Brand New Sky

by Heidi Hutchinson

  Stubborn Hearts (Sneak Peek)

  (unedited)

  ©Heidi Hutchinson 2015

  Attention Reader: this is not a romance.

  This is an origin story.

  In Brand New Sky, Ryan Zacherson fell head over heels for rock star, Sway Schaeffer. But so many things happened before that. This is the story of her beginning.

  Prologue

  Ryan was tired. The kind of tired that you felt in your bones and in your breath. Like living was wearing you out. She sank to her knees and then slowly stretched her body out on the ground.

  "It's a nice place, mom. You picked a good spot," she said softly to the small box resting on the grass of the bluff.

  Another tear slipped out and ran across the bridge of her nose, dripping into the grass. It was hard to believe that her beautiful mother and all she had done in her life was reduced to this small box of ashes.

  The wind blew warm on Ryan's face, tossing her hair in messy tangles. She didn't care too much except that it reminded her that the first time she got to see her mom's favorite location was after she died. In fact, the first time she went anywhere wasn't until she had to. And it was only because her mom had made her give her word.

  "I'm going to do the things we talked about," she promised with more conviction than she felt. "I'm gonna travel and have adventures. I won't stay. I won't."

  The funeral had been lovely. More people showed up than Ryan thought possible, but it made sense. Her mom was kindhearted and sweet, she was loved a great deal.

  Conspicuously absent was Ryan's father. Though, that was to be expected. Her parents had been divorced for ten years. Still, Ryan thought that it would have been a decent thing to at least pay his respects to the woman who had loved him first.

  On the heels of that thought, came the memory of her mother's siblings. They had made the day harder, if that were even possible. Bickering about petty things like flower choices and whether or not the Reverend had been seen at the race track the week before.

  They were embarrassing.

  Ryan understood why her mom always told her to stay away from them. She had said they would only break her heart and it was best to not acknowledge them.

  But they they were family.

  So, Ryan was conflicted.

  Although the incessant texts and phone calls asking about when the reading of the will would be happening was seriously wearing her down.

  She wanted to finish her promise to her mom first. So, she'd taken the small box of ashes and followed the hand written directions up the coast to Carolina. To the place where Faith Zacherson had said she had first fallen in love with a sunset.

  And now that the time had come, Ryan was having difficulty letting her go. She kept thinking she had one more thing to say.

  "I'm gonna miss you so much," she said, more tears welling up and spilling out. She was amazed that she still had any tears left to cry, she hadn't stopped since she'd received the phone call notifying her of her mom's sudden departure from this earth. The cancer had been more aggressive than they'd anticipated. The doctors thought they had a handle on it. But then it was just there.

  Faith had known, it seemed. She prepared for the moment immediately. Making sure Ryan wouldn't have to worry about all the details, just keeping her promise. She wasted no time in imparting as much wisdom as she could on her twenty-year-old daughter. Even writing letters during the times Ryan was at school, so nothing would be missed.

  “How were you so brave?” she finally asked the question she wish she would have months ago. “I don't just mean when you got sick. I mean with all of it. How were you so very brave?”

  Ryan had no idea if she was going to make it. She couldn't be certain, but she had to have hope. Hope that since she had come from such a remarkable woman, some of that had gotten into her.

  But Ryan's mom must have sensed the hesitancy in her daughter, because one of the things they talked about the most was Ryan chasing her dreams. Her mom was adamant that when her time had passed, Ryan move on from that town. And never look back.

  So Ryan had promised.

  Again and again.

  She was going to keep that promise no matter what.

  She just didn't know how.

  Chapter 1

  Just shy of three months later

  Triston-

  Thank you for your reply. I was genuinely touched that you took the time to respond.

  To answer your question, yes, I am writing again. Though, it's mostly short stories and scenes with no context. Almost as if these people pop into my head and start having a conversation with one another and I'm just there to witness it. I suppose that makes me sound totally looney. Or perhaps that's normal. Any insight there would be appreciated.

  I'm excited to learn that you're working on a continuation of your Formidable Fire series. (And no worries, I'll keep that to myself. I'm also a very private person, so I get it.)

  Do you ever get worried that your personal life with accidentally spill into your writing and wreck it?

  Maybe that's just me.

  -Ryan

  Ryan read her email again. She bit down hard on the skin at side of her thumb, enough to break the skin. She wasn't even reading the words anymore. She knew what it said. She was still trying to decide if it said what she wanted it to say. Or if it even mattered.

  “Ah,” she muttered under her breath and hit send. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes.

  It was one thing to write fan mail. It was something else to receive a reply. At first she wasn't going to reply to the reply at all, but then she did.

  “It's not like it matters.” She stood up, taking her empty coffee cup with her. It was still early, the sun easing it's warm rays through the large windows in the dining room where Ryan kept her laptop. She had plenty of time to take a shower and get to the stable.

  She really didn't need to get up as early as she did. At one time, she was the girl sawing logs until the absolute last minute. Then flying around trying to get ready and still make it to wherever she had to be on time.

