Road to Victory (Dogs of Fire Book 5) (9 page)

BOOK: Road to Victory (Dogs of Fire Book 5)
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“Yes, I’m serious. He only trains a couple people at a time and right now he’s training Marcus Simons and Morgan Flay.”

My breath left me. Marcus and Morgan had both been accepted to the American Olympic team. Morgan wasn’t even sixteen yet, but she would be once the events started. How I never put together that Knight was Aidan Scott, I’ll never understand.

“Kim? You okay?”

“Hmm? Yes, sorry. Look, Kni—ah, Aidan and I aren’t really that close, but I can talk to Dani for you and see if her husband can talk to him.”

Ellie threw herself into my arms. “I love you! Thanks, Kim. Seriously.”

She ran off and Dani rushed toward me. “You won! Get back in the arena, they’ve been calling you.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Yes, go!” she demanded, and gave me a leg up.

I guided Fozzie back to the judges, received my blue ribbon (the money would come later), and then headed back to the stall. Dani followed and we began the process of packing up.

“You were amazing,” Dani said.

“Thanks.” I slid from Fozzie’s back and loosened the girth. He let out a big sigh of relief.

“You okay?”

“Did you know Knight was Aidan Scott?” I asked, sliding the saddle off as Dani held Fozzie.

“Who’s Aidan Scott?”

I sighed. “He’s the go-to trainer for anyone wanting to be on the Olympic equestrian team.”

“Shut up!” she breathed out.

“Right?” I set the saddle on my tack box and faced her again. “He never said a word.”

“But why would he?”

“Dani.”

“What? I love you, you’re my other sister, you know you are, but you’ve shut him out.” She grabbed my arm when I tried to walk away. “Ever since that night you went to the club without me, you’ve gone out of your way to be cruel to him. Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?”

I blinked back tears as I pulled away from her and walked Fozzie into the stall. After removing his bridle, I faced Dani and took a deep breath. “He turned me down.”

“What do you mean?” I gave her a pointed look and her eyes widened. “Oh. Really? When?”

“Dani, I don’t want to tell you.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “There’s something you won’t tell me? It must be pretty bad.”

It was the only thing I’d ever kept from her.

“It is,” I admitted.

“Kimmie, I love you. I don’t understand why you forget that sometimes.”

With just those few important words, I spilled everything that happened with Knight the night I was attacked, particularly the sweetness he’d shown.

“Knight refused to leave, so I went to bed, but I had another nightmare and went to get some water.” I busied myself with unwrapping Fozzie’s legs and then began to brush him down. “Knight was asleep on my sofa and ohmigod, Dani, he was so beautiful. I couldn’t help myself and I kind of went in, you know?”

Dani frowned. “Sure, I think.”

“He woke up, told me I was beautiful, and shut me down.”

“Kim,” she whispered.

“Proof positive he wants nothing to do with me.”

“But he kissed you at the club, honey. How is that wanting nothing to do with you?”

“That was him staking his claim. He doesn’t want me... he just doesn’t want anyone else to have me. But I took care of it.”

Dani narrowed her eyes. “How exactly did you ‘take care of it’?”

I shrugged. “I told him he made me feel unsafe.”

She gasped. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“Does he?”

“Yes.”

Dani frowned, but then quickly pulled me in for a hug. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was abusive.”

“What? He’s not!”

I tried to pull away but she held me tighter. “But he makes you feel unsafe. I can understand that, considering everything you’ve been through. Those triggers are hard to ignore, and he apparently sets them off,” she continued, patting my back.

“He doesn’t do anything to trigger me,” I rushed to defend. “Besides you, he’s the only one I feel one-hundred percent safe with.” Dani pulled back so I could see her face (which was totally smug and covered with a snarky smile) and I hissed out a quiet, “Damn it, Dani!” I shook my head. She’d been playing me the whole time with the sympathy. “I take it back. I no longer feel one-hundred percent safe with you,” I lied.

