A Photo Finish: A Small Town Second Chance Romance (Gold Rush Ranch Book 2)
A Photo Finish: Chapter 9

I WOKE up to a message from Pretty_in_Purple. It said, “Good morning, Butterface,” and I laughed. For the first time in a long time, I laughed. It felt foreign in my mouth, and I looked around like someone might have seen.

Except I’m alone. I’m always alone. It seems like this is how my life will be. I think it started out that I wanted it that way, but now I’m not so sure. I’m smart enough to know what people say about me . . . the recluse who runs the family company and is a total dick.

The role comes to me naturally, but I think I’m tired of it. Tired of my own company. Tired of the same fucking thing every fucking day.

I write back. I’m not funny or witty. I don’t know what to say. So, I just say what I’m thinking.

Golddigger85: Take off your clothes.

She replies a few minutes later.

Pretty_in_Purple: You first.

Yeah. That sure as shit isn’t happening. Just the mention of it makes me nervous. I say nothing back, but a couple hours later I check our chat again and reply this time.

Golddigger85: No chance.

Pretty_in_Purple: Guess we’re stuck talking. We could be pen pals!

Pen pals. That’s so far from what I had in mind when I messaged this girl. How old is she?

Golddigger85: No.

Pretty_in_Purple: Come on! I’m lonely. You obviously are too. Let’s just be friends.

Golddigger85: Why am I obviously lonely?

Pretty_in_Purple: Do I really need to answer that?

Touché, internet girl. And no. Please don’t rub my nose in how pathetic I’ve become. “Does having a pen pal make me more or less pathetic?” I ask myself out loud as I rub a hand over my stubble and stare at the screen.

I would ask her, but that involves admitting I think I’m pathetic. I refuse to go there. Deflect. Redirect. That’s what I’ll do.

Golddigger85: Maybe I’m just a control freak.

Pretty_in_Purple: Maybe you’re both?

I snort. Touché, internet girl. Tou. Ché.

I’M GETTING mighty tired of carrying Violet out of a truck. It’s like she has no regard for her own well-being. At least this time she doesn’t feel limp in my arms.

I rip open the freezer and pull out one of my ice packs, agitation lining every movement. I was already annoyed when I walked in after a long week of working at the clusterfuck that is our company’s new investment to replace her shit everywhere. Water glasses abandoned around the house, shoes tossed carelessly by the front door, dishes piled in the sink, and a sweatshirt draped over the back of a chair almost made me go nuclear.

I’m the bachelor. I’m supposed to be the messy one. But instead, I have a twenty-something-year-old living in my space, a now world-famous athlete, who can’t put simple things back where they belong. My feet stomped on the worn hardwood floors the entire time I cleaned up the place. Not what I felt like doing on a Friday night, but then I don’t know what else I’d do in Ruby Creek.

With the ice pack in hand, I grab a water bottle from the fridge and walk back over to Violet. “Here.” I hold the water out to her before I come to kneel by the couch.

I undo the Velcro straps on her air cast as she crinkles the plastic water bottle and regards me curiously. “What are you doing?”

“Getting ice on your leg so that you can get on a horse again one day.” The mere thought of that sends a lance of anxiety through my chest, but I push it away. This is her journey, not mine.

“Did you know that plastic water bottles are bad for the environment?”

My god. She really doesn’t stop with the questions. I don’t respond, which she apparently takes as a sign that she should keep talking. “They don’t decompose. Instead, they end up in the oceans—”

I roll my eyes. Has she tasted the tap water here? “Why did you try to walk home on a leg that you know you’re supposed to be resting?”

I know something is up. It had been my job for years to sense when something was off.

Violet is ranting about water bottles, and Billie acted weird on the phone. The strained, tittering laugh when she suggested Violet might need help seemed panicky. I could feel the unspoken words, the tension.

She rolls her lips together nervously, and her crystalline blue eyes go wide. They only look brighter next to the pink blooming on the apples of her cheeks.

“Why are you blushing?”

“Now who’s the one with all the questions?” she replies with fake bravado. A little tremor in her voice gives her away. The woman is an open book. No poker face to speak of.

“Violet.” I scold her, pulling the cast away to assess her ankle below the hem of her leggings. Swollen. My teeth grind.

Her sigh comes out loud and ragged, her voice a little too quiet. “Okay. I just needed to get out of there. I didn’t think it through.”

“Why?”

Her eyes dart away, and I cup her heel delicately, the smell of her vanilla body cream in the air as I press the ice pack to her swollen leg. She hisses and gives her attention back to me—which is what I was going for.

“I’m just . . .” Her voice quivers, and she strokes her fingers through her golden locks. Her tell. She does it when she’s nervous. “You know. Really disappointed. Really bored. Really . . . choked about the current state of my life. I didn’t want to talk about it.” She pauses, and I sit back on my heels, moving my hands down onto my thighs to listen, not wanting to touch her any longer. Her eyes are sparkling with unshed tears. I could tell that she’d been crying earlier, just like she’s close right now.

“So, I told them about us instead,” she rushes out, looking at me pleadingly. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I go still. Stuck in place. “I swear it was all just really general.”

“Them?”

She flinches at the bite in my tone, and I’m instantly filled with self-loathing. “Okay. So, I really only told Billie. I didn’t know Vaughn was listening.”

My skin crawls with embarrassment, like that feeling when you have a bug inching its way up your spine but can’t quite reach it. My leg aches, like it often does. This was never supposed to happen. My sex life was supposed to stay perfectly compartmentalized on the internet where no one gets to see me. Violet was supposed to stay firmly removed from my real life. She was never supposed to crop up as a mainstay in the family business.

Panic courses through my veins as I see my perfectly-laid facade crumbling. Just one little crack in the corner is going to lead to more questions. When one brick falls, the others will follow, torn down by questions I don’t want to answer.

