CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Haden
“Alright. So what do you remember about tacking up a horse?” I ask Cassie as I tighten up my cinch.
I watch the little knot form between her eyebrows.
She already looks worlds better than she did when I got to her place earlier.
After some coffee and food, she appears good and sober.
She’s wearing a pair of jeans I’m trying really hard not to let distract me, a big wool sweater, cowboy boots, and a puffy vest. On her head, covering her long wavy hair, is a tattered old cowboy hat that looks like it might be vintage.
Little flakes of snow dust the top and, in the crisp winter air, there isn’t even a breath of wind to blow them off.
There is something about this woman that makes it very fucking difficult to keep her at arm’s length.
Seeing that video earlier, the look of terror in her eyes, the way she clutched her body, having nothing else to cling to but herself?
Christ, that was heartbreaking. But beyond the trauma of that night, there are other demons she’s grappling with.
And I can’t pretend I won’t be there for her if she needs an ear or someone to lean on.
I’m not saying I’m not still pissed at her for dismissing me, but seeing her that vulnerable makes me wonder what other truths she’s hiding.
How deep that well goes. If all I can offer her today is some fresh air and a break from living in her own head, then that’s what I’ll do.
She turns to me now as we prepare to ride. “The pad goes first. I remember that. Then the saddle.”
“You want to swoop it over. This one is heavy.” The rack contains a saddle that will fit her frame and is a good size for the Morgan she’ll be riding. A calm horse this time. Unlike Outlaw.
“I can lift it,” Cassie says, grabbing a step stool from the corner and dragging it over beside her horse. She steps up onto it and puts the saddle pad on the horse’s back. “What’s his name?”
“Aspen,” I tell her. She gives me the “gimme” hand signal so I oblige, handing her the forty-pound saddle and eyeing her cautiously. It weighs her down, and a little squeaking sound escapes her as she lifts it up. I smother a grin.
“Still got it?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says instantly.
“Try not to fling it on him. You want to set it. You want him comfortable.”
“I know,” I hear her grunt as she lifts the saddle up and sets it on Aspen’s back. Once I’ve finished checking my own horse, Odin, I turn back to find her straightening her saddle. She pats Aspen gently, whispering something in his ear as she does.
“All coming back to you?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says as she climbs down from the stool and rounds the other side.
“Before you do up the cinches, make sure the pad is even on both sides,” I tell her. Miraculously, she doesn’t argue and does what she’s told.
“Front cinch first?” she asks. I fold my arms over my chest and nod. She’s got this. “Like riding a bike,” she says, doing up the cinches and buckling them. I make my way over and pull on them to check they’re tight enough.
“Not bad, Princess. How long has it been since you’ve ridden? Truth,” I add.
“Truly rode? I was eighteen or nineteen, so five or six years. I had a friend in Jellico that had a ranch.”
Cassie eyes Aspen like she’s about to get on up.
“Hold on.” I stop her. “Let’s square him up first. See his legs?”
I move Aspen forward to get him standing square.
“Now you’re good. See the difference?”
“Yeah,” she answers. I watch as she takes her plush bottom lip between her teeth.
“Need the stool?” I ask. Now that I see her beside Aspen I wonder if he might be just a bit too big for her.
Something about my question challenges her. Because she scoffs, takes hold of the stirrup, slides her boot in and swings up onto Aspen like she was born to ride him.
I chuckle at her attitude. I’m happy to see that spark of fire back in her eyes.
“What’s funny?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Then what are you thinking?”
I give my head a shake.
“Just thinking you look damn good up there, Princess,” I say as I turn to mount Odin. “But I’m not about to tell you that. It might make your head grow even bigger.”
“Haha. A comedian cowboy today?” she fires back, and I almost see the hint of the girl I met five months ago.
“Time to ride. Let’s roll.”
I sit up tall and squeeze my legs around Odin, making a clicking sound with my mouth.
She does the same, only she rides past me and out into the pasture.
The fucking confidence on this one. She has no clue where she’s going but she doesn’t wait long before taking off like she owns the damn place.
If her long blonde hair wasn’t flying out behind her, and the pasture weren’t wide open and empty, I might be pissed with her risking her safety.
The beauty of her flushed cheeks and smile stuns me as I catch up to her.
“Feeling a little more free?” I call to her.
“Maybe!”
