Four - Horse Daddy
FOUR
HORSE DADDY
I CAN’T SLEEP , and like always, it’s not the mattress’s fault.
It’s my first night here, and even though Riverlight’s guest rooms are simple and utilitarian, they’re apparently soundproof, so I’d be more likely to hear a worm tunneling through the foundation than my neighbors. Which means it’s not the noise either.
The sheets are butter-soft, the blankets heavy and warm, and the air conditioning hums at a level I’d call therapeutic if I wasn’t too stubborn for therapy. Even the towels remind me of those mystery cloud cakes from Japanese convenience stores—preternaturally soft, engineered to offend no one.
So yeah, it’s definitely not the room. Or the mattress, or the faint scent of woodsmoke and lavender detergent.
It’s just me, and my brain doing that thing where, instead of relaxing for sleep or craving sex, it fixates on small humiliations, awkward conversations, and tonight, the idea of naming a horse.
I roll left, then right. Then onto my back, staring at the exposed beam overhead, trying to count every knot in the wood.
It buys me maybe ninety seconds before my brain makes up a number and boomerangs back to the barn, or to Eli, or to the words impending ruin , which seem branded on the inside of my skull.
Fuck it. I sit up, kick the covers off, and don’t bother checking the time—it’s next-day late, for sure.
Hoodie on. Sweatpants. I grab my sneakers, crack the door open, and step into a cool breeze that smells faintly of hay and something floral Riverlight probably plants on purpose.
The electronic lock buzzes as I pull the door shut behind me.
I drop onto the edge of the deck, its boards groaning softly as I work my shoes on. This is definitely not a hotel.
Stepping out of a hotel room means endless carpeted hallways lined with stock art prints and staging furniture. Here, it’s weathered planks wrapping around an open courtyard on three sides. And damn, it’s beautiful.
Quiet, like everything here. Caught in that silver-blue filter the moon throws over everything.
A knobby tree stands in the center, draped in soft string lights, roots breaking up the grass.
There’s a small tiki bar by the corner—now empty—a few stools surrounding it, and a long picnic table sitting off to one side, plus log benches and lounge chairs scattered like dropped matchsticks.
Someone left a blanket on the grass, like they forgot it after sunbathing. Or stargazing.
Each door along the deck looks like mine—plain, rustic, a tiny green light winking from the thumbprint reader—but every one has its own little constellation of boots lined up beside it. Some neat, others collapsed like they gave up mid-sentence. There’s life here, even when everyone’s asleep.
Mostly ranch staff, and some other riders, I’ve been told. Not that I’ve seen much of anyone.
I finish with my sneakers and cross the courtyard, headed for the wide arch cut in the plank fence. Trellised wood, framed in vines silvered by moonlight—like I’m in a period drama. Where’s my fucking knight, then?
It’s even quieter past the fence. The main paths are gravel, and my steps crunch loud enough that I start picking my way along the weeds at the edge, where dirt swallows the sound.
After a while, the path doglegs past a cluster of brush, and the world goes ink black—no real lights, just ground-level glows so you don’t kill yourself wherever you’re headed.
The night air is even colder here, a metallic tang with each pulled breath.
The ranch is a different animal after dark—less a workplace, more a psychological thriller where the killer is always just off-camera.
Shadows crawl out of every structure. Round pens look like ribcages stripped of flesh, bleached bones slammed upright into the dirt.
Or I’m just being paranoid.
A sound then. A soft laugh, quick and startled, so out of place I almost peg it as an animal. Then another follows, lower, rumbling, and the faint clink of glass.
I slow down, rounding a corner where the path kinks past a paddock.
Two figures take shape in the gloom, haloed by a spill of moonlight.
One is perched on the top rail, a boot planted on the bench below.
The other sprawls against the fence like sinking into a comfortable couch, a small cooler at their feet.
The bottom one tips their head back, the curve of a bottle glinting.
I should’ve slowed harder. They spot me, and I instantly regret my life’s choices.
“Well, shit,” fucking Kellan of all people says, raising his bottle. “Motherfucking Vale, slumming it with the rest of us.”
“Didn’t know there was a VIP area,” I shoot back after a sigh, walking closer because apparently I hate myself.
