Love is Silent

Chapter 22

It was barely starting to get light out when the alarm in the motel room went off. Chase grunted and blindly smacked out at the offending piece of technology, swearing quietly when he only managed to knock it to the ground without shutting it off. He untangled himself from me and clambered out of the bed so he could finally silence the annoying beeping.

            I sat up and watched in amusement as he stumbled into the bathroom. The only other time we’d spent the night together, he hadn’t been so uncoordinated in the morning. When I glanced at the clock, I realized that it might be because it was only five thirty in the morning. I was used to early mornings for horse shows, though it had been a year since I’d been up at this time.

            When Chase came back out of the bathroom, he looked slightly more alert. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me sitting up. “You look more awake than should be possible at this time of the morning.”

            I smiled. “This is nothing. There are some shows that I had to get up at three in the morning for.”

            He shuddered. “That’s still the middle of the night.”

            I laughed as I climbed out of the bed. “I’ll make sure to leave you out of those shows then,” I teased him.

            Before I could walk by him to go to the bathroom, he wrapped his arms around me. “Not a chance. I’ll be with you for every show that you go to.”

            I tilted my head and kissed the tip of his nose. “You might change your mind by the time the day is over.”

            He kissed me lightly and then released me. “We’ll see.”

            That first day went by pretty quickly. I had only entered Justice in one division, which consisted of two classes today, and then the championship round tomorrow. Justice and I did pretty well, only taking down one rail in each class. That allowed us to move onto the next day. Since there were over a hundred people in my division the first day, no one really paid too much attention to us. The number had been diminished to twenty-five for tomorrow though, so I had a feeling it might be a little different.

            When Chase and I got back to the motel room that night, I was more tired than I had been in a long time, and my leg was pretty sore. Chase ran a bath for me, and then massaged my leg before we went to bed.

            The next morning we arrived at the show grounds and went immediately to where Justice was stabled. I touched up his braids, since he’d rubbed some of them out overnight. Chase helped me by handing me the yarn when I needed it, and keeping Justice entertained so he didn’t move too much.

            My class wasn’t until the afternoon, so once Justice was braided perfectly again, Chase and I found some seats so we could watch the main event of the show, which was just below the grand prix level. I noticed that a girl sitting near us kept glancing over at me, and she looked vaguely familiar, but she didn’t approach us. It was almost as if she was waiting for something, but nothing happened and eventually she frowned a little and walked away.