You, Me: Us

2. Competing

When the team got back to the hotel, all the girls changed so that they could get ready for dinner. Lainey was wearing a flowy white dress with her hair pulled back slightly.

All the girls met up outside their rooms with their trainer. "Ready?" She questioned them and they nodded. "I made us a reservation with a restaurant across the street."

"Thanks Miss Varley," Chloe smiled at her. They were all very excited for the competition, it was nerve racking that they would competing for the next two days, but they were all ready.

When they entered the restaurant they look around. It wasn't very fancy, but it was nice. They were all seated and ordered their food when they really got to talking. "So, Faith, how's the fiancee?" Henry teased her.

Lainey rolled her eyes with a smile on her face. "He's great. We're waiting on the wedding for maybe a year or so. We just took over the stables back home and we haven't even graduated yet."

Eliza sighed, "but it's just so romantic I mean friends to lovers and he's literally royalty. I could hear you talk about it all day." She sipped on her drink as she leaned forward, wanting to hear a story.

"Well I want to hear about that," she said, staring over where Carla and Devin were sitting suspiciously closer together.

Miss Varley gave them a look, "I hope that's nothing because I thought you knew the rules, no dating on the team."

All the others rolled their eyes as the two blushed and moved away from one another. "Come on, Varley! It's nationals, the last competition. Let them be together," Lainey pleaded.

"Please," Chloe continued, entwining her fingers and pouting her lips. The otehr started talking over each other, begging for her and Miss Varley started to laugh and raised her hands in defeat.

"Okay, okay. It's the last competition." She raised her glass in their direction. "Congratulations Devin and Carla."

The others cheered and Lainey also raised her glass with them as they cheersed.

Siena set down her glass first and looked at her teammates, "We're so gonna win tomorrow."

Grant laughed, "there's no way to overall win–"

"Just win in every category," Chloe shrugged like it was easy.

Grant gave her a look, "you're joking right? That's practically impossible. I can see us winning polo, but there's dozens and dozens of people in show jumping and dressage."

Someone scoffed, "yeah no chance you'll win dressage tomorrow." They all turned towards whoever said that and saw the island team glaring at them. Lainey met eyes with her cousin, who was the one who said that.

"Really, Mia? We're trying enjoy dinner."

"Well I was trying to enjoy a competition and not be going against my cousin again! You're just a traitor," she glared and Lainey looked to the rest of her friends to see what they said.

"Becky, Jade, Zoe, Gaby? What's your opinion here?"

Gaby narrowed her eyes, "well, it is pretty suspicious that you say you would never ride against us and then turn around and join your school's team without telling us." She crossed her arms and Lainey rolled her eyes and looked to the other three.

"I don't know what to think, Lains," Jade said. "It's weird, but I'm willing to hear you out."

Becky shrugged, smiling at her, "Well, I don't need to hear anything. I know you iddn't do anything to hurt us because you're awesome like that." Lianey smiled at her and made a heart with her hands.

She turned to Zoe who just shook her head, "I don't know."

Mia scoffed, "You're all stupid. It's clear she doesn't care about us. Maybe she's planning to sabotage anything we're trying to do."

Grant scoffed and glared right back, "not like she needs to, you're already terrible as it is. We saw you at Nationals over the summer, none of you even placed in show jumping and that was the only event any of you entered."

Siena smirked, "pretty pathetic honestly. I mean who placed again Peter Hawthorne, the duke, Faith, and oh– that one right there, Callum who was actually on Faith's team and it doesn't seem like he cares too much about her being with us." Lainey shrugged, it wasn't like she was that close with him, but he really was relaxed about this, so sure that they're gonna win.

Mia got up and was about to start saying something again when Miss Varely stood up from teh table. "How about we end this right now before something else happens?"

Mia glared at them once more before sitting back down at their table. Lainey turned back to the table in front of her as their food started to arrive, she just wanted to compete and go home, all this drama wasn't worth it.

~

By the next morning, Lainey was up bright and early, even beofre the sun. She got into her uniform. Funny enough, it was blue just like the Bright Field uniforms.

Her team made it to the field early and started to warm up as soon as possible. Individual show jumping, cross country, vaulting, and Dressage were the next day. Eventing was today as well as polo, barrel racing, and horsemanship.

Horsemanship was the first event any of them were in. It was the one where you had to look the nicest so it was purposefully the first event of the day. You had to look nice, calm, and the horse had to be calm.

Lainey pet Angel nicely as made sure to keep him calm throughout the time. When she got out into the event, she could spot her mom, brother, and Pin watching her. They were planning to go to every event she was in to see her. She smiled as she went out and kept her head high. She took a deep breath as they announced her and she smoothly did her performance before riding out back into the stables.

"You did so good," she hugged Angel. "Now just several more events, we got this."

~

Polo was the middle of the day event. It was arguably one of the most exciting so teh crowd was packed. Also because it had the most amount of players. There were four to a team and it was like lacrosse, but on horses so it got people interested.

Lainy didn't used to like or play polo, but her brother did so Angel already knew it. It would be too hard to teacher her the events that Priscilla did in such a short amount of time.

Overall, she got a good rating on Horseman ship and they got second in polo, losing their last match.

She was very lucky that she didn't run into anyone from Bright Fields, only Callum and Alex. Then again, they only focused on maybe 3-4 events at the most.

Now, they just had to see who won show jumping.