Kellan is just Kellan—a pro rider, technically, but he’s more famous for starting hypes on social media and his ability to break embargoes on new gear drops.
He’s got this godawful mix of surfer-dude blond hair, with the build of a high-school wrestling star, with the personality of a Golden Retriever puppy—so chill, swole, and dumb.
The other one is a girl I don’t recognize, but I know I know her from somewhere.
She’s got that feral-elf-in-the-woods look—long hair in a wild ponytail, a knee tucked inside a hoodie so oversized it could double as a tent.
She’s younger—maybe twenty—but her eyes are the kind that could dry out concrete.
Not because they’re hot. Because they’re laser beams powered by fairy dust and chaos.
“Oh, this is Cassian, yes?” She jabs the air in my direction, sharp and delighted, three different rings on that one finger. “Yes, yes. With, um…Vivaldi! Grand Prix champion. Very well done.”
Fuck me, I know who she is now.
Lena—the Balkan prodigy who got famous for trying to ride a dressage test in fishnets and a sports bra. And then acting like the figure of innocence for the press. Or even worse, not acting, just being it. A succubus on fire who was told she was an angel.
Kellan pops the cap off another beer with his teeth like the barbarian he is and says, “Careful, Lena, you’re making him blush. Golden Boy’s allergic to chaos.”
“I am chaos,” Lena declares, chin tilting, voice syrupy with the weight of an oath or maybe a diagnosis.
“No worries. I give antihistamine.” She slides off the rail, landing deftly right in front of me.
Her eyes scan me slowly, up and down, the way a satiated animal might size up a prey—first for weakness, then for fun.
“Gold Boy, mm?” she kind of asks but actually not. “I think also maybe chaos on inside.” The finger with all the rings flicks the cord of my hoodie. “You have secret, yes?”
Oh my God. Is this straight girl for real coming onto me? I almost laugh—it’s been a while.
“Pretty sure my only secret is why I’m still standing here.” And even I don’t know the answer.
Lena grins slow and fox-sharp, like I just told her where I hide my spare key. “Ah, running man. Always most fun to chase.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. Which is the breaking point for Kellan to start cackling. He gets up too, clamps her by the shoulders, and spins her around to face him. Thank the heavens. “Lena. Baby. Sweetheart. Twin flame from another mother. This one’s gayer than I am.”
Lena’s face falls open. “No,” she whines, clutching her non-existent pearls. “No, no, no. This is not possible. What is point of coming to desert forest without adult supervise if no men will fuck?”
And I feel her. I really do. From the bottomest part of my bottom gay heart.
Kellan shrugs. “Honestly, same.”
“Kellaaan.” She drapes herself over him. “I need dick in me.”
“I know, baby.” Kellan pats her back. “Men are useless.”
She nods. I nod. I don’t know what’s happening.
Then, as if someone interrupted the broadcast, Lena smiles and gets her full perk on as if nothing happened. “So why you out of deckhouse?” she asks me, planting herself on the fence again. “You look like man that came duel against ghosts.”
“I—what? No. Just… needed air.”
“Aww,” Kellan drawls. “And then you found us . Don’t worry, we’ll keep you warm.”
“Please don’t.”
Lena pats the spot next to her while sipping at her beer. With a straw. Yuck. “Sit. Drink. Forget ghosts. Ghosts are no good.”
Kellan hooks his arm with mine and yanks me to sit with him on the bench. “Oh, you’re gonna love Riverlight after dark, Vale.”
I reluctantly welcome my fate and lean back against the fence, accepting when he beers me. “Yes, this seems incredible,” I sigh, looking around at all the nothings, as far as the eye can see.
Lena leans down to our eye level. Her mischievous gaze is its own level of scary. “Can you keep secret, Mr. Champion?”
Kellan leans in too, from my other side, grinning like Satan’s hype man. “If you snitch, we’ll be forced to nag you forever.”
I match their leaning, if only because I’m a slut for secrets and insomnia needs enrichment. Lena points with her chin. “Look. There.”
I squint where she aims, past the paddock, through a notch in the trees. A barn—shocking. Okay, and there’s light inside. So someone’s in there? Yeah, I can see it. Some guy’s—
Nope.