I know I’m fucked up. The last thing I need is everyone around me knowing too. And this bombshell is more than I’m equipped to handle. I get up woodenly, not saying a word, and walk away.

That’s enough of this shit for one day.

THE PHONE IS silent for several beats, and then it fills with a raspy, maniacal cackle. “The woman is living with you?” Trixie gasps out, making me bang my head back against the brass bars of the bed frame. This place is like a fucking doll house.

“I don’t pay you to laugh at me, Beatrice.” I pay her because I need her. She’s the first call I made this Saturday morning when I woke up after a shitty, fitful sleep. A sleep full of dreams about all my deepest, darkest secrets being spilled to the world. Dreams about Violet’s naked body spread out before me. Dreams I can’t afford and don’t deserve.

“And she told your brother and future sister-in-law about how you both met?” She may not be laughing, but I can still hear the amusement in her voice.

“Yes,” I grumble.

“And then she told you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t fault the girl for her honesty.”

“I think I would prefer a little dishonesty in this case.”

“Oh no, you don’t need anymore of that in your life.”

I look out the big window across the vast field toward the barn.

“Why don’t you let me—” my eyes snag on something in my periphery. I jump out of bed and take a few hops over to the window, gripping the crown molding with one hand. Why the fuck is there a horse in my yard?

“I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” I hang up, but not before I hear Trixie say something about not being at my beck and call.

I get myself ready, throwing on the same T-shirt as yesterday, before heading downstairs and out the front door, straight to the paddock that has been sitting gloriously empty until now. I eye up the scrawny brown horse inside and then notice the paper rolled and shoved into one ring on the halter that’s slung over a hook.

I pull it out, confused and annoyed.

Hey Vi,

I know this isn’t how you saw your year going. I know setbacks are frustrating. So does Pipsqueak here. Do you remember her from a couple of years ago? Apparently, she was a preemie foal that was touch and go there for a bit. Anyway, she’s two now, and she’s a fighter. Small but mighty, just like you.

I know you can’t ride right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work. I’d like to see what she’s got. Mind getting her started for me?

Love,

Billie

No. No fuckin’ way am I living with Violet and with a horse. I’m not above admitting this is thoughtful of Billie. I can’t fault her for that. For me, though? This can’t happen. I turn and storm back up into the house, note in hand.

The door slams behind me. “Violet! Get up!” My voice is sharper than I intend, but my life is completely out of control, and I’m panicking. That ends now.

I hear a small squeal from the other side of her door, followed by a thump, and I instantly feel like a dick for not keeping my cool. When the door opens, she’s already dressed and pulling an earbud out of her ear. “What? What’s wrong?”

I shove the note at her as if it will clearly explain what’s wrong. Violet takes it from me, one dainty hand reaching out to remove it from mine. Her eyes are wide until she recognizes the writing, and I watch her feelings dance across her face. She’s so expressive, it’s like she could tell me a story without saying anything at all.

Tears spring up over her irises, usually the color of the sky and now more of an indigo as they darken with emotion. Her long lashes blink rapidly, as though she could sweep the tears away with them. One side of her perfectly heart-shaped mouth tips upward, sadly. And then slowly the other side pops up to match. The smile is small, but the impact on me isn’t.

I feel like a little boy again, one who just fell off the tire swing and winded himself, the thud of my bones against the packed ground rattling through me. My breath is caught somewhere beyond my reach.

Violet doesn’t even look at me though. She doesn’t see my struggle. She just limps over to the front window, pressing a hand to it like a child at the zoo, like she’s never seen a horse before. I watch her body from behind. Her round ass, the taper of her waist, the slender curve of her neck beneath where all that pale hair is piled up on her head in a loose bun.

“What’s the issue?” she asks quietly, on a deep sigh, without looking back at me. Her spaghetti-strap-clad shoulders go from tight and high to slowly dropping, like the tension is melting right off her and flowing away on a warm, gentle current.

And I know.

I know at this moment that I don’t have it in me to make her get rid of the horse. After watching that physical reaction, how could I? I’m not a cruel man—not intentionally, anyway. Everything Violet feels is so plain to the naked eye, particularly to those of a man who’s spent his entire adult life reading people and situations. If there had been something that could soothe me the same way that Violet relaxed at the prospect of having some plain brown horse to play with, I would have done it.

And I would have resented anyone who tried to stop me.

Instead, I just resent myself for being stuck in a rut. Something I don’t want for Violet. Because no matter what she thinks, the days I spent messaging with her were some of my brightest in recent memory.

She turns to look at me over her shoulder, her wide blue eyes full of emotion, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Life courses through her so vividly and almost tangibly—like I could reach out and touch it, bottle it up and drink it, or just keep it. Possess it, knowing I have the option to consume it whenever I want. Money can’t buy this brand of vitality. This is bone deep—soul deep. She shines like the sun, golden and bright.

What a man like me wouldn’t give for that.

“No issue,” I husk. “I’m just not taking care of it. That job is all yours.”

Violet tilts her head, almost imperceptibly. “Who knows, Cole? You might come around.”

I cross my arms and widen my stance, wanting to make it clear to her that I’m serious. Although, I’m getting the sense I don’t intimidate Violet as much as I thought. She’s tougher than she comes off. More resilient. “I don’t like horses,” I say plainly, pinning her with a serious look, choosing to leave out the part where my most vivid memory of them is watching my father fall to his death beneath their hooves.

Her body jolts ever so slightly, like I’ve just slapped her. And then a gentle smile spreads across her mouth. “We’ll see about that.”

She looks far too knowing for a woman her age. She’s looking at me like I’m the project rather than the scrawny horse in the yard.

I’m already dressed for a run, so that’s what I do.

I turn and run.