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strained against the fence, the top rail biting into her stomach.
     Her hand rubbed at the sore spot in her chest as if some ragged rip inside had begun
     to knit together.
    “Yes.” Cole moved closer to put his foot on the fence. If Katie shifted her weight
     their shoulders would touch. She willed herself motionless. “Two pregnancies seem
     to have settled her. She’s much calmer now.”
    Katie nodded and waited. She didn’t want to know, loathed breaking their tentative
     peace, but she had to ask. “And her first?” she whispered.
    From the corner of her eye she watched Cole scrape his hand across his darkened cheek,
     a gesture he made when he was uncomfortable. “Stillborn.”
    Disgust coated her mouth like vomit. She barely kept herself from spitting. “And you
     still bred her again.”
    “Christ, Katie, I know what your opinion is of me, but cut me some slack. You’ve lived
     next door to me your whole life, and yet you judge me on only one moment.”
    Katie couldn’t look at him. Conflicting images ran through her mind. How, as a child,
     he’d picked her up when she’d fallen and had blown on her scraped knees. How, whenever
     she was in trouble, she could count on him. And then there was another time, another
     flash of memory that had destroyed a young girl’s trust.
    “I didn’t have the heart,” he said. “We turned her out to pasture, and well, she went
     wild. She seemed to do better the less we messed with her. It got to the point, unless
     there was a real bad storm coming, we just left her out. There were other horses in
     the pasture, so she wasn’t alone. About a year ago we noticed she was carrying. I
     don’t know who the sire was, but this time it was her decision.”
    Cole shifted so Katie would have to look at him, his gaze direct and unwavering. “Katie,
     this time she got to choose.”
    She nodded and ran a hand through her hair to hide the fact she was close to tears.
    Cole pulled out an apple, shiny and red. It glowed in his palm like the witch’s offer
     to Snow White.
    “Do you think you still have it?” Cole asked, with his perfect lopsided smile, and
     the promise of a dimple high on his cheek.
    Katie pushed away from the fence, unable to pretend that his presence didn’t affect
     her. It would be so easy, too easy to forgive and forget, to fall back into old patterns.
    Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . . No.
    She snatched the apple out of his hand and walked farther down the fence line. She
     needed to be alone, couldn’t have Cole’s presence fogging up her mind. Katie slipped
     between the two wood rails and slowed her steps to half measure. She got as close
     to Sweet Thing as she dared. Then took a breath and waited.
    Moments passed as mother and baby grazed alongside each other. Sweet Thing was in
     constant communication with her baby—a flick of tail, a whinny of warning, reassuring
     nuzzles. Then as if by some higher knowledge, Sweet Thing’s head popped up.
    Large brown eyes caught hers. Katie’s legs weakened until she was on her knees. The
     mare raised her head and called to her baby. Then with a flick of her tail, she turned,
     and Katie watched, as they both ran off into the pasture.
    Katie let her arm fall, the apple slipping from her numb fingers. And for a moment,
     she got lost between the now and the hundreds of times in the past, when she’d sat
     in the dirt—with a bribe in her hand and her heart in her throat.

Chapter 4
    Senior year
     
    It was damn hot. The air was already thick and stale, and lazy as a rented mule. If
     a wisp of breeze could have found its way to the far stall, Katie would’ve wept. As
     it was she was pretty darn close already. A person couldn’t sink much further than
     sitting in the dirt—and Lord knows what else—rolling apples under a gate, trying to
     entice a pissed-off horse.
    Sweet Thing had feed in front of her at all times. Now, after three months, she actually
     looked like the true