  Sleep had been more difficult to obtain recently. For obvious reasons.

  Although Jeremiah was trying to change that. Or, at least he thought he could. He wanted her to move out of her house that her mom had left her, and into his lovely condo across town.

  Ryan wasn't too keen on this for a couple of reasons. One, they had just gotten engaged. Like a week ago. So it felt a little rushed. But their entire relationship had felt that way. She supposed it could be attributed to Jeremiah's chosen profession of bull rider. He was intense and always on the go—here, there, up, down, spinning, spinning, spinning—Ryan couldn't keep up. And she sort of didn't want to. He had his thing, she had hers.

  Two, she liked her house. She really liked her house. It was right on the beach with a gorgeous view of the Gulf from the top balcony. Big and clean. And it was home. It had been her home her entire life. She loved to spend her evenings watching the sun set over the Gulf. It settled her heart and quieted her mind—which she happened to need a lot more these days.

  She couldn't see the sunset over the water from Miah's place.

  But he was adamant that her lack of sleep was due to her still living in a house that she had only ever lived in with her mother. He believed that she needed someone with her in order to be at peace.

  This was a weird point of contention between them. Ryan didn't mind living alone. Missing her mom and living alone were two different things. She did miss her mom. And that was why she wasn't sleeping.

  Well, that and the weird phone calls she'd been getting from her mom's older brother Vic. In fact, all the phone calls she was getting from that side of the family were unsettling. So far she had no idea how to navigate their new interest in her and her life. And Miah wasn't too interested in talking to her about it.

  It's not that he shut her down, he didn't. His eyes would glaze over and his shoulders would slump—the universal sign of “not even pretendi
ng to care.”

  So, she was dealing with all that shit on her own.

  Which was fine.

  Really.

  It was her shit.

  She should be the one to deal with it, not make it someone else's problem.

  She yanked the shower curtain back in the second floor bathroom and twisted the water on, her mind drifting back to the email she'd just sent. Was it ridiculous? Probably. He had already replied once, the chances of him replying again were slim to none.

  Still.

  The tight knot in her belly was hoping he would. She was especially hoping he would answer her question. Because while she was writing again, she was doing so in a careful and limited sort of way. Making sure that nothing, not even something small, looked anything like her real life.

  She actually didn't know why she did it that way. She just did.

  These were the thoughts that she drifted on as she showered. Along with the random item she mentally added to her grocery list for after work. She should write them down because she knew she'd forget. But she never did.

  Stepping out of the shower, she heard her phone ping with a new text.

  Jeremiah: lunch today?

  She loved him, she really did. But he never remembered her schedule. Not even if she wrote it down for him and stuck it to his dashboard—which is what she had been doing for the past two weeks.

  Ryan: I work all week. We can do dinner if you want.

  She finished toweling off and got dressed in her standard jeans and t-shirt. She wished she could wear shorts to work, but it just wasn't the smartest idea. She'd rather wash manure or other unsavory accumulations from her occupation out of her pants than off of her legs. Even if the humidity in Florida made the denim stick to her legs and pinch her in weird and awkward places.

  Hair in a ponytail, no makeup, and she was out the door.

  She was halfway to work when her phone pinged with a new message.

  Jeremiah: Sounds great, pick you up at 8

  She tossed the phone back onto the passenger seat of her Toyota Camry. She did it smiling.

  Unfortunately, her smile didn't last long.

  As she pulled her car into her parking space (the one at the very end. It wasn't marked or anything, it was just the one she always used.), she saw that today was not going to be a normal “day at the office.”

  Not by a long shot.

  Her dad was there today.

  Ryan Zacherson had a difficult relationship with her father Caleb. Difficult because he had left her and her mom when she was ten and started a new family—a better family. A family Ryan had never been allowed to meet. She didn't see him normally. At all.

  Even though she technically worked for him.

  It was a tentative détente they had reached after her mom passed away. It was providing her with the hours she needed to gain experience in her preferred field of study, and it let him feel less guilty for being the definition of absent father.

  Although, if it hadn't been for Doc Henry, she probably wouldn't have this opportunity at all.

  Doc Henry was the vet she was interning for. He took care of the horses at Zacherson Racing Stables and she'd been his biggest fan for the past 3 years. She didn't know he worked for her father, not at first. She had been drawn to the track and the powerful animals and Henry was always there. She'd started asking questions and he'd provided the answers. He was probably the smartest man she had ever met. He knew everything. Being in the business for more than forty years, he'd seen it all. And he was the only vet she had seen at the track who took such good care of his charges.

  A girl with no father figure to speak of, Ryan latched onto Henry's wisdom and patience, forcing a bond with a man who was a veritable stranger. But he hadn't seemed to mind.

  Under his encouragement, she enrolled at the University of Tampa and began her under graduate studies, majoring in biology. She sucked up the information and was a voracious student—much to the surprise of her mother—and ended up getting her degree in just over three years.