Dani crossed her arms. “I can’t believe you’d say something so reprehensible to him. You know he loves you, he’d cut off his arm rather than hurt you.”

“I know. I just needed space.”

“I get it, honey, but what you did was mean. And, Kimmie, you are a lot of things, but mean isn’t one of them.”

“I have
never
been turned down.” I dropped the brush in the bucket. “Ever.”

“Now you’re justifying being mean because your pride was hurt? You’ve loved that man forever, Kim, I don’t understand why you’d want to hurt him.”

It was true. I was an awful human being.

“Because I’m a bitch,” I whispered. “Obviously.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “You weren’t very nice, but you’re not a bitch. You had a moment of insanity.”

“You’re being very kind, Dani,” I pointed out. “You usually are, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he’s not interested in me in the very general sense of the word.”

“Kim, stop it.”

“What? It’s fine. He’s way too young for me anyway.” I turned back to Fozzie and his care.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m hitting my head against a brick wall when I’m talking to you,” Dani complained.

“Well, feel free to stop anytime, I’d hate for you to get brain damage.”

“I will say one thing and then I’ll leave you to your delusions. I know Knight, probably better than most of the other guys, well, outside of Mack of course, because he’s been working closely with Austin on this super secret whatever it is I’m not allowed to know about.”

I raised an eyebrow... Dani tended to ramble when she was excited, agitated, bored, sad, lonely, tired, etcetera.

“All that to say,” she continued, “regardless of the whopping five year age difference, he’s exactly what you need and he knows it, I know it, we all know it... it’s just taking you a little while to figure it out. But lucky for you, he’s on top of it, so I’m going to just sit back and watch the show.”

“Ohmigod, Dani, bite me.”

“I’ll let Knight do that.”

“I just don’t know if I can open up to him, you know? He scares the crap out of me.”

“I know, Kimmie. I get it. But you’ve already opened yourself up to him! You haven’t even looked at another man since you met him...not in any real sense of the word anyway. So you’re just driving yourself crazy by pining for him without telling him how you feel.”

I groaned. She was right, but I didn’t really want to hash out the subject anymore. Luckily, Dani left it alone, mostly because Mack and Darien arrived to congratulate me and say goodbye. Once they left, Dani and I packed up, loaded Fozzie into his trailer, and followed Isaac (one of our barn’s hands) who was on hauling duty, back to the barn.

By the time I arrived home, I took a long bath and fell into bed, managing a full night’s sleep without dreaming. It was a nice reprieve for once.

 

 

O
NE WEEK LATER, Knight stepped up to the horse he was examining and ran his hand over her withers, whispering as he slid his hand down the bad leg. “Good girl. You’re okay.”

“What do you feel, son?” Doc Farlane asked.

Knight was interning in his final year at vet school, his specialty working with large animals, and horses in particular were his passion.

“Heat’s comin’ off her left fetlock. I feel swelling.”

“Anything broken?”

Knight shook his head. “I don’t think so. She has full motion, it’s just sore.” He lifted her hoof and grabbed a hoof-pick to clean off the area. “She’s got a nasty scab over the frog. Some dried blood. Looks like she cut it.”

Doc leaned in to look and nodded. “What’s the treatment plan?”

“We’ll need to clean it out, give her a tetanus shot and antibiotics. I’m concerned about her fetlock, but I think it’s all connected. I’d bind her leg and watch her.”

Doc patted his shoulder. “Well done, son.”

Knight smiled and lowered the horse’s foot gently to the ground, patting her side. She bumped him with her nose and Knight chuckled, reaching in his pocket for a peppermint. “You just want me for my candy.”

With Doc’s supervision, Knight treated the horse, then handed him off to her owner, packing up his bag and disposing of his trash.

“I’m gonna head out,” Doc said. “Good job today.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Knight gave him a chin lift and watched the vet walk back toward the cars. As his gaze hit the barn, he recognized Kim standing outside a stall talking to Fozzie. An older man Knight thought he knew, but wasn’t sure from where, approached Kim and her entire demeanor changed. Her body went stiff and she moved to stand in front of the horse as though to protect it.

