Chapter 2
Benson
I can feel Remi watching me as I walk beside him into the horse barn. He shuts the door once we’re through, keeping the windchill outside.
“You don’t actually have to help muck stalls,” he says, peeling his winter gloves off and tossing back his hood. He shucks his coat next, hanging it on a hook inside the door, several other coats and leather hats lining the wall.
It takes me a second to respond. “I don’t mind. I’m not doing anything else.”
Remi gives me a look I’m unsure how to decipher. “This morning or…in general?”
I follow Remi’s example and lose my coat, the temperature in here warm enough that I’ll probably be sweating by the time we’re done with…whatever it is I’ve enlisted in. “Both.”
He nods, waiting until I’ve pulled off my hat and tucked it in the pocket of my discarded coat before waving me after him.
“It’s pretty simple. Any stall that’s empty, we rake out the soiled straw.
That goes into a wheelbarrow, which goes out back.
Quick wash of the feeders, as well as any floors that need it. If there’s urine or whatnot.”
Remi waits until I nod before going on.
“Once dry, new straw goes in. Rakes, shovels, and pitchforks are all in here.” He taps the opening to a storage room. “Questions?”
“Yeah. When did you grow up?”
Remi’s eyebrows fly into his hair before I register what I said.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I just… Jesus. Last I was here, you were, what…twenty-five?”
“It has been a while.”
“Yeah, it has,” I agree, taking in my kid brother’s friend who…
isn’t really a kid anymore. So much of him is the same.
Shaggy, golden-brown hair. Light blue eyes and expressive features I’ve always secretly appreciated because they rarely leave me guessing.
Almost delicate bone structure yet a fierce sort of resilience he’s possessed for as long as I’ve known him.
He’s not…different than five, ten, fifteen years ago. And yet he is.
“I’ll be thirty in—”
“Sixteen days,” I fill in. “Yeah, I remember.”
There go his eyebrows again. “You remember my birthday?”
I nod. Numbers are one thing I’ve always excelled at, whether it’s recalling dates or phone numbers with ease or running complex figures. It’s why I got into corporate finance straight out of college, following in my dad’s footsteps.
I never expected at forty-two to be right back where I started from.
“You’re just different,” I tell Remi. “Competent.”
His mouth quirks.
“Christ. I don’t mean…”
Remi knocks his fist into my shoulder before I can figure out a way to dig myself from that verbal hole. “I didn’t take offense, Ben. I know what you mean. You’ve never seen me at work.”
That’s exactly it. The way he carries himself here at his family’s ranch is a far cry from the kid who used to play video games on the couch back home with August during those rare occasions I visited.
“Where has the time gone?” I ask him.
Remi’s gaze moves from my mouth to my eyes, a small smile on his face. “If you figure that out, let me know.” He grabs two rakes from inside the storage room, passing one to me. “You’re different, too, you know.”
“In what way?”
His eyes roam over me slowly. It’s not the same way he focuses on a person when they talk. It’s something else. He rests his rake against his shoulder before curving his hands in front of his jaw, signing the word, ‘Beard.’ Then his eyes reach my hair, and he appears to be fighting a laugh.
“What?” I ask, running my fingers through the strands. “Hat hair?”
“Static,” he answers, amusement in his tone. “You look like a Silkie.”
“Oh, well, that’s great.”
Remi starts to laugh as I try to smooth my hair down. “You’re making it worse. Here.”
I stare at Remi’s hand, one finger outstretched my way. When I realize he’s trying to help disperse the electrical charge, I touch my finger to the tip of his. The zap is expected. Remi’s hand proceeding to ruffle through my hair is not.
“Better,” he says, stepping back.
Pulling in a breath, I head toward a nearby stall. “So, you’re older, and…I have more hair.”
“That’s an oversimplification,” he says amidst a chuckle. “You’re older, too.”
“And none the wiser,” I mutter.
“What was that?”
I turn his way, cursing the fact that I said that out loud to begin with. If he were anyone else, I’d say it was nothing. But it doesn’t feel fair to do that with Remi. “None the wiser.”
“Ah. I think that’s a myth… Wisdom with age.”
“Well, then we’re all fucked, aren’t we?”