  Henry had a word with Caleb about taking Ryan on as an assistant in order to get her some more hands-on experience to better her chances of being accepted into the University of Florida's Veterinary Program. Ryan hadn't been in that meeting, but it must have went well, because Henry got his way and Ryan had been working with him nearly every day since, and that was three months ago. Two weeks after her mom had passed.

  Ryan knew realistically that Henry probably went to bat for her out of compassion that she had lost her mom. But she wanted to believe it was just because he saw something good in her and wanted her to succeed.

  Maybe it was both.

  Even though Ryan had been working at the stables for three months, she'd only seen her dad twice. Once when he was folding his perfectly tailored suit into the Jaguar at the front office on his way out—he hadn't seen her. And once when she was helping Doc with an irritable colt as he tried to take a blood sample.

  She'd gotten flustered and the colt's hard head had pushed into her chest before she'd braced properly, sending her out the stall door. She'd tripped over her feet and the wheel barrow she'd been using to muck out stalls before being called to assist. She'd landed on her butt. Hard.

  Cursing with all the versions of the f-word that she knew, she'd struggled to regain her feet as shadow fell across her body.

  Looking up into brown eyes that matched her own, she'd swallowed her suddenly dry tongue.

  “Sorry,” she'd muttered, glancing away quickly as her face heated up.

  Caleb Zacherson had cleared his throat and then stepped around her. He hadn't said anything.

  And she hadn't seen him at the stables ever again.

  Until today.

  The nerves in her belly made themselves known and she had to take several deep breaths before she got out of her car. Maybe he would be in the office or the main building and she wouldn't see him.

  Shuffling quickly to her locker in the back to stow her purse and phone, she noticed that the atmosphere surrounding the stable was quiet. She didn't hear the normal chatter coming from the jockeys or the sounds of horses huffing with impatience to be the next to get taken out.

  Then again, maybe she was imagining it.

  “Hey, Doc,” she said softly as she approached Henry, who was looking at a chart for their newest acquisition—a beast of an animal with a coat that had once been sleek and shiny, but was now dulled and matted in places. His thick, mahogany mane was dry and limp, like he hadn't been able to run for a very long time.

  Faramir's Fire.

  Ryan had fallen in love with the name long before she had met the horse. But who didn't love a good Tolkien reference?

  She secretly called him Red to keep things simple.

  The large stallion was the most-hyped racer to enter the scene in the last decade. He came from good stock, a great farm, decent owners. He was fast, breaking records in his first heats. But then he seemed to hit his peak and his speed died off. In the previous three races, he's come in last, by seven lengths.

  It was looking like retirement for Faramir's Fire.

  But Doc Henry had taken a shine to him when he'd arrived at Tampa Bay Downs and had a word with their resident trainer Jesse Hart.

  No one in the stable had the kind of influence that Jesse had. He was only twenty-five but had already established himself as some kind of wonder kid when it came to training race horses.

  So Jesse had had a word with Caleb, and Faramir's Fire arrived by trailer two days later.

  He was Ryan's priority for the next three weeks. She was to assist Doc in changing his diet, monitoring his moods, and taking blood and urine samples. Because Jesse wanted to race him again at the end of the three weeks.

  The whole stable had been buzzing with anticipation. No one had ever taken a horse that had been consistently losing by more than three lengths and turn them into a champion. But Zacherson Racing didn't own middle-of-the-pack racers. They bred, raised, and raced cont
enders. Placing top three and usually first.

  They were all wondering if Jesse and Doc could pull it off.

  Ryan wasn't wondering. She knew they would.

  Doc was a genius and Jesse was the best horseman she had ever seen.

  They totally had this covered.

  “Hey, girl,” Doc said without looking up from his clipboard.

  “Anything out of the ordinary today?” she asked her usual.

  “Bloke's got a touch of bloat this morning. See if you can get me a UA and run the protein levels again. I suspect they're still too high.”

  Great. A urine analysis first thing in the morning.

  This is why Ryan wore jeans to work.

  Doc gave her a nod and then resumed his daily rounds.

  She gathered her bucket and her stool, perched in the corner of the stall, and waited for Red to do his business.

  “He likes you.”

  Ryan's eyes lifted to the voice. Long, corded arms were draped over the edge of the stall, they were attached to defined (even through his denim button up shirt) shoulders and strong neck. Could a neck look strong? Well, everything about Jesse Hart was strong, from the way he spoke to people to the way he blinked—which he did slowly and deliberately, cunning blue eyes taking in everything around him all the time. The shock of once brown hair that had been lightened with the sun and styled by the wind, was tossed across his forehead, drawing even more focus to those eyes.

  “How can you tell?” she quipped, shoving Red's head away as he pushed into her shoulder, hoping for a goody—of which she had none since it wasn't in his very special diet.

  Jesse's lips twitched but he didn't respond. His shoulders straightened suddenly and his arms withdrew from the ledge of the stall.

  “Good morning, sir,” he greeted solidly.

  Ryan craned her neck over the side of Red's huge head and tried to see who he was talking to.

  “Good morning, Hart,” Caleb Zacherson's smooth voice hit Ryan's ears just before he came into view. “How's he doing today?”