16. Sawyer
SIXTEEN
Sawyer
When I first found out about The Far Meridian, I hadn't known how I would feel watching Daniela work again. I respected her; she was amazing. But I didn't like that she had to be Daphne Wilder, when I thought Daniela Morales was perfect.
Seeing her though?
Watching her?
God…she was so fucking sexy.
The Far Meridian was a Western. A real one—not the sanitized kind, not the kind where the women stood at windows and watched the men ride out. Rose, Daniela's character, was a woman who'd left a ranch and come back to claim it, and Ellis had dressed her accordingly.
Dark trousers. Worn boots with real miles on them. A canvas duster that moved right. Hair back, hat low, a rifle scabbard on the saddle that she actually knew how to use now because I'd taught her.
She looked nothing like a damsel.
She looked like someone who knew exactly where she was going and what she'd do when she got there.
Sexy as all hell.
The stunt was a full gallop pickup—more complex version of the cone drill we'd started with back in January, except now she was picking up a saddlebag off a fence post at speed, on camera, in costume, with Ellis watching from the monitor.
Bishop knew the sequence. Daniela knew the sequence.
I'd watched her run it six times this morning at half speed and she'd nailed every single one.
She didn't need me out here.
We both knew that.
I went out anyway.
"Walk me through it," she said, when I came to stand at Bishop's shoulder.
Her eyes were laughing at me.
"Approach at a controlled gallop," I said. "Right hand on the pommel, left arm down and loose. Eyes through his ears, not at the post."
"Not at the post," she repeated. Serious.
Completely not serious.
"Your peripheral vision does the work."
"My peripheral vision does the work." She nodded slowly, like she was hearing this for the first time, like we hadn't had this exact conversation forty times in the paddock at Holt Creek. "And if something feels wrong?"
"You call it. Everything stops."
"Everything stops." She looked down at me from the saddle. The hat was pulled low. The duster fell perfectly. She looked like the protagonist of every Western I'd watched growing up, except real, except mine. "Anything else?"
I put my hand on her knee.
She looked at my hand.
Looked back at me.
"Your left heel," I said. "Keep it down through the lean."
"My heel was down every time this morning."
"Keep it down anyway."
"Sawyer."
"Daniela."
She didn't correct me on her name anymore.
I liked that. Loved it.
"Are you going to hold my hand through every stunt on this film?" she teased.
"Probably," I said.
"Ellis is going to notice."
"Ellis already knows."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Ellis has known since we started shooting," I said. "She's not subtle about what she pays attention to."
Daniela looked toward the monitors, where Ellis was standing with her arms crossed and her sunglasses on, talking to the DP. As if she felt the look, Ellis glanced up. Looked at us. Looked back at the DP without expression.
"She's not going to say anything," I said. "She hired us both on purpose."
"I know." Daniela looked back down at me. Her hand came down to cover mine on her knee. "I know she did."
We stayed like that for a second. The set moved around us—crew repositioning, someone adjusting a light, the second AD talking into her headset.
"Heel down," I said.
"Heel down," she agreed.
I squeezed her knee once and stepped back.
She gathered her reins. Rolled her shoulders. Looked out at the course—the fence post, the saddlebag hanging from it, the line she'd run enough times her body knew it without her brain.
She clicked her tongue.
Bishop went.
She went from standing to a full gallop in four strides, the duster flaring out behind her, the hat somehow staying exactly where it was, and she looked like she'd been doing this her whole life.
Because she had been, now—months of early mornings and cold paddocks and Bishop teaching her the language of it, all of it visible in the way she moved with him instead of against him. He was more her horse now than mine.
That felt right too.
The fence post came up fast. Her right hand stayed on the pommel. Her left arm dropped, loose and certain.
She didn't look at the post.
She leaned out.
The saddlebag came off clean.
Ellis said, from behind the monitor: "That's why we call her One-Take Wilder."
I grinned…proud, because my girl's star was rising.
Daniela brought Bishop around in a wide arc and came back toward me at a trot, the saddlebag in her hand, her face smug as hell but trying not to crow about it immediately.
She was losing the fight.
"Well?" she said.
"Adequate," I said.
She pointed at me.
"Very adequate," I said.
"Sawyer Holt, I will get off this horse?—"
"You were perfect," I said. "You were absolutely perfect."
The smile broke through completely. The real one, full and unguarded, the one that had nothing to do with Daphne Wilder and everything to do with the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
She looked down at me from Bishop's back—hat low, duster settling, the woman who'd shown up at craft services in New Mexico in a wool costume she was dying in and thrown her arms around my neck like she'd been looking for something solid to hold onto.
She'd found it.
So had I.
"Again?" she said.
"Again," I said. "They need another angle, but that was great. Just want options…now do it perfectly again.”
She rolled her eyes and wheeled Bishop back toward the start mark, muttering in Spanish under her breath, and I stood there in the Hill Country sun and watched her go and felt something so simple and complete that I didn't have a word for it.
Wait…there it was.
Love.