▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance
There's a kind of wild you can't outrun.
Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
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The first time I raced in Cody, my last name clung to me like heat in high summer—not visible, not loud, but there all the same. Pressed to my skin, pulsing just beneath it. A weight. A warning.
You couldn't see it, not really. But the second I stepped into those stables, I felt the air shift. Heavy with old ghosts and older expectations. People didn't have to say my name out loud. They just looked. A half-second too long, eyes trailing after me like they were waiting to see if I'd rise to it or crumble underneath.
Odell.
This was where it all started. For him. For us. The dust, the rails, the heat in the crowd. My father's broad hand on my shoulder, silent and steady, like a brand. My mother up in the stands, her applause sharp, proud, the way she only ever clapped when she thought the world was watching. And Laney—slouched low in her seat beneath that ridiculous wide-brimmed hat, arms crossed like the whole thing was beneath her. It was, to her. She never pretended otherwise. Mom dragged her there, determined to make us look like a family. That was the goal: look like one, even if you weren't.
Now, standing in that same spot with the smell of sweat and sawdust curling in the air, it didn't feel like memory. It felt like reckoning.
The kind that doesn't knock loud. It just waits—quiet and patient—until you're back where it all began, and it settles over your shoulders like it never left.
Through the open stall doors, I heard the muffled pulse of the crowd, the way they roared and cracked open for the riders who gave them something to feel. I knew that sound. Used to chase it. But today, it barely moved me.
Colt had just come off his ride. Scored an 85. Clean. Confident. The kind of ride that keeps your name in the running and your future in motion. I spotted him a few yards off, heading in our direction—hat pulled low, shoulders loose like they hadn't just squared up against a bull. That was the thing about Colt Langmore. He never wore the weight of what he'd just been through. He carried it somewhere quieter.
Caleb and Sean trailed behind him, easy in their skin, like the fight had been just another part of the day. Caleb's cheeks were still flushed, his hair damp and sticking to his forehead as he reached up to sweep it back.
"They gave me hell out there," he called, grinning like he hadn't a care in the world. "Think I'll take that 80 and pretend it's what I was aiming for all along."
Sean let out a sharp laugh, giving him a nudge with his shoulder as they passed the rail. "You mean it wasn't?" he asked, half teasing, half calling him out.
Caleb smirked. "C'mon, I'm not that good of an actor."
Caleb's grin didn't fade, but it shifted—eyes glancing between me and Colt with a flicker of something unspoken. The kind of look that says I see it, even if no one's saying anything out loud. Sean was just behind him, slower, quieter, with that usual glint of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth, like he was already two steps ahead of the joke he wouldn't say.
