Briarwood Elite Riding Academy: Take the Reins

Chapter 23: When Jumpers Meets Dressage

Sebastian didn’t give us the liberty of a day off; even though we had been up since eleven o’clock in the night unloading horses and tack, putting away horses and tack and doing just about everything else you don’t want to be doing in the middle of the night.

Sunday as per usual my alarm blared at the ungodly hour of ten o’clock for elimination startling me awake.

“Just one more hour!” Zoé’s disgruntled and half asleep voice called out through the room.

I grumbled out an agreement and rolled back over.

“You’re all going to get eliminated for late conduct.” Chloe’s voice rung out; clear as ever yet not unkind, it was still quite shocking to hear her talking with something other than disdain in her voice.

“She’s right.” I mumbled trying to sit up in bed and turning off my alarm clock.

Amelia was still snoring softly in her bed; the alarm did nothing to wake her up nor did our talking.

Zoé looked unhappy and grumpy as she stalked off to the bathroom muttering darkly in French.

“How do you wake up so early?” I asked Chloe; bewildered at her fresh face and chirper gleam in her eyes as if not going to bed at midnight and competing all day the day before had bothered her at all.

“I attend a lot of shows back home; my body clock had me prepped on ‘show time’ early mornings since before I was ten.” Chloe explained.

“Oh.” Was all I could manage.

Ten minutes later Zoé remerged out of the bathroom and as she strode back to her bed she threw a pillow rather forcefully at Amelia’s sleeping figure startling the British girl awake in an instant.

I chuckled slightly at Amelia’s bedraggled appearance as I went to use the bathroom myself.

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We met up with Tatum in the cafeteria and after eating a light breakfast all headed down to the arena together.

As we entered I immediately caught sight of Ben; a ripple of unease spread through me. Since we had fought at the show we hadn’t talked to each other, neither of us making a move or an effort to apologize and move on.

Though I knew what I had said had been pretty harsh I also knew Ben needed to hear it from someone who cared about him and I wasn’t in the position to openly apologize until he had time to think about what I had said and he’d cooled down.

“Still not talking?” Tatum whispered catching my gaze.

I shook my head.

“Don’t worry I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Amelia offered gently.

“I know…”

Before we could continue talking about it Sebastian made his presence known and everyone scattered to form a straight horizontal line.

“Good morning competitors.” Sebastian sounded more pleased than usual and it made me wonder what was so special about today; “I wanted to say that you all represented Briarwood wonderfully and to the best of your abilities; I want to congratulate everyone who pulled a ribbon, it was a tough class.”

Everyone clapped briefly out of respect before it died off and elimination began.

“Receiving the highest combined scores of 38.5 and being the first to tie in the competition are Zoé Dubois and Logan Prest.”

I could see Zoé’s and everyone’s shocked expressions as two riders were called for first place. Yet both Zoé and Logan seemed content with it and exchanged smiles and shook hands after stepping forward.