Facing The Fire (The October Horses Book 2) Read online

  Facing The Fire

  Genevieve Mckay

  StonePony Studios

  Copyright © 2021 by Genevieve Mckay

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books and Resources

  Chapter 1

  Bree

  There are moments in life when the whole world feels beautiful and enchanted. Like the air has an extra sweetness to it and everything you put your hand to miraculously turns out the way you want.

  That’s how it felt when I’d first come home from the hospital and began working with Lorne and the horses. Like my entire existence was charmed.

  Before my time in the hospital, I would never in a million years have pictured myself working with horses and learning to ride any more than I would have taken up elephant herding or jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

  But here I was, not only riding but working at a barn full time. And I was officially listed as one of the founders of our October Horse project. Our mission was to find new homes for retired racehorses.

  I had even been given my own young thoroughbred, Ace, to retrain. He wasn’t exactly mine, but he was the next best thing to it.

  I also ran a popular blog and a handful of social media pages for the farm. People loved hearing about the horses and my followers just kept growing at an exponential rate.

  The entire autumn and early winter after I’d moved to the farm had been like a dream come true. I’d assumed it was sort of an apology from the universe for the year of painful dying that had come before it. And I’d somehow thought that my new charmed existence would go on forever.

  But after Christmas, when the real winter set in, my idyllic life came to an abrupt freezing halt. Gone were the soft sunny fall days where the air was crisp and clear, and the horses had an excited prance to their steps.

  Gone was the perfect winter vacation where Nicholas and I spent every day together, talking excitedly the whole time we worked about books, ideas, and the future. And finally, magically, stealing kisses when nobody else was around.

  After the holidays, Nicholas had vanished back to school, barely bothering to text me let alone come home to visit. And the hard reality of working with horses during the coldest, most miserable months of the year kicked in.

  The whole world became socked in with snow. Plows moved back and forth daily on the road below the farm, their blades grinding across the gravel as they pushed great drifts into the ditches.

  The power went out constantly. Everything froze in a stubborn layer of cold. Ice had to be broken out of the buckets, the hoses seized up, and we had to make endless trips lugging water to make sure the horses had enough to drink. The gate latches had to be forced apart every single time or you had to stand there blowing your hot breath on them long enough to melt the frozen clips.

  The path down to the barn had become a treacherous skating rink that was dangerous to cross on foot or with a vehicle. Both Julie and I had skidded down it multiple times, but when Lorne slipped and fell coming out of his driveway, that was the final straw.

  We’d had to call the ambulance when he couldn’t get up, and they’d whooshed him away to the hospital to make sure nothing was broken. Luckily, his X-rays had turned out fine. He’d walked away with a bump on his head and a few bruises, but the experience had been enough to scare all of us badly.

  Julie had had enough. She made a phone call and soon, a man showed up with an oversized dump truck full of sand. It took hours but eventually, the driveway and parking lots were coated in a thick brown layer of sand. It looked filthy against the white snow but at least gave us traction.

  The ring was too deep and frozen to ride in and there were some days when it was too icy to even turn the horses out. Something they resented strongly. They were used to being outside all day in all sorts of weather, so they neighed and pawed, digging holes in their bedding. They paced and banged the doors impatiently with their hooves, demanding to be let out. They got bored of their hay nets and Dragon and Nipper found all sorts of inventive ways to rip theirs off the wall and stomp them

  Even gentle Ace would sigh sadly while I brushed him, staring longingly at the rear door of the barn that led to the pasture. For him, even a snowy pasture without grass was better than being locked inside.

  Chloe’s project horse, Dragon, was awful to handle if she’d been cooped up for more than a day. Getting her back out to the pasture each time the ground thawed took two people and a lot of willpower. The second her lead rope was unclipped, she would take off to the far end of the field and not show her nose back at the barn until the last part of the day, long after the other horses had been tucked back inside.

  “We need some smaller sand paddocks,” Julie had complained, shaking her head. “I hate to see them locked in their stalls without being able to stretch their legs.”

  I agreed with her when it came to the horses needing exercise, but I couldn’t say the same about myself. I would have gladly stayed inside next to the woodstove until Spring. The frigid air outside hurt my lungs. And I had to constantly wear a scarf across my mouth and nose whenever I was outdoors. My muscles ached all the time and I was always freezing. Even with the woodstove crackling away non-stop, the big drafty farmhouse never seemed to get warm enough for my taste.

  “Welcome to real farm life, Bree,” Lorne had said when he’d overheard me complaining bitterly about the weather to Chloe. “It isn’t all sunshine and trail rides. This is what separates the fair-weather riders from the real horse people.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I’d said ungratefully as I’d carted yet another water bucket past him.

