Sinner's Prayer

In the Headlights

The air is still as Jack rides back, cool against his skin, his body swaying with each step of the mare. It's numbing in a way. The cold distracts him from the wound ripped fresh in his chest, throbbing deeply with a heavy mix of hurt and betrayal.

He had no right, Jack thinks bitterly. It was completely unfair of Ennis to do that, to twist words in such a way, to be such a hypocrite. Jack grit his teeth.

It just pained him to think that this was how Ennis truly felt. Despite everything they've said and done.

"Fucking asshole," he mutters under his breath, blurry eyes sealed into the horse's mane though it's hardly visibly without the light of the moon. The night is almost too still, quiet in a way that makes Jack's hair stand on edge. He'd normally be pretty relaxed on his journey home, but given the circumstances, he was anything but.

Twigs snap in the distance, the mare flicks her ears, a soft groan emitting from her throat as she halts. Jack whips his head in the direction of the sound, his stomach sinking as he listens carefully.

It's probably just a deer, though he knows it's bound to spook the horse.

"Easy," he soothes, leaning forward and running a gentle hand over her neck. He gives her a soft nudge to get her moving but another twig snaps and the grass sweeps off in the distance.

The mare gives a soft winny, ears dropping and shaking her head. She's starting to panic and Jack holds the reins with a death grip, squeezing his thighs over the saddle.

"Whoa-" he says, but she jerks, giving a spin. The motion swings Jack, but he manages to hold on, growing more frantic as his horse grows more nervous.

"Whoa," he repeats, his heart pounding in his chest. A doe leaps from the grass, the horse brays, rearing up and kicking her front legs. Jack flails, clawing at the air, trying to find purchase on something.

"Shit-!" He shouts before the fall, unable to find his grip as the mare goes vertical.

He hits the dirt with a hard thud on his back, knocking air from his lungs and shooting pain up the back of his skull. He coughs, ears ringing. The mare's galloping off and the deer is long gone. It's just him and the cold, hard ground. His eyes on an inky veil of sky, tears building in the corners due to the hurt in his back.

"Fuck," he breathes, buzzing with adrenaline and then overcome with a sense of devastation.

He just lost the fucking mare.

How in the hell is he supposed to explain that?

He slowly tries to peel himself off the ground, pebbles sharp under his shirt, his body aching. He hadn't been thrown like that in a long time and it felt like he'd been busted between the shoulder blades.

Jack finds his footing, standing on shaking legs and gulping in breaths of air. He lifts a hand to the back of his skull, searching for any kind of stickiness and thankfully coming up short.

His eyes find the distance, engulfed in a blanket of dark. He's stranded without a horse, at least three miles from home.

He drops his hands to his knees.

"Fucking perfect," he huffs, scanning the ground for the hat he'd lost on impact. He can see the faint silhouette of it and stumbles forward, his body still recovering from the shock of hitting the dirt so hard. He approaches it, boots crunching gravel, another sickening wave of dread as a glow begins to illuminate the road.

He swoops to grab the headwear from where it fell, quick to place it back over top of his skull before his eyes dart to meet twin beams of an orange glow in a hard squint.