Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) (26 page)

“What’s going on with you?” I asked.

Zoe looked out the window. It was another beautiful Wellington day. Maybe Wellington in the winter was a little bit like L.A., kind of like a fake movie set. The harsh gray winter at home wasn’t fun, but perhaps it was more real.

“Depends who you ask. Have you seen what they’re saying on HorseShowDrama?”

“I’m asking you,” I said.

I expected Zoe to give me some witty and sarcastic answer, to end up somehow emphasizing how lame and sheltered I was. I expected her to find a way to dodge the truth. But she didn’t this time.

“I’m in big trouble,” she said, sounding teary.

“How so? Is it drugs?”

“Yeah, and, of course, there’s this—” She motioned to her swollen eye and the bruise that had formed around it.

“Donnie?”

She nodded and a few tears slipped out.

“Why do you stay with him?”

“He has nice horses. I’m winning on them. What else am I going to ride?”

“Someone else
has
to be willing to give you nice horses.” As I said it, I realized it wasn’t true. I had learned enough through Chris to know that talent didn’t equal good horses being thrown at you. Plus, Zoe wasn’t Chris. She had a tarnished reputation and so many trainers wouldn’t want to touch her with a ten-foot lunge whip. I’m sure Donnie had emphasized that point to her regularly in his desire to hold power over her.

“But whatever, that’s not the worst thing.” Zoe brought her shaky hand to cover her eyes. “You know all the stealing? It’s been Étienne and I’m a part of it.”

“How? Like you’ve been doing the stealing?”

“No, but I’ve been telling him who to steal from. In some cases I’ve been getting him the codes to the locks and the gates. It’s not just that I’ve known what’s going on. I’ve been a part of it.”

“Wait—did you tell him to steal our golf cart?”

“No, I swear I didn’t. He might have swiped it but for once I didn’t target you.”

“Did you take any money from him?” I wasn’t sure why that mattered but it seemed like it might be relevant.

“No, but he used it to buy me drugs.”

I tried to listen if Dakota was out of the shower. I didn’t want her to overhear this conversation. It was still quiet from upstairs—no footsteps. “What kind of drugs are you on?”

I watched Zoe’s scarecrow chest as she inhaled deeply. “Painkillers mostly. Percocet. Oxy. A little Adderall mixed in for good measure.”

“Cocaine? Meth?”

“Have I done them before? Yes. Am I on them regularly now? No.”

“Not heroin, either?”

She shook her head violently. “Never done that.”

“Well, that’s something. I mean painkillers, that’s not that bad.”

“From your extensive knowledge of drug addiction?”

There was the witty sarcasm back again. “Just from stuff I’ve read online.”

“What the hell am I going to do?” Zoe said. I didn’t answer right away because I didn’t know and she added, “Why am I even asking you? You don’t owe me anything after I fucked you and Chris over. You’re probably just waiting for me to leave right now so you can have nothing more to do with me again.”

I softened my voice. “That’s not true. I… We were friends. I was really angry at you but that doesn’t mean I can’t forgive you. If you’re asking for my help, I’m willing to help you.”

“Really?” Her face was pained, like she didn’t believe me.

There was a part of me that worried that it was all an act. That Zoe was using me again somehow. That this would all come back to bite me in the ass. What would Chris think when I told him I was back involved with Zoe? By virtue of his relationship with me he could be associated with her and her problems, and his name, via mine, might show up about her on HorseShowDrama. But I kept thinking about how I’d seen her last night, looking over Dakota as she slept, and crying softly. And I thought about the good parts of the summer, how Zoe had been a really good friend to me at times. She was in a world of hurt and she needed my help. I couldn’t turn her away. I just had to hope I didn’t regret it.

“We’ll figure out what to do,” I promised her. “It’ll be all right. But right now I need to call AAA and then you need to take me over to pick up the car.”