  Easy for him to say when he didn’t have to carry buckets or push overflowing wheelbarrows of frozen poop-nuggets through the snow. His age, and his fall on the ice, had slowed him up quite a bit, and he’d taken a backseat on the physical work. But he still showed up at the barn each day to supervise. And he looked downright happy to be bossing us around while we worked.

  “You can give it up anytime you like,” he’d said casually, taking a sip from his coffee cup. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  I confess that for a moment I considered it. I pictured myself back in my warm bedroom at home working on … working on what? Living with my parents again? Going back to do university courses that hadn’t meant anything at all to me? Never seeing the horses or my friends at the farm again?

  “No, no,” I’d said quickly, glancing over to where Ace was wo
rking on his hay net. “Of course I want to be here.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He’d given me a hearty pat on the back that sloshed half the water out of the bucket and had walked away whistling way too cheerfully under his breath.

  But there was another secret reason I was so frustrated about the weather. Despite the success of my remission, there was always the chance that I might get sick again. We didn’t really know which of the drugs, treatments, or miracles had made me recover. I was still doing two drug trials and there was a part of me that was terrified that maybe one day the drugs, if they were even doing anything at all, would stop working. I was terrified of getting sick again.

  I had so many things that I still wanted to accomplish in my life and each day that I wasn’t actively working my way through my goal list felt like it had been wasted. Sometimes I could almost feel the hours ticking away.

  I hadn’t even sat on Ace yet. And I dreamed of exploring with him on the trails and cantering him effortlessly around the ring. I tried to hold that vision tight in my mind and tell myself that winter would be over soon, but it was getting harder and harder to convince myself.

  “Just be patient,” Julie kept telling me, “the weather will change, the racehorses will come and soon, you’ll be riding Ace.”

  Julie had turned out to be much kinder and more sympathetic than I had originally thought when I’d moved in. I had not been sure at the beginning what sharing a house with Julie would be like, but it turned out that underneath her sometimes prickly exterior she was a comforting sort of person.

  It was always nice to come back indoors where the woodstove was perpetually blazing, and she always had something nice baking in the oven or bits of tack spread across the kitchen table to be cleaned and oiled.

  Still, sometimes even homemade cookies couldn’t cheer me up.

  “I don’t know how we’re ever supposed to train all the new horses in this,” I said glumly on one extra dreary afternoon after chores were done. It was a slightly warmer day and the ground had thawed enough for Chloe to force me into the promise of an afternoon trail ride. But right then I wanted nothing more than to hide away inside.

  I absently twisted the horse charm bracelet on my wrist. It had been a present from Lorne’s wife Gretta before she’d died, and I never took it off.

  I stared gloomily out the window at the rapidly falling snow. The entire hillside that sloped down to the barn was knee-deep again. Another layer piling up on the snow that had already fallen. “We can’t even see the ring let alone ride in it.”

  “Oh, stop fussing.” Julie laughed and set a chipped blue pottery mug of tea on the table in front of me. “You’re worse than Lorne. The horses aren’t even here yet. Who knows what the weather will be doing by the time they arrive? It could be balmy sunshine by then.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, sighing heavily. “This looks like it’s going to last forever.”

  “Of course it won’t. Seasons always pass. Besides, Gretta usually liked to let the horses rest for a few weeks when they first arrived. It’s nice to give them a little time to decompress when they come fresh off the track. We can work on their ground manners and give them some time to get used to their new surroundings.”

  “But we’re getting paid to train them,” I said stubbornly, wrapping my hands gratefully around the steaming mug. Despite the woodstove crackling away in the living room I was still cold. I was always cold. The illness that had nearly killed me last year had stripped my body of all of its fat reserves, leaving me pretty much unprotected in this unseasonable winter. Even wearing thermal socks and multiple layers of sweaters, I was nearly always shivering.

  To be honest, I’d never really liked the winter, even when I was a kid. Other people liked to frolic in the snow and work up an outdoorsy sweat doing things like skiing and snowshoeing, but not me. I preferred to spend my winters hibernating with a blanket, hot chocolate, and a stack of books to read through. This apparently wasn’t an option anymore now that I had a stable full of horses depending on me.

  “Won’t the board of directors think we’re wasting their money or something by having the horses just sit there?”

  “I doubt it.” She shrugged. “It’s all part of the process and it also happens to be out of our control since we’re not in charge of the weather. Go on now, drink your tea so you can warm up and then go on out for your trail ride. Chloe is probably already down there waiting for you.”