Knight started toward her. He was almost to the barn when the man turned and walked away and Kim let herself into the stall. Her head disappeared below the side and Knight sped up. Something wasn’t right.

Arriving at the stall door, he dropped his bag and peered over the side. “Shit!” he whispered, and stepped inside. Kim was in the corner in the fetal position, hands over her head, regardless of what looked like piss close to her, chanting to herself. For a sick and twisted second, he thought how beautiful she was even amongst filth.

“Kimmie?” He knelt beside her and touched her shoulder, awarded with a kick in the side by her swift and elegantly booted foot. “Fuck!” he snapped, holding his side.

Kim went back to her chanting, seemingly unaware that the she’d even kicked him. Her horse was growing agitated, so Knight took a minute to calm him, deciding that leading him out of the stall would be the safest plan of action. “Good boy. I’m gonna take care of her. Just gotta keep you from tearing up the stall.”

He tied him to the side of the barn and stepped back inside. He approached Kim differently this time, kneeling beside her, not touching her. “Kim?”

“He doesn’t own me, he doesn’t own my body. It is mine, I am me, he has no power,” she chanted in a whisper.

“Kimmie?”

“He doesn’t own me, he doesn’t own my body. It is mine, I am me, he has no power.”

Fuck!
His heart twisted as he watched this beautiful woman try to beat back the demons.

“Sugar,” he whispered.

“He doesn’t own me, he doesn’t own my body. It is mine, I am me, he has no power.”

Knight shook his head. “Fuck me,” he whispered, reaching out to pull her arms away from her head and moving into the strike zone. “Kim!” he snapped.

She let out a scream and went on the offensive, kicking, scratching, punching, anything to get him to release her.

“Kim, sugar, it’s me. It’s Aidan.”

She fought for a few more seconds as he continued to talk to her and then her body went limp and she opened her eyes, seeing him for the first time. “Knight?”

“Yeah, sugar.”

Now she was pissed.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she snapped, pulling away from him.

He knew he had to handle this very carefully.

She jumped to her feet. “And what the fuck did you do with Fozzie?”

“He’s fine, Kim. He’s outside,” Knight said, and stood slowly. Kim rarely swore, at least around him, but there was something unbelievably sexy about her lips wrapping around the word “fuck.”

Kim rushed out of the stall, Knight following, to her horse. He whinnied as soon as he saw her. “Aw, buddy.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and took a deep breath. “I’m here.”

“Kim?” Knight prompted.

She whirled to face him. “If you say anything to anyone about any of this, I will cut you.”

“Are you shittin’ me right now?”

“Not one thing, Knight.” She crossed her arms, leaning against her horse. “Ohmigod, what the hell are you even doing here? Trolling for low-class, barrel racing pussy?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You know nothing about me, do you?”

“Oh, sorry,
Mister
Scott. You train riders for the Olympics now... I forgot.”

“So you finally figured it out.”

“You didn’t have to keep it from me,” she snapped.

“It’s not a fuckin’ secret, Kim. My middle name’s Scott, it was a good way to keep this side of my life separate from the club.”

“But you’re like fifty years too young to be a trainer.”

He smiled. “Yeah, when they picked me, they didn’t know I was so young...just wanted the person who trained Lucy Seals.”

“You trained Lucy?”

Lucy had won an individual bronze in the last Olympics, despite the fact her team hadn’t ridden well. She’d been the breakout star for sure and Knight had been receiving phone calls for years. At twenty-three, no one would have expected him to be considered seasoned, least of all him.

“Yeah.”

“Well, good job.” She shrugged and untied Fozzie. “I need to get him settled.”

“Babe, he just pissed in there.”

“Okay. So I’ll muck out the stall.”

“Have you ever mucked out a stall?” he challenged.

“Of course I’ve mucked out a stall.”

BOOK: Road to Victory (Dogs of Fire Book 5)
3.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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