Nope. It’s Eli. That’s definitely Eli.
Without a shirt. No shirt, people!
He’s got a horse’s head tucked against his very shirtless chest, hands hovering so gently, it reads like telekinesis.
He’s all warm skin I swear I can feel from here, all slow breaths and absolutely illegal shoulders.
And the way that bicep is curling, you know that thing could crush fruit.
Obliterate it. I refuse to pretend otherwise.
I stare, then look away, then look back because what the fuck else am I supposed to do?
Why is he cuddling a horse in the middle of the night? And for fuck’s sake, why shirtless? Why? Is the universe imploding? Is this guy my own personal Fifth Horseman? Is the apocalypse starting—and if so, could it maybe hurry the hell up?
“He’s been doing that for an hour,” Kellan says, voice almost reverent. “At least.”
Lena sighs, rests her chin on her knee. “He so… What is word? Daddy?”
Kellan doesn’t even blink. “Horse Daddy.”
Goddammit. Now I’ll have ‘Horse Daddy’ stuck to the brain. Good luck scrubbing that off.
“So you’re stalking him,” I say, one-thousand percent accusatory, so they maybe ignore the fact that I’m doing the same.
Lena grins. “No stalking. Admiring.”
“From the dark. Without him knowing.”
She just nods like I got the criminal charges correct. Then Kellan sighs dreamily, elbow on his thigh, cheek in his palm. “Respectfully? I’d let him destroy me.”
“I let him lick my eyeballs,” Lena adds.
“I want to get pinned between him and a hay bale. In the name of agriculture.”
“His moans I bet sound expensive.”
“Factual.”
I shake my head. “You guys are sick.”
“Bro, I’m gay, not blind.”
Lena lifts her beer like a toast. “I am whatever sticks hot dick in me.”
Kellan does the same. “Amen.”
I want to say something clever, but it’s dangerous to keep feeding chaos goblins after 1 AM, so I tap out.
Though in my mind, what I’m doing isn’t pining, it’s… physical therapy. Or a spa day. Getting my dose of cute guy like the rest of them, not indulging whatever feelings are currently gnawing from inside my ribcage. Because that would be stupid. So stupid.
Eli was clear, wasn’t he? Back off. Don’t mistake peace for permanence. Don’t get ideas just because this place smells like hay and healing. That’s all this is—hormones mixed with horse dander, and the way moonlight drips off a man’s shoulders like an R-rated baptism. Nothing serious.
I mean, look at us. Three idiots hunched in the dark, drooling like a nature documentary on predatory behavior.
That’s not love. It’s not even a precursor to it.
That’s a thirst trap, capital double T’s.
Kellan is basically narrating in slow-mo, ASMR-style.
Lena is ready to sell her blood for a whiff at the guy’s crotch.
And I’m just… treasuring the aesthetics. Same as them. Definitely.
But damn.
Damn, what a vision.
Every line on him, carved by God on a day He was showing off.
Skin kissed bronze by the sun, soft where it stretches over the hard parts, the sharp edges.
He’s murmuring something to the horse—words too low for me to hear, but I can see his perfect lips moving, the animal’s ears flicking like they’d follow him blindfolded, anywhere.
And then Eli strokes down their neck, and you can see his back now, his muscles rippling.
I’m almost positive the three of us gasp in unison, and I wouldn’t even deny it if someone asked.
That hand could hold a gun to my head, and I’d still feel safe.
Shit, I need to leave. Right now. Before my thoughts develop trigger warnings.
“Yeah, no, I’m out,” I say, popping up so fast my knees crack like rapid fire. Then I down the rest of my beer in one go, because tonight has been all about making great decisions. “Keep it creepy. See ya around.”
I toss my empty bottle at Kellan’s lap and ignore the jabs they’re surely sending my way, probably saying I’m a pussy, but hell, that’s the most courageous shit I’ve done in a while.
It’s a long trudge back to my room, and I pretend this isn’t me fleeing shirtless temptation in the dead of night.
This is totally fine. I’m totally in control.
My nipples are just pebbling because it’s cold out.
Fuck my life.