After the Fall

that Tsarina hadn’t gone far. Some hoof beats. A quiet sneeze. Anything. Give me something, Tsarina.
    “They’re on their way,” he said after a moment. “ETA was fifteen minutes or so, and the trailhead’s not far.” He paused. “Do you need a jacket or anything?”
    “It’s fucking June,” I snapped. “Just go .”
    He hesitated, and I could have killed him when he started unzipping the padded blue and white jacket— matches your bike, how adorable . He set it beside me. “In case you need it.” Then he picked up his helmet off the ground. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
    I nodded but avoided his eyes.
    He fired up the bike again, and a moment later, he was gone. I was alone.
    And in spite of the heat of the afternoon, I started shaking. Fuck. I knew what was coming. I hadn’t been thrown too many times in my life, but the post-fall adrenaline crash was hard to forget: that moment when the initial panic was over, and the body had to do something with all that pent-up energy. I took a couple of deep breaths but didn’t bother fighting it.
    When the shakes hit, I desperately needed to walk off that restless trembling, but I couldn’t. Not when I was ninety-five percent sure one of my shaking legs was broken in at least two places.
    It would pass. It always did. Probably not as fast as I’d have liked, since I had to stay still instead of walking, but it would pass.
    I closed my eyes and took some more slow, deep breaths. My heart was racing, another symptom of that crash, and I reminded myself over and over that it would slow down, that there was nothing to freak out over, though it was hard as hell not to freak out with a heart rate like that. My hands shook in my lap. I just gritted my teeth and tried to hold my injured hand and leg as still as possible.
    I glanced at the biker’s jacket. It wouldn’t help; I was shaking, not shivering. I wasn’t cold. Admittedly, though, I found some comfort in the fact that he’d left it behind. Though I didn’t know a thing about motorcycle equipment, it was well made, leather—probably expensive. Something told me he wouldn’t leave it here and run for the hills. I didn’t know his name, didn’t have his insurance information, and I’d punched him. He could have disappeared and left me to find my own way home.
    But the blue and white jacket lying crumpled in the dirt with a faint smear of blood on the collar was an unspoken promise that he really would come back.
    I wasn’t cold, but I dragged the jacket a little closer anyway. Carefully, I tucked it against my shaking knee to stabilize my injured leg.
    The woods were almost completely silent. Wind rushed through the leaves, the odd bird chirped from somewhere outside my line of sight, but the forest was otherwise quiet. The motorcycle engine had faded into nothing, and I couldn’t hear any sirens.
    No horses, either.
    I scrubbed my uninjured hand over my face, swearing softly into the stillness.
    Ten years of dreaming. Three years of saving. Almost a full year of searching for the perfect horse. Six and a half hours squirming behind my desk.
    And now this.

I had no idea how much time passed. Pain and fear have a weird way of warping time and space, and for all I knew, I’d been sitting there for an hour before the bike’s engine broke the silence again.
    In spite of having his jacket beside me, and being fairly certain he’d be back for that at least, the fact that the biker had come back at all was a huge relief. For all I’d known, he could’ve had a dozen of these jackets at home. Or he could’ve bitten the bullet and bought a new one if it meant he didn’t have to put himself back at the scene of our little incident.
    But there he was. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry this time, coming up the trail at a reasonable, sane speed.
    Oh, now you’re going to ride slowly and carefully. Fucking douche bag.
    He also wasn’t alone. Someone was on the bike behind him. As they came closer, I recognized the light blue uniform shirt and dark blue pants, not to mention the patch on his shoulder with that weird snake-wrapped-around-a-pole symbol.
    Paramedic. Thank God.
    He had one of those hard plastic neck braces around his arm, too, and I suppressed a groan. Those things sucked. Maybe not as bad as a busted-up leg and a throbbing hand, but this parade didn’t need any more rain clouds, goddammit.
    The medic got off the bike and shrugged a small pack off his shoulders. Behind him, the