Rein In (Willow Bay Stables #3)(19)

She opened her mouth, then closed it and opened it again.

“He doesn’t really talk very much,” I continued. “Not at all sometimes, actually.”

“I—” she started and then stopped.

“I haven’t seen him since the kiss,” I thought out loud.

London reached across the gearshift. “Are you sure you’re being smart about this, Aurora?” She threaded her fingers with mine. “You have a big heart and…”

“You said that’s what made me special,” I argued with her.

“But…” she started.

I knew where this was going. It had gone this way my entire life.

“But you think my big heart makes me weak and na?ve.” I laughed without humor.

I’d always been the saint with a bleeding heart. The one who took on whimsical notions of second chances and found a home in everything she loved.

I was a glorified joke.

“That’s not what I said.” She shook her head.

“You didn’t have to.” I unwound our fingers and buckled my seatbelt. “What happened to some people aren’t beyond redemption, London?”

“Aurora.” Her voice was pained, but I was done.

My heart was hurting.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I looked back out the window. “Let’s just go. I have to help Owen with the evening turn-in anyway.”

She paused for a few beats, possibly waiting to see if I’d change my mind.

I didn’t.

Eventually, she backed out of the parking space and drove us home to a place where one of my homes would never accept the other.

My heart, that loved to conquer, felt despair at the seams where hope had once kept it whole.

Not all homes were meant to be shared, I whispered to my soul. There are some we keep just for ourselves.

“Is he hot?” London whispered as we pulled into our driveway.

Or perhaps some homes just needed to grow on the guests that visited them.

“Yah.” I smiled. “I’ve never seen anything quite like him.”

She laughed lightly. “I know that feeling all too well.”

After we got home, London must have told my dad what happened at the lake, because Wells didn’t come to work the next day or the day after that. No one ever spoke about his absence, and by the third day, there was a new barn hand working in the stable.





A KISS.

Just one kiss that lasted barely a second had become the end of every thought I’d had in the four days she’d been gone.

That scared me.

She scared me.

A blonde girl in a sundress, with lips softer than a water lily and the name of a princess, scared the ever-loving piss out of me.

I’d seen the scum at the bottom of humanity’s barrel, and below it, the inhumane bodies they used to clean it. Yet still, a man who’d seen all of that was scared of a girl.

“What’s the camera for, bossman?” Glitch pointed up at Grant who was balanced on a ladder in front of his office.

Grant adjusted the baseball cap on his head and cursed under his breath. “Hooligans.”

Glitch’s eyes went wide and he pointed at his chest, offended. “These hooligans?”

He stepped down the ladder and wiped his hands on his jeans. “No, Glitch. If it was you hooligans snooping around my office, that shit wouldn’t fly and your ass would be grass.”

I almost choked on the sip of water I’d just taken.

“There ain’t enough ass on Glitch to make any grass.” Fun Bobby doubled over in laughter as he walked in our direction.

Today he was wearing some kind of tight, bedazzled-looking red shirt with track pants.

“What makes you think somebody’s been snoopin’?” Glitch passed him a small box from the ground that looked like it held another camera identical to the one he’d just installed.

“Sometimes a man as old as me just has a feelin’, son.” He shrugged and took the box from Glitch.

Grant played his cards close to the chest, and I didn’t blame him. He was surrounded by criminals and young criminals in the making every day. Honestly it was a bit surprising, at least to me, that it had taken this long to have a security system put in place.

“You goin’ to kick Dirt to the curb?” Glitch blurted out.

Dirt had missed his curfew by a half hour last night, and we’d all been shittin’ bricks waiting to see if Grant would narc on him for it. If he did, that meant a violation of Dirt’s parole, and he’d be back on the bus to the pen before dinner.

“That’s between Dirt and me,” Grant grunted.

He was clearly displeased but his eyes seemed more disappointed than they did angry.

For selfish reasons, I hoped he let Dirt stay. He was a good kid with bad habits to break, but out of all of us, he and Glitch had a good shot at a second chance. Didn’t hurt for me that he was also a great mechanic. His next day off was tomorrow and he’d promised to take look at my bike, which was currently sitting pathetically outside of The Shed covered in a tarp.

“Morning, baby girl,” Glitch said, his eyes going somewhere behind Grant’s head.

I didn’t have to look to know who it was.

It was her.

“Oh, good.” Grant clapped his hands together as he turned around to greet her. “I was just about to come find you.”