Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Win.

  We were loafing under the same tree where I had seen Pete sitting on Regina back in June. The first Intermediate riders were beginning their tests, and an energetic Warmblood was carting his rider around the arena while a more sleepy-looking spotted horse trotted around the exterior path, getting ready for his turn in the spotlight but not getting particularly worked up about it. I watched the rounds with my feet out of the stirrups, reins loose on Dynamo’s neck. He knew how to do the test, and I knew what I had to do to get him through it. The kind of elevation and self-carriage required at this level was not easy for him, and I wasn’t going to tire him out before the judge even got a look at him. We’d do a little jogging up before the test, and go in fresh as daisies. That was the plan, anyway.

  I looked at my little silver watch, the one I saved for dressage, when I wanted to look classy. It was 8:15. There was no sign of anyone from Briar Hill — not Pete, not Lacey, not Becky. I was starting to feel nervous. What if something had happened back in the stable? What if Mickey had done something stupid? What if one of Pete’s horses had done something? That Vanellope, his ACE horse, could be a funny character. I wasn’t altogether sure I trusted her.

  Then I looked over my shoulder and saw Lacey and Becky walking together, deep in conversation. Both had leather lead shanks and halters slung over their shoulders, both had buckets with washcloths and bottles of Gatorade, both were the pictures of happy young grooms off to help their trainers, and I nearly looked at the sky to see if any pigs were flying by. Instead, I just waved hello when one of them looked up. Lacey waved back. Becky just smiled, but it wasn’t her sneer. It was a genuine smile, and I had the confusing realization that even while my unexpected relationship with Pete was collapsing around me, my old friendship with Becky, if not exactly rekindled, might just be possible again in the future.

  And this was why I preferred my horses to people. Horses were never this complicated, even when they confounded you.

  Lacey handed me up my bottle of neon-blue Gatorade. “Pete’s on his way over. He just wanted to do a couple transitions and some shoulders-in, he said. She works best fresh.”

  “That’s our strategy too.” I took a gulp of Gatorade and wished it was caffeinated. My stomach was too nervous for coffee, and I was starting to feel the effects of my wakeful night. Then I saw Pete riding over on a high-headed Regina, his hands light and easy on the reins, and my anxious stomach did a graceful flip. I handed the Gatorade back hastily and concentrated all my efforts on not fainting, or being sick, or whatever trouble my body seemed to have planned for me. Just seeing him made me shake. He wasn’t good for me, that man.

  Lacey followed my gaze and gave Becky a tap on her shoulder when she saw Pete. Becky waved good-bye and went running over to take care of her rider, who appeared to be studiously ignoring me. The harder I looked at him, the more he seemed to stare off in another direction. I put my face down on Dynamo’s neck to hide my flushed cheeks. His hot flesh was a comfort, his solidity, his familiarity — he was my rock while every other relationship I had shifted all around me.

  The silence between Pete and I continued, through the dressage tests and the time in the stable afterwards, while Lacey and I rinsed off Dynamo and he and Becky rinsed off Regina right next to us. Lacey and Becky were able to joke and laugh, though it was stilted, only adding to the strangeness of the day.

  Our test had been good, although I feared it wasn’t good enough to put us in first. I hadn’t liked our first canter transition very much, and judging by the way Dynamo had pinned his ears and stuck his nose straight out, he hadn’t liked it much either. We recovered, and my legs were now aching with the effort of putting him back together. But I was afraid the damage had been done.

  I thought Pete and Regina had done beautifully, though Pete told Lacey that he thought Regina was too fresh and he should have put some warm-up into her. I didn’t know what he thought was wrong. She looked fantastic to me. Maybe Pete and I were both suffering from a shaking of confidence after yesterday’s unpleasantness. I didn’t know anymore. I just wanted to get through the weekend in one piece, so that we could talk this thing out, and get going wherever it was we were going. Upwards, I hoped. Whether it was together or separate, I really couldn’t say.