Remi barks a laugh that shoots through me the same way that static did. A jolt. Something unseen but there all the same.
I roll the rake handle in my grip as Remi starts grabbing items out of empty stalls. Big rubber bowls and plastic balls the horses play with. I imagine we’ll wash those, too.
Remi’s voice rings out as I watch him. “Need an invite?”
“For what?”
He disappears around a corner before tossing another rubber bowl into the hallway. “To get to work.”
I huff, even as I can feel a smile tugging at my cheek. “Jackson won’t mind, will he?”
Jackson Darling is the one who runs the ranch these days, the second-oldest of the four brothers.
Lawson, the eldest, is a teacher at the local school.
Colton, the other middle child, is a farrier.
Remi is the baby of the bunch. Mr. and Mrs. Darling are retired, last I heard, but they still live on the ranch in their own cottages near the main house.
My mother has kept me informed over the years.
“He won’t mind,” Remi says, the scrape of his rake prominent beneath his words as he starts cleaning a stall. “Are you fond of those boots?”
The topic change throws me. I look down at the hiking boots I’m wearing. They’re not my best pair. “Uh, not particularly?”
“Good. They’ll never be the same after this.”
“You’re really selling this, you know.”
Remi laughs.
I step into the nearest stall, a light high above flickering as I appraise the rectangular space.
Not sure what I’m doing, I start raking the straw toward the exit.
Once I have a pile of it, I go in search of a wheelbarrow.
I find one near the back of the barn, passing Remi who already has his own wheelbarrow filled.
Getting the straw inside turns out to be a harder task than I imagined.
I make a mess of it, straw scattering everywhere.
Using my boot, I drag some of it onto the rake and then double back for a shovel, getting the smaller messes left behind.
All the while, that light above my head keeps blinking on and off.
Huffing, I return to the storage room in search of a ladder. And that’s precisely how Remi finds me a minute later, amusement on his face as he peers up at me from the doorway to the stall.
“Bulb was flickering,” I explain.
“You got it?”
“Yeah. Just needed to be twisted.”
His lips quirk as he takes in the straw bits strewn all over the floor and out into the hall.
“I know,” I say preemptively, climbing back down the ladder. “I’ll get better at it.”
“No, you’re doing good, Ben. I appreciate the help.”
Remi heads off before I can answer, leaving me feeling a strange sort of warmth at his words.
I store the ladder and spend the next five minutes getting every scrap of straw and horse mess I left behind.
I find the dumpsite out back where Remi said it’d be, the sun up fully now and the snow glittering under the rays.
For a second, I simply stare.
Cold infiltrates my lungs, the sounds of the countryside so much quieter than my previous home of Salt Lake City. More peaceful, like I told Remi. Here, it feels like I can breathe again for the first time in a long time. Sure, there’s work to do. Work I somehow fell into without quite knowing how.
But the anxiety I’ve lived with all my life is…tempered. It’s a dull thrum under my skin, not the roar it’s been for the past decade plus.
How is it the one place I had to get away from now feels closer to a home than anywhere else?
A rancher passes, giving me a wave I return. Realizing my fingers have gone cold, I head back inside the barn.
After Remi shows me the process for cleaning the feeders, he cuts the string off a fresh bale of straw.
Picking up a pitchfork leaned against the wall, he hefts a hunk of it into the stall I cleaned, his aim precise.
I have a feeling if I tried that, the straw would fall apart midair, leaving me with another mess to take care of.
Using my own rake, I distribute the fresh straw evenly over the floor, feeling rather proud of myself until I step down the hall and realize Remi is halfway through the rest of the stalls.
His lips pull into a smile when he catches me staring. “I promise you’re doing good, Ben.”
“You’re humoring me.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m slowing you down,” I point out.
Remi stops, his rake at his side. “Who said I care about how fast we’re going?”
That brings me up short. I’m so used to a fast-paced office environment where efficiency is everything. You arrive early or you’re late, you take minimal breaks or, better yet, skip them entirely, and staying past the requisite eight hours is expected.
But I’m not a part of that lifestyle anymore, am I?
“I think…some habits are hard to break,” I admit.
Remi gives me an understanding smile. “You’re under no obligation here. This isn’t even your job.”
