Chapter 2

I drove back to the estate in a daze. The world was a blur of colors and sounds that didn' t make sense. I had to get Caleb' s things. His favorite stuffed dinosaur, the blanket he couldn' t sleep without. I had to get them before they disappeared, before his memory was wiped clean from this cold, perfect house.

I found them in the stables. Not packing. Not grieving.

Nicole was standing with Wesley, her back to me. Her hand was resting on her stomach, a soft, protective gesture.

"He' ll be the true heir," she was saying to Wesley, her voice low and conspiratorial. "Our baby. Not like Caleb. He was a mistake, a reminder of a contract I was forced into."

My blood ran cold. A mistake.

"I never wanted him," she continued, and the casual cruelty of her words hit me harder than any physical blow. "He had none of my fire. He was common, just like his father."

Wesley murmured something, and she laughed. Then she turned and saw me standing there. Her face hardened.

"There you are," she snapped, as if I were a servant who had wandered off. "Where have you been? You abandoned your son and ran off to cry to my father. You' re trying to turn him against Wesley, aren' t you?"

I couldn' t speak. The words were trapped in my throat, choked by a grief so immense it felt like I was drowning all over again.

"Well?" she demanded, stepping toward me. "Don' t just stand there. Go get Caleb. He needs to come back and apologize to Wesley for startling his horse."

Bring Caleb back.

The absurdity of the command, the sheer, psychotic disconnect from reality, finally broke something inside me. A memory flashed-Caleb, just last week, running to me with a fistful of dandelions, his small voice piping, "For you, Daddy!"

I took a step back, shaking my head.

"No," I whispered.

Her eyes narrowed. "What did you say to me?"

"He' s not coming back, Nicole."

"Don' t be ridiculous," she sneered. "Stop this pathetic act."

She shoved me, hard. I was off-balance, my mind reeling. My feet tangled and I stumbled backward, falling into the empty, concrete-lined drainage ditch that ran alongside the stables.

The impact was jarring. My head hit the concrete, and for a second, the world went white. The pain was a familiar echo, a ghost of the rodeo accident that had shattered my leg and my career years ago. Lying there, helpless, looking up at the sky.

Nicole loomed over the edge of the ditch, her face a mask of triumph and disgust.

"Look at you," she mocked, her voice laced with venom. "Pathetic. You think you belong here? You' re nothing. A gold-digging nobody who tricked my father."

She knelt down, her face close to mine.

"Wesley is the one who belongs here. He' s the one who saved my career. When my champion horse, Starlight, was injured five years ago, everyone said she was done. But Wesley, he got Barney Hughes. The Horse Whisperer. He convinced that legend to heal her. He did that for me. What did you ever do? You just took his place."

She spat near my head.

"You stole his life, Ethan. And now you' re trying to steal my father' s sympathy with this stunt about Caleb."

She stood up, brushing her hands off as if she' d touched something dirty.

"Stay down there where you belong."

She turned and walked away with Wesley, leaving me broken in a ditch, the truth of her delusion a final, crushing weight on my chest.