  I hoped it was together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Standing in Mickey’s stall, I rubbed the horse between his dark eyes, running my hand up the gap where his forelock should have been. There was a little fuzzball springing up from his poll, right between his ears. It wanted to stand straight up, and looked more like an untidy bridle path than a forelock, but I had my hopes — it looked as if a replacement to his shorn locks was coming someday. I was aware of how fortunate I was that he had come through the scalping incident without a scar. My first stroke of good luck? Or had I been having good luck all along, and I had never even noticed?

  I pulled a dark blue bonnet out of the tack trunk just outside his stall door and held it up for him to inspect. He ran his nostrils over it and snorted. “It will bring out the brown in your eyes,” I told him. “And hide what you did to your face.”

  I was nervous about riding him. I couldn’t pretend not to be. But we had a dressage ride to get through. So I tied him to the rail, and I tacked him up.

  Pete looked up as I led Mickey out of the barn. He was grazing Regina while Becky gave Vanellope another stocking-scrubbing with the wash pail and a bottle of whitening shampoo. She stopped what she was doing and watched us walk by, her hands stained purple with the soap suds.

  I ignored them. I just wanted to get mounted, and get out of here. I threw the reins over Mickey’s ears, gathered them at his withers, and said a silent prayer to the eventing gods. Then I added a silent plea to Mickey as well, just in case that whole “horses are psychic” voodoo stuff was for real: Please don’t be a freak. Please be the horse I know you can be. I lifted my foot towards the stirrup — and felt a touch on my shoulder.

  “What.” I didn’t turn around. I was facing my saddle — the black leather gleaming a few inches from my nose.

  “If he does anything at all, get off him and back him up,” Pete murmured in my ear. “Break the cycle. Ten steps. Fifteen. Until he will walk forward gently.”

  I swallowed hard, and then nodded.

  “You’ll do it?”

  I nodded again, and brushed his hand from my shoulder. I heard him step back.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Good luck.”

  I mounted, and Mickey took a few dancing steps before he consented to walk, spritely and high-headed, but definitely a walk. I let out a harsh breath that I’d been holding without realizing it, and guided him towards the warm-up ring.

  I backed him exactly one time. As we neared the dressage arenas and warm-up, Mickey began to jig sideways and wring his tail, slashing it against my boot. First one side, then the other — swish swish swish. When he began to grind his teeth and lift his head so high I found myself looking between his ears to see where we were going, I knew I was in trouble.

  We were in trouble. We were a team in this, even if Mickey didn’t quite believe it yet. I gathered my reins closer, but kept my fingers loose. “Easy son,” I whispered, hoping to see his ears flick back to hear me. “Relax, buddy boy.” His ears remained fixed forward, glued on the scene ahead.

  And it was a rather more chaotic scene than it had been earlier today. The Novice horses were not so composed as the upper-level veterans, and there was plenty of bucking and spinning and rearing and bolting going on in the warm-up. Worst of all, just beyond the dressage there was a view of the starting box, where the earliest cross-country rides were already getting underway. The air was crackling with the tension and excitement and nerves of several hundred very worked-up horses.

  Mickey began to bounce up and down like a rocking horse, and with the same amount of forward motion. I dropped my hands, spread wide, past his withers, hoping to bring his head down. He only arched his neck in response, tuck
ing his chin close to his chest, and I felt him bring his magnificent hindquarters underneath of him, preparing for his one special trick.

  And before I could really think about what I was doing, I had kicked my feet free, slipped from his back, and was bunching the reins in my fist, slapping it against his chest. He groaned at me, picking up one right leg, and I flung the loose end of the reins at his forearm like a barrel-racer gunning her horse for the finish line. “Don’t you dare slap at me!” I roared, and several Pony Clubbers manning the nearby tack-cleaning tent turned their heads, mouths perfect o’s at the prospect of fresh carnage from the famous Jules Thornton and her wonderful prancing Lipizzaner.

  But it was too late to worry about the peanut gallery now. And not having any tricks in my arsenal but the one Pete had used yesterday, I took a big hunk of his chest in my fiercest grip and squeezed. “Back. Up. Back up!”

