▍ 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 quiet of Canyon Ridge felt like the first breath after drowning. After hours of noise, the crush of bodies, and the weight of countless eyes—always watching, always expecting—this silence soothed the frayed edges of my mind. The corridors before me stretched like a forgotten memory, dark and empty, yet humming with a life all their own. Out there, beyond these walls, the world was too loud, too unpredictable, sharp with unsaid words and expectations clinging to me like shadows. But here, wrapped in the calm, I could exhale. I could finally just... be.
I wasn't supposed to be here tonight. Not really. Honey's gear had been forgotten in the shared tack room, a chore for tomorrow that I should've just left behind. But something deeper tugged at me, something unnamed and persistent, drawing me back here. Maybe it was the familiar pull to avoid the usual post-rodeo routine—bar-hopping and drunken conversations that always seemed to end somewhere darker than I wanted. Caleb and Sean? They were harmless, their slurred teasing a part of the background noise I'd grown used to. But the others? The nights that dragged on until whiskey blurred the lines of regret? I wasn't in the mood to drown myself in that kind of oblivion. Not tonight.
Colt's hat sat a little too loose on my head, but its weight steadied me, grounding me as I walked through the empty halls. I tugged the brim lower, feeling the worn leather press against my forehead. The scent of him—sweat, dust, something earthy—clung to it, a quiet reminder of the day's moments. Small touches that tethered me to now, even when my mind wanted to drift.
Dinner had been surprisingly good. Better than I'd expected. Caleb and Sean had been relentless, their jokes sharp but harmless, flying across the table like arrows loosed from a bow. For once, I hadn't felt the need to brace myself or dodge their playful jabs. Instead, I found myself laughing—real laughter, the kind that untangled the knots in my chest, loosening the tension that had wound tight all day. Those fleeting moments, where I could just breathe, felt like rare glimpses of normalcy. Moments where I wasn't the weight of my name or the burden of living up to the Odell legacy.
After dinner, I excused myself, leaving Caleb and Sean at the table, their drinks clinking together as they pulled Colt deeper into their stories and laughter. The pull to walk back to Honey tugged at my chest, something instinctive, like I needed to be near her, to see her before the day truly ended.
The arena was quiet now, a peaceful contrast to the chaos that had unfolded earlier. The familiar scent of hay and leather greeted me as I reached the tack room, where Honey's gear was still neatly tucked away, waiting for the morning. I ran a hand over the worn leather, finding comfort in the routine, in the small act of checking that everything was in place. That everything was ready.
Because if things weren't perfect for her, how could I trust myself to be?
The stables had always been a place where the world slowed down. The soft shuffle of hay beneath hooves, the steady rhythm of horses breathing in their stalls—it was a pace that asked nothing of me, a gentle kind of calm that always seemed just out of reach in the rest of my life. Honey's stall was in the far corner, where shadows stretched and shifted with the dim light, but I knew she'd be there. Waiting. She always knew when I was close, like she could sense the parts of me I tried to hide from the rest of the world.
