’t be able to look her in the eye without turning fire engine red.
“Nope,” I say, popping thepsound, as I stand up in front of our tack stall and reach for the black and yellow Gold Rush Ranch silks.
“Viiiiii,” she moans, “this iskillingme! It’s been a year. I saw your face that day. What did he say to you? Give me something.”
I feel the light sprinkling of heat crawling up over my chest. She is relentless. “Okay. We met online a couple of years ago. Chatted a bit.”
She rubs her long fingers over her chin as she regards me. “Like some sort of veteran pen pal thing?”
“Something like that.” I wave her off. “Now leave me alone. I need to go weigh in and get in the right headspace if you expect me to win.”
“Okay, okay. Come find me when you’re done, and I promise I won’t ask about this again.” She waggles her eyebrows as she stands to leave. “Until after the race.”
I roll my eyes as I walk down the barn alleyway toward the track offices. Toward the Bell Point Park winner’s circle. The very place where Cole Harding waltzed back into my life.
I remember sitting up on DD’s back, overwhelmed by our Denman Derby win, when a man who was clearly Vaughn’s brother approached me. I remember thinking he looked like an ominous storm cloud hovering over such a bright and joyful celebration. I remember the way his huge hand engulfed mine, the heat of it, the weight of it, as he crooked a finger for me to come closer. And I remember the warmth in my body evaporating and all the sounds around me fading to white noise when I leaned down to hear him say, “Nice to see you again, Pretty in Purple. I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
Just recounting the memory makes me blush. But I am also still agitated by the way he took one of the happiest moments of my life and tainted it withthat.The way he threw it in my face when he knew he had the upper hand.
You see, Cole Harding knew exactly what I looked like. What every inch of me looked like. And I still had no idea who he was—a real sore spot for me—until that moment.
Turns out he’s my boss’s boss. Billie’s future brother-in-law, and now he’s moving out to the one safe space I’ve created for myself over the last couple of years. A place where I can be a successful and independent version of Violet Eaton with no one coddling me. I’m not the same girl I was two years ago when I responded to that message. And what happened between Cole and me? It’s never going to happen again.
I don’t think my heart could take it. And definitely not my pride.
Which is why I pasted a wobbly smile on my face and told him to go fuck himself before sitting back up and forcing myself to enjoy the win.
When I accepted his chat request, I didn’t expect to spend months getting to know the man. And when I ghosted him in that chat room a year later, I didn’t expect to ever come face-to-face with him. Me anonymously pushing my own boundaries and living a little turned out to be a whole lot more. And now, my entire house of cards is about to come crashing down around me. Because he’s here, at the ranch, threatening that buffer that I’ve tried so hard to preserve.
I keep my head down as I get prepped for the evening race. I may have a Northern Crown win under my belt, but I still feel like the new girl on the block. Inexperienced and out of my depth. I still feel stuck in the mindset of living at home under the watchful eyes and overbearing involvement of my dad and three older brothers. I still feel like a little kid who doesn’t belong.
Once I’ve weighed in, I head back to DD’s stall and shove my headphones in my ears. A little Shania Twain never fails to get me in the right headspace. Reminds me of my childhood.
Before I became the in-house rider at Gold Rush Ranch, I was a lowly groom. A girl who moved out to British Columbia from her small-town home in Alberta with not much more to show for herself other than a good work ethic and a lot of desperation to pave her own way.