“So I was right? Some fresh air was good for you?”
“What? I can’t hear you!” she jokes with a soft smile, slowing Aspen and holding one hand to her ear.
“Well, hopefully you hear this. Safety first, Princess. You stay behind or beside me. I’m in charge here.”
“For now,” she retorts as I pass, flashing her a wide grin as the snowy pasture swallows us whole.
“So, you gonna tell me?” Cassie asks me an hour later as we ride side by side on the main trail back from the river.
I showed her the site of Wade’s new wedding barn that is almost complete, and also where we’ll be building three new cabins.
All made to resemble the old ones that have been here since the fifties.
“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific,” I say as I take in the silver pines that line the path. The ones this ranch is named after.
“You said you understood what I was going through. My career in jeopardy. You some sort of local celebrity I’ve never heard of?”
I raise my hand to scrub my jaw, before looking down and subconsciously sliding it onto my knee. I rub the lingering dull ache and chuckle. “Not quite.”
“But you might have been?”
When I don’t answer for a beat, she coaxes me further.
“Come on, Cowboy. Tell me something I don’t know.”
I keep my eyes ahead, avoiding her gaze. “I had a football scholarship to UK.”
“So you were a celebrity?” she muses with a small smile.
“Everyone else seemed to think so—’specially my dad.”
“And?”
“It’s a lackluster story. I don’t talk about it much,” I deflect, determined to keep this conversation surface-level. Until I see her face drop out of the corner of my eye. Fuck. Maybe she needs to hear someone else has been in her shoes. I sigh and bite the bullet.
“I played football in high school, and my first year of college,” I admit with a gruff sigh.
“The town’s golden-boy quarterback? Just as I thought.” Cassie straightens her hat. We’ve slowed to a walk now and her cheeks are even more flushed than when we left. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a frustratingly beautiful woman.
“Tight end. And you’re wrong. I was never a golden boy.
I had to bust my ass at two jobs in order to pay for my gear and for camps.
We never had much. My dad has worked as a landscaper for years and, after my mom left, we moved to the less desirable side of town.
My dad hated it there. He said he worked too hard for us to live on the ‘wrong side of the tracks.’ But without my mom’s pay, it was all we could afford.
I spent every summer in camp, every fall and part of winter totally immersed in training.
Six days a week, I was a machine. My dad gave me what he could to help, but he was never the same after my mother left us.
He pinned everything on me, and that’s the only reason he supported me.
He wanted me to make it to the NFL. I guess he figured it would benefit him in the long run. ”
“Drinker?” Cassie asks, and I see the hollow ghosts of a past life in her eyes. I know Glenda used to drink. There’s probably a lot Cassie’s got buried.
“Yeah, he drank some. But gambled more,” I say.
“How old were you? When she left?”
“Ten,” I tell her. “My dad wasn’t very nice to her. He never hit her. But he manipulated her and cheated on her. I can’t blame her for leaving. Though that didn’t stop me staring out of our front window for hours on end, waiting for her to come back.”
Hell, Cassie probably didn’t need to know that part. But she doesn’t pry, just nods.
“Well, that’s something we have in common. I was around the same age when my daddy died. After that my mom went off the rails. Ivy was more like my mom for a while.”
I watch her turn her face to the late-afternoon sun that floods the pasture. The trees are still, and the sky is bright blue, the morning snow all but gone. Some of the horses are out in the field as we reach the barns.
“What was your dad like?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
“He was the best man I’ve ever known. He used to listen to me and Ivy make music for hours at a time.
She would play the guitar and I would sing.
Then I learned to play …” Her eyes shine with the memory.
“Even when I was practicing the same verses over and over, learning the chords until my fingers were blistered, he loved it. Was your dad ever supportive like that?”
I bark out a deep laugh.
“No, he was a selfish prick mostly. He pushed me so much that I knew by tenth grade I didn’t have a passion for football anymore. All I wanted was to be normal; to hang out with friends, to be irresponsible. I couldn’t even drink a beer or stay out late. I always had practice of some kind.”
“Why did you keep doing it?”
I shrug as Ivy and our resident jockey, Rowan McCoy, leave the office and head toward us.
“I just didn’t know any different. Training, playing, being better, getting better. Football was everything to me.”
Fuck. I give my head a shake. This wasn’t supposed to be a “Haden tells all” trail ride.