  And Mickey backed.

  Ten strides, fifteen, twenty — I lost count. I just backed him up until I could tell by his expression that he was more worried about what was behind him than what was in front of him. And then he was more worried about me than anything else. His eyes were focused on me, his left ear was trained on me, his mouth was open and working. He was hoping and praying to whatever gods the horses prayed to that I’d stop and go back to being nice.

  So I did.

  Mickey stood still, his sides heaving, working the bit anxiously in his mouth. Foam dribbled down to the ground and spattered the toes of my boots, but I wasn’t worried about losing the sheen on my boots. I watched his wide eye, fixed on me — not on the other horses, not on the chattering people, not on the fluttering canvas atop the tack-cleaning tent. Me.

  “Can we do this?” I asked gently, and put my hand on his damp neck. Mickey chewed on his bit in response.

  Good enough.

  Heart in my throat, willing my hands to be still, I sprang back into the saddle, found my stirrups, and asked him to walk on.

  Neck arched, ears on me, hooves careful, Mickey walked.

  I held the reins gently, waiting for my heartbeat to slow down to a more natural rhythm, and let Mickey choose a slow pace towards the warm-up.

  We were leaving the dressage arena, both feeling a little wiser and a lot older, when a voice startled me. “Jules! Jules Thornton!”

  I turned in the saddle, causing Mickey to shy a little from my sudden movement. I tightened the reins and laid my hand on his neck to calm him. It had been a tense test, with an exciting moment when he decided that the fluttering flowers in front of the judge’s gazebo were going to eat him, but we recovered, and I now had a good idea of just how good his pirouettes would be someday, so not all was lost. We might not bring home a ribbon, but at this point, just walking normally was a win. Everything else was gravy.

  “Jules, over here!” A woman extracted herself from the little grandstand and came jogging over to meet us. She was plump and red-faced and wearing a massive floppy sunhat that Mickey at first regarded as a second coming of the gazebo flower monster. But she held out a carrot, the kind with the green leaves tasseling from the top, and the horse graciously changed his mind. The woman unbuckled his flash noseband and was handing him his carrot before I could say a word of protest. And then a second woman, greyhound-slim and athletic, with a graying pony-tail and a face I knew from a hundred magazine articles, joined her, and I realized with a jolt that I was looking down at Mickey’s owners.

  The round woman gave Mickey an enthusiastic pat on the neck and beamed up at me. “Oh, Jules, I can’t believe you have him at a trial already. This is just fantastic. I’m so proud of him!”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Which was just as well, because Carrie Donnelly spoke next, and I would have died if I’d interrupted the undisputed queen of eventing. “Fancy footwork when you first brought him out. Did you learn that backing-up trick from a cowboy?”

  My face flooded red. “No, it was just — he had a bad habit of plunging and bolting —”

  Carrie smiled. “I wasn’t criticizing you. That was really very clever. Reset his entire mind and focused him completely on you. I might use it myself.” She gave Mickey a rub, then ran her hand up his head and flipped up the ear bonnet. “Forelock’s growing back, I see.” Carrie nodded briskly. “I think you two are a good match.”

  Eileen, pulling more carrots from her voluminous handbag, nodded her head enthusiastically. “Oh, they’re just adorable together,” she announced. “Here, Mickey, have another carrot.”

  I was dying to get back to the barn, to tell Pete that it had worked, to apologize for accusing him of trying to sabotage my event or to take over my horse or whatever the hell I’d accused him of. But Eileen and Carrie had other plans, dragging me from friend to friend while they showed off Mickey. I smiled and shook hands with two dozen riders and owners, all prominent eventing people I had seen from afar and longed to meet and schmooze with, but now my heart wasn’t in it. I just wanted to talk to Pete.

  By the time I got away from the socializing and made my way back to the barn, Pete was already out on Regina to warm up for her cross-country. Lacey was sitting on the tack trunk in front of Dynamo’s stall, going over my cross-country saddle for any signs of wear we might have missed in the ten thousand inspections before. She looked up as I led Mickey into the barn, and hastily pushed the saddle aside so that she could hop up and take his reins.