  “I guess so.” I sighed, eying the temperature gauge stuck to the outside of the window. Humans really hadn’t evolved to be outside in weather like this. We would have been born with appropriately thick fur if that were the case.

  “You don’t want to ride?” Julie said, a flicker of concern moving across her face. “Are you doing okay? Do you feel sick? Is the work too much for you? Have you been taking your vitamins and minerals like you’re supposed to? You might be low on vitamin D. A lot of people get the winter blues when they’re—”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I interrupted quickly, gulping my tea in an effort to finish so I could end the interrogation.

  Honestly, she was worse than my own mom sometimes. Ever since I’d moved into the big farmhouse, it was like Julie had gone from being my aloof riding instructor to taking on the role of my protector.

  “I mean, yes, I’m fine. I’ve got it all under control. The weather just has me in a bad mood, that’s all. Working here is definitely not too much.”

  I looked away, escaping her piercing gaze. If I told her that I was tired and sore all the time she might say that the farm was too much for me. She might want to send me away. I couldn’t risk that.

  Although, now that I thought about it, I might not have been quite as good at taking my vitamins and supplements lately as I usually was. I took the drugs for the trial like clockwork but I sometimes slipped up on the other stuff. Maybe she had a point. It was pretty easy for me to become anemic if I didn’t stay on top of things and I knew that could lead to low mood, loss of energy, and all sorts of random things.

  I made a mental note to take something as soon as I was back from my trail ride.

  “All right, as long as you’re sure. I know I always say that a good rider rides in all types of weather, but that doesn’t apply if it actually makes you sick. If it’s just the cold that bothers you, then we should probably find you a pair of those fleece breeches that Chloe has. She doesn’t seem to get cold.”

  That’s because Chloe is practically superwoman, I thought grumpily and then pushed the uncharitable thought aside. Chloe was wonderful. She was a nice person and a brilliant rider, and she seemed to have an inexhaustible well of energy that never ran out.

  Everyone loved her, including me, but I wasn’t a good enough person not to feel the tiniest bit jealous at how perfect she was. And it wasn’t my long stay at the hospital and near-death experience that made me weaker than Chloe, either. Even at my peak, I hadn’t been even a quarter of the athlete that she was. She was small but mighty and she rode the feisty mare, Dragon, like a dream, even though the mare was a rank handful for most people.

  “Here, make sure to take some cookies for the road,” Julie said, setting a Tupperware full of fragrant biscuits in front of me. “They’re from a packaged mix but I added nuts and chocolate so they taste like homemade. You need to keep your strength up.”

  “Thanks, Julie.” I put my teacup in the sink, eager to escape before she launched into another lecture.

  “And Bree …” she hesitated and then pushed the Tupperware of cookies into my hands. “I hope you’re not upset that Nicholas hasn’t been around much. I know he cares about you but with his schoolwork load this year—”

  “Of course not,” I cut her off, forcing a smile and turning abruptly toward the living room. My boots were stored with the others on a mat right next to the crackling woodstove. “He’s busy with school. That’s fine. Totally fine. No big deal.”

  “I’m so glad you understand. I want him to enjoy th
is school year.” She paused and then said the rest of the words in a rush. ““He didn’t get to have much fun growing up. I was hurt so badly after the accident and I needed help with so many things. Even though I tried to give him a normal childhood, I don’t think he ever stopped worrying about me. I was hoping that university would give him a chance to just let loose and have fun. But of course, he’s taking it seriously, like he does everything. He always wants to give a hundred percent to anything he puts his mind to.”

  “I know. I think he’s happy there, Julie. I’m glad he’s having fun.”

  That part was true. But I wanted him to be having fun here. Which I knew was completely selfish of me. And I didn’t want Nicholas to have to deal with the uncertainty of my future either. He deserved to be happy.

  I stood as close as I could to the fire, letting the heat sink into my bones and waited until Julie moved back into the kitchen before letting the smile slip off my face.

  Nicholas didn’t owe me anything. We weren’t even a couple. Not really. Kissing someone wasn’t an eternal promise. A fact that I should have known better than anyone else. I’d practically moved in with my last boyfriend, Duncan, and he’d still managed to cheat on me with my sister when I was in the hospital.

  I was sure the few kisses and deep conversations I’d shared with Nicholas probably meant way more to me than they had to him anyway.

  He was at school surrounded by smart and beautiful girls all day long. Was it even fair for me to expect him to give up having a normal life for someone like me? Someone who might have a pending expiration date stamped on them that might be coming due at any moment.