“Yeah, how’d I get roped into this again?”
“I asked nicely?” Remi says, a grin on his face.
“We both know that’s bull.”
He laughs. “I bet there are worse ways you could spend your sabbatical.”
“I’m not on sabbatical,” I counter without thought. “I quit.”
Remi’s eyebrows fly up in surprise. I expect him to ask why or what’s next or a million other questions everyone from my old life wanted answers to. But he doesn’t. “Did it feel good?”
Well, shit. “Yeah. It felt amazing.”
He nods, brushing his hair out of his eyes with the side of his wrist, his hands likely as dirty as mine. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’ve never understood that question,” I tell him truthfully. “Am I going to say no without having any clue what you intend to ask? It’s a question about questions that only leads to more questions. Just ask the question and then you’ll find out whether or not I’ll answer it.”
He looks amused. “I think that’s the most you’ve said to me at once since I found you trespassing on our farm.”
“It’s not trespassing if you’re invited. Colton said I could stop by anytime I want.”
“Fair enough,” he says, his smile lopsided. “Are you happy?”
“Jesus, Remington.”
“Oh, you’re full-naming me now?”
“I… I don’t know your preference.”
“Remi is fine,” he says. “Are you gonna answer the question?”
I stare at the collar of Remi’s shirt for a long time as I consider it. Long enough I expect him to get bored waiting, but he never rushes me or fidgets, even as my own fingers tap a complicated rhythm on my pant leg. “I don’t know,” I say in the end.
“You don’t know if you’ll answer me or you don’t know if you’re happy?”
“The second one.”
He hums. “When I said earlier that you’re different, too, I wasn’t just talking about your beard.
You seem like you’ve…shed some sort of weight.
I don’t know how else to describe it. You’re different, but you’re still you.
I can’t claim to know anything about your life, not really.
But I think if you came back here to find what makes you happy, you will. ”
I swallow, my throat feeling raw. “I haven’t shed weight.”
His smile quirks. “I’m not talking in a literal sense, Ben. I think you know that.”
I do. And his words couldn’t be closer to the truth. But how he saw it when no one else has, I can’t understand.
“I hate running,” I tell him, the words slipping free as if possessing their own sentience. “Every morning, I’d go for a jog before showering and heading into work. I hated every damn step.”
“So why’d you do it?”
I throw my hands in the air. “Societal expectations? Routine? I thought I had to be a certain way.”
Remi appraises me for a moment, light blue eyes searing enough I have to flick my gaze away. I bring my eyes back to his when he speaks. “For the record, I think you look better than ever. You seem…settled in your skin.”
My heart beats a swift staccato, but he’s not done.
“If no one has ever said it to you before, you don’t have to be any certain way for anyone else, Ben.”
I wish someone would have told me that when I was young. I wish someone would have noticed all the ways in which I was different.
But no one ever did, least of all myself.
One of the horses next to us lets out a soft whinny, reminding me of why we’re here. “What do you do about the horses that are still inside their stalls?”
Remi follows my gaze, lifting a hand to pet the horse’s muzzle through the bars. “Some will go out to work when the second-shift ranchers arrive. I’ll clean their stalls this afternoon. For the rest, I’ll shift them outside.”
“And between now and then?”
“I’ll head back to the petting farm,” he answers. “Rinse and repeat.”
“You stay busy, don’t you?”
He huffs a laugh. “I do. Animals require care every day. But I find my moments.”
“Moments for what?”
He lifts a hand gently to his chest. ‘Myself.’
I nod, feeling like, out of the two of us, Remi may be the wiser. He seems to have his life figured out. Whereas me?
I’m still learning more about myself every day.
I grab my rake to start on a second stall. “By the way, you never said hi.”
“What?” Remi asks, head cocked.
“Earlier. You just…started talking to me like it hadn’t been years since the last time we spoke.”
His mouth curves into a smile. “The hello was implied when I brought up the trespassing.”
I make a sound of acknowledgement, and Remi chuckles. His voice, however, is sincere.
“Hi, Ben. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Yeah,” I answer, realizing despite the times I’ve seen Remington Darling over the years, this is the longest continual conversation we’ve ever had. “Yeah, it is nice.”