  “I was there to catch him, but you were so busy with those ladies, I didn’t want to interrupt,” she explained, looking guilty.

  “Settle down, you’re fine,” I said, unbuckling my hard hat. “Where’s Pete?”

  “Gone for his dressage with Becky. I saw Mickey go like an old pro. That was crazy good, Jules.” She kissed Mickey on his nose, and his nostrils fluttered in response. “Such a good boy!”

  “It was crazy good, considering he was about thirty seconds from trying to kill me on the way over the warm-up.” I rummaged in the cooler for a Diet Coke. “Pete’s trick worked,” I added as casually as I could. “Shut the whole nonsense down. It reboots his brain or something.”

  Lacey shook her head while she fumbled with the bridle straps, Mickey’s curious lips wiggling after her fingers and making the operation difficult. “Craziness,” she managed to say.

  “I know.” I took a deep swig of soda. Caffeine bubbles popped in my sleepless brain. I had a lot more day to get through. “I have to talk to Pete about it. And apologize,” I added. “That’s going to suck.”

  “It’s worth it,” Lacey said warmly, sounding pleased. “But you really don’t have time now. We have to get you and Dynamo ready for cross-country. Pete’s already out and he’s the rider before you.”

  And it was a mark of Lacey’s efficiency that twenty minutes later she had Dynamo and I kitted out in our protective boots and safety vest, respectively, ready to go onto the cross-country course and tackle the Intermediate course we had won over nearly six months ago.

  “Good luck,” she said, slapping my boot at the in-gate to the warm-up arena. “I’ll be near the finish line.”

  I was busy looking around at the other riders. “Do you see Pete?”

  Lacey shook her head. “Hey Jules? Pay attention to your ride. There will be plenty of time to talk to Pete afterwards.”

  I laughed. “I can’t believe you have to tell me that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jules in love is actually more annoying than ambitious Jules. I can’t believe it.”

  I leaned down and gave her a cuff on the side of the head. Dynamo side-stepped, throwing his head. “Literally everyone is telling you to focus right now,” Lacey smirked, letting go of the reins. “Go get ‘em. Eventing before boys.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Eventing before boys.” I’d apologize to Pete later. We had plenty of time. But now, I had about twenty minutes to get Dynamo’s muscles warmed up before we went out there and tore up the cross-country course. This was what we showed up for. This was why we got up in the morning. I grin
ned at Lacey and shook out my reins. “Here we go!”

  I remember it now in slow-motion, as if that’s how it happened. We were galloping, of course, but we were galloping in slow-motion. We jumped the eighth fence, a straightforward ditch-and-wall, but we jumped it in slow-motion. We landed and turned towards the drop into the forest, a dark wall of trees one long gallop away, where the woods nearly concealed a tall hanging log with a slippery gravel hill on the other side, sloping dangerously down into the wooded portion of the course, but we made the arcing turn in the poison-green grass in slow-motion. The ambulance went racing past us, but somehow that, too, was moving at a rate much more slowly than real life. There was no siren — I remember silence.

  And then the jump judge was running towards us, walkie-talkie in one hand, red flag waving at us in the other. “Hold on course, hold on course!” she must have been saying, but I can’t hear her, I don’t remember her voice. Was it panicked, was it authoritative, was it high or was it low — there’s no telling now. It all happened, but it all happened so slowly.

  And then it all happened so fast. I looked past her, to the forbidding darkness where the ninth fence was, and saw the ambulance pulling to a halt, grass flying from its back tires. And I kicked Dynamo into a full gallop, my spurs in his sides, my elbows out like a cowgirl, and we went flying past the jump judge and tore down the galloping lane at racing speed, my heart in my throat, my horse at his utmost.

  Because Pete was the rider in front of us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The EMTs whirled as we came slipping and sliding into the forest, plunging down the side-path that had been built for the course-walkers, and the jump judges, and, of course, the EMTs themselves.