▍ 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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My boots hit the dirt. The sun was high enough to sting my eyes, but I didn't squint. I just tightened the cinch, swung up into the saddle, and let Honey move beneath me like she always had—steady and sure. The leather creaked, familiar beneath my weight, and I adjusted the reins, my grip settling into something that felt like instinct more than choice. My heart wasn't loud, not yet, but it was there. A quiet thrum in my chest, threaded tight with everything I hadn't said out loud.
The riders ahead of me circled the arena in slow, measured lines. Horses pawing at the dirt. Breath fogging in the late afternoon sun. The announcer's voice bled through the air in pieces, distorted by distance and nerves. I barely registered the names. Didn't need to. I wasn't thinking about the others.
I was fourth today. Close enough to feel the tension crawling up the back of my neck with every name called, every gate swing. I gave Honey one more circle, her hooves slicing soft arcs into the dirt. She was calm beneath me—muscle coiled, lungs even. She was ready. More than me.
Colt's hat still sat low on my head, heavy with dust and sweat and something unspoken. That gesture—small as it was—kept echoing in my chest. For luck, he'd said. But it hadn't felt like luck. It felt like something else. Something quieter.
The second rider cleared the gate, and I felt the ground respond before the sound reached me. A low tremor through the dirt, a thrum that crawled up through Honey's hooves and into my spine. She felt it too. Her ears twitched, her body shifted beneath me like a question waiting for its answer.
I leaned down, murmured something quiet into the space between us—nothing important. Just a grounding thing, a tether. And then the announcer called my name.
There's a silence right before the gate swings. It's not quiet, exactly—there's noise all around you—but it doesn't touch. It's the kind of hush that lives inside your bones, the kind that makes your ribs feel too small for your lungs. I didn't breathe through it. I just let it pass over me.
Then the gate opened.
And Honey flew.
There's a kind of motion that doesn't feel like movement at all. It feels like surrender. Like trust falling into gravity. That's what it was—her hooves pounding the dirt, my hands holding steady, our bodies folding into that first turn like we'd never known anything else. The barrel came fast, but she was faster. We slid around it clean, tight enough to make the wind snap against my face, and for a second—just one—I thought maybe.
Maybe today would be the day it all worked.
But we hit the second barrel with a breath too much.
My cue was late. Not by much. Just enough. Honey corrected mid-stride, but the damage was done before it even showed. We cleared it, but the rhythm stuttered. Like a heartbeat skipping inside your chest. It wasn't big. Just enough to feel it.