Chapter 29

And, in fact, he did. After hearing me describe what Zoe had told me, he suggested an out-patient center. He said it would be less expensive and she could keep riding. He said she would go to the center, probably daily at first, get on a program to fully detox, and get support and counseling. I went online and printed out a list of places I thought would be good for Zoe that were right in Wellington. Of course, the circuit would be over soon and I wasn’t sure what her plans were for where she was going next. Thank goodness Zoe told me she was still on her parents’ health insurance so that would cover some of the costs. I had picked places that specialized in dual-diagnoses, which I’d learned meant substance abuse and mental health issues, and were heavy on the therapy-part. Given the fact that she slept around, was being abused by Donnie, and had helped Étienne with his crimes, she needed more than just detox. I wasn’t going to fool myself. Even if Zoe called one of the centers to find out about their program, it didn’t guarantee she would follow through with going. And even if she followed through and went, it might not work. No matter what, she had a long road ahead of her if she actually was going to get clean and get her life back together.

I also asked Ryan what he thought she should do about being involved in the thefts. “Should she go to the police?”

“I think she has to,” he said. “It’s probably key to her recovery. Facing up to things.”

“Poor Zoe,” I said. “I don’t know if she’ll be strong enough to make it through all this.”

“All you can do is be there for her,” Ryan said. “What about you? Have you figured out what’s next?”

“No, not in the slightest.”

“How’re things with Chris?”

I told him about the 5-star horse and how Chris needed the money to buy it. Chris and I hadn’t ever talked about how dismissive he’d been of me the night Dakota was roofied. I’d decided to let it go and chalk it up to how tunnel-vision he was about getting Athelstane. I had vowed to make myself all about his career so I told myself I had to put aside how he hadn’t been there to help me the night with Dakota. He knew what happened to her, though, and he’d been appropriately horrified, if not as apologetic as I would have wanted him to be.

“I think I’m going to ask Dad. Do you think he might go for it?”

“I don’t know. He did seem kind of intrigued by it all.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, flashing back to Dad asking to watch Chris from the in-gate. My spirits lifted. I had expected Ryan to bring me down to earth and say no way was Dad ever buying a share of a horse. But now I harbored even more hope.

Dad had to have known I would one day approach him about helping Chris. He’d probably thought it would have come a hell of a lot sooner. I had asked him to pay for Logan’s training and entries but I hadn’t asked outright for him to invest in a horse just for Chris. The time had come. After I hung up with Ryan, I dialed Dad’s number.

“You saw for yourself how dedicated and talented Chris is,” I said after explaining about Athelstane and what the horse could mean for Chris’s career. “It’s an investment you’d be making.”

He was silent.

“What do you think?” I asked eagerly.

“I’ll tell you what I think—I want to, I really do, but it’s not an investment, honey,” he said. “There is nothing about buying part of a horse or a full horse that’s an investment. Investments are smart decisions based on the long term viability of a business. Horses have no long term viability.”

“But you have to admit that Chris is amazing, don’t you? I mean, as an athlete.”

“Yes, I think he’s immensely talented and impressively focused. If he was a CEO, I’d back him. I liked the horses, the competition. But I can’t quite wrap my brain around the sport and how much money it takes, how you don’t get any of that back.”

I felt tears pressing at my eyes. My dad always managed to make things so unemotional. He made everything about science and rational thinking. But when it came down to it, he had plenty of money. Couldn’t he make a $250,000 investment in something part-emotional? And I hated that basically he was right. If Chris managed to buy this horse, he would want to keep it, especially if it ended up doing really well and being worth a lot. Why did show jumping have to depend on people having enough money to make non-investment investments? I had to dig deeper, to come up with a convincing counter argument.

“You’ll be investing in an experience,” I said. “In the privilege of watching a human and an animal perform in perfect harmony at the highest level. You will be investing in possibly going to the Olympics, in supporting our country, in giving young riders someone to admire and believe in. You’ll be investing in memories. Memories don’t have a price.”

I paused, breathless, and proud of myself for what I’d come up with.

“I’m just not there yet,” he said. “Maybe someday but I can’t say yes today.”

“But he needs the money now. Horses like this don’t come around at this price.”

“Then he’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ll keep supporting Logan, but that’s it.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. There was no use trying to change his mind. I knew my dad. Until I had some game-changing idea to add to my argument, I might as well save my words.

“It was a good pitch,” he said. “The memories thing. Giving riders a hero. You were very eloquent.”

Any other time I would have been thrilled by his praise. But not now.

Luckily, I hadn’t told Chris I was asking my dad so I didn’t have to disappoint him. I couldn’t tell him how upset I was either, though. How all of a sudden I felt like I’d been knocked to the ground. How after the call I had put my pointer finger in my mouth and nibbled at the nail just a little before stopping myself.

The only place I wanted to be was with Logan, so I went over to Chris’s barn, knowing that he was at the show with Lily anyway.

Logan and I had a different relationship now. I didn’t toss him his morning grain, I didn’t groom him every day, I didn’t climb on his back and try to learn how to ride him. I missed those days. Especially right now they seemed so much simpler and I yearned to be back in Vermont, where I was consumed only by trying to find a way to get along with Logan and trying to figure out whether a guy like Chris could actually be interested in me. Now there was Zoe and her very serious real-life problems. There was Chris and the fact that he might not be able to get the last 250K and Athelstane would be sold to another American rider and he’d have to watch him win and witness on a regular basis what he’d lost. There was Dakota and the fact that she’d nearly been raped, and also the fact that her bleeding heart parents didn’t seem to care about her at all. There was my dad, who refused to see what buying part of the horse for Chris would mean to me. I didn’t want him to do it for Chris, really. I wanted him to do it for me. Would it be so terrible to make a less than wonderful business decision because it would mean a lot to his daughter?

Even though I wasn’t taking care of Logan every day, we always picked up right where we had left off, like some people said about reuniting with old friends after years have passed. I pressed my face against his neck and inhaled. When life was getting too much horse people felt solace in the smell of horse. I rubbed my cheeks against his fine coat. I put my nose to his mouth and inhaled his sweet, grassy breath. The stubble of his trimmed whiskers felt nice against my cheek. He chewed a remnant of hay and I listened to the oddly comforting grind of his teeth.

I could have stayed there for a very long time, seeking harbor from the real world. I had come to Wellington to make life easier and clearer and it had only made everything more complicated.

I’m not sure if he was trying to sneak up on me and make himself seem even more intimidating or whether Dale just did everything stealthily, but my breath caught in my throat as I saw him looking over Logan’s stall door.

“Did Chris tell you he could go to Europe with the team if he had a number one horse?”

So much for
hello
. So much for
how’s it going, Hannah
? So much for,
what are you doing pressing your face into your horse’s muzzle and looking like you’re never going to move again
? Was Dale incapable of any sort of small-talk warm-up with everyone, was he just socially inept, or was it just with me that he refused to engage in the kind of niceties that make humans human? Even dogs seemed more subtle than Dale, the way they barked a hello or walked circles around each other when they met.

I decided I wouldn’t try to be delicate either. “No, who said that to him?”

“The chef. He wants to see Chris on the team. Arkos is going well but he wouldn’t be ready to jump solid 5-star classes this summer. It would be great if he could be Chris’s second horse for the smaller international classes.”

“What do you want me to do?” I snapped at Dale. I was tired of trying to be nice to him. “What can I possibly do? Can I break up with him? Will that somehow get him a horse? I don’t think so. I already asked my dad to buy the last share and he said no. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Dale’s expression didn’t change. This guy seriously should have been a professional gambler or a politician. “Just wanted you to know.”

“Okay, thanks, now I know.”

Dale disappeared to whatever fastidious task he had been engaged in before, leaving me with Logan. Logan blew out through his nose and I swear it seemed like it was in response to Dale, like he was saying, “Jeez, that guy!” I laughed a little because it was the perfect response. But inside I still felt all tangled up with everything. It felt like everyone, now Dale included, was looking to me to figure things out, and I didn’t have the answer to any of them, least of all myself and the question of what I was going to do at the end of circuit.