Chapter 34
TILLY
Tilly,
Are you back yet? I tried to get back to you as quickly as I could.
If you’re already gone, I guess you’ll see this when you get home. Either way, how was the trip? You’re allowed to be scared, even when you think you’re not. Nobody is that fearless, hellcat. You still went, and that takes guts, too.
I hope you got what you needed. Your brother sounded anxious in his last letter.
If you need to talk to someone and don’t want it to be a stranger in some stuffy office, scribble all your thoughts out on paper for me.
You don’t have to send me anything, just get all that shit you’re feeling out.
It helps. I’ve been doing the same thing.
If you have photos of your trip, I’d love to see them. Even just one of you.
Rowe.
“Do you think he’s gonna get to saddle him soon?” Tanner asks.
I look out the stable door to where Rowe’s working with the black horse in the pen.
He’s got a saddle blanket in his arms, letting him get a good sniff of it.
The horse is cautious, but he hasn’t chomped down on it yet, so that’s a good sign.
This last week has been full of baby steps between those two, and I can tell Rowe’s warmed up to him.
“I don’t know. Depends on how long it takes to desensitize him,” I answer.
“Will you do me a favor and let me know the minute he decides to try? I want to watch him get tossed across the dirt.”
“What makes you so confident he won’t be able to hold on? Or that the horse would even try and buck him off?”
Tanner leans a shoulder against the bars of Diesel’s stall, appearing all the more boyish. “A horse that fucking mean? He’s going to buck. Doesn’t matter how much time Rowe takes with him.”
“And how many horses have you trained, Tanner?”
“Soon to be one as soon as I convince Rowe to teach me a thing or two.”
I pinch my lips to avoid laughing and don’t bother replying.
Diesel’s staring at me from inside his stall, or rather, the hay in my arms. I’ve hardly managed to unhook the gate and pull it open before he’s trying to steal it from me.
I shouldn’t laugh at his bad manners, but he’s my precious boy.
The kids running up and down the aisles, trying to finish up for the day, are still scared shitless of him, yet here he is with me, acting like a greedy toddler.
The plastic bucket hanging on the wall of his stall is no surprise—empty.
I drop the two flakes of hay onto the ground in front of him and slip out to get him some pellets.
When I get back, he’s still busy scarfing his food.
The second he hears the pellets drop into his empty bucket, he takes a step back and changes focus.
I laugh under my breath and give his ass a pat before closing him off inside the stall again. Tanner’s still in the same spot I left him but isn’t looking as cocky. Instead, he’s straight-faced, arms hanging at his sides.
“Do you not think I could be a trainer one day?” he asks.
I stare at him, slightly surprised. “Does my opinion really matter that much? I’m not a trainer.”
“No, but you’re Rowe’s girl, right?”
“You aren’t going to earn yourself any points with him by asking his ‘girl’ to pull favors for you.
If you want his approval, earn it. If you want more responsibilities and to be taken seriously around here, act like it.
I can tell him to let you learn, but he’s not going to respect you any more than he already does. He’ll give you more shit, actually.”
Tanner nods, his eyes darting behind me for a moment, like he’s too nervous to keep staring at me. “Alright. We can just forget I brought this up, then.”
I tongue my cheek and stare past him out the door.
Rowe’s still letting the horse get used to the blanket but has started rubbing his neck as well, praising him for not eating it for supper.
My heart kicks at the gentleness he has with that horse—with all of them, really.
He’s a hard-ass man, but it’s like he was born with some superhuman ability to be able to communicate with these animals.
Soft when need be, but firm too. There’s a balance there that not everyone has.
It’s what differentiates a good trainer from a bad one.
“If you want my honest opinion, Tanner, then yeah, I do think you could be a decent trainer someday. But if that’s really what you’re interested in doing, you need to be sure.
As gratifying as it can be to turn a horse around, it doesn’t come without pain, both physical and mental.
The shit Rowe’s seen is . . .” I think back to the night we found Diesel trapped in that broken stable, the scent of his stall creeping through my memories.
Then, the three horses still trying to find a home at this ranch.
“It’s enough to turn your stomach and make you wish you could bring a sledgehammer through a cowboy’s skull. This isn’t a luxurious job.”
“I won’t know unless I try,” he says, his voice a lot more thoughtful than earlier.
“No, you won’t. Just hang around the pen more.
Try and sit in the arena and watch Sawyer with one of the easier horses, or hang out outside the new mare’s pen and see if you feel the draw to help her.
There’s plenty you can do to test just how badly you actually want to do this without diving headfirst with a wild one. ”
“We’ve all heard about you.”
His blurted words draw my brows in. I blink slowly, waiting for him to explain further. Only, he doesn’t.
“Heard what?” I ask tightly.
He pales slightly at my tone before shaking his head, floppy hair swinging beneath his hat.
“Not anything bad. Just that you were here on the ranch when Rowe was gone. And that you were the one who was with him when Diesel was brought in. I always just assumed you cared about training. Nobody specified about what your old job was here, and we haven’t asked any of the guys old enough to know. ”
“I’m not a trainer. I love horses, but putting them back together after someone’s mistreated them isn’t my calling. Grooming was always my thing. That’s what I did here before. It’s what I’ve always done.”
“You’re good at it.”
“You’ve already blown your chance to use flattery to get your way,” I mutter, battling a smirk.
“Oh, I’ve gotten that. I was being honest.”
I rub the dust from the hay off my arms and tip my chin at him. “Thanks. If you put in the work, I’ll make sure Rowe knows you’re interested.”
“And here I thought I’d shot myself in the foot.”
“You have, but lucky for you, I’m in a good mood.” I glance over my shoulder and catch Brock’s retreating figure and then look back at Tanner. “Lighten up on that kid. He might be the best hire the ranch has gotten this summer, and I heard you assholes giving him shit last night.”
He’d forgotten to top off the water buckets in a handful of stalls.
It was a dumb mistake that could have been worse than it was if Otis hadn’t caught it.
Now, he’s got a permanent target on his back.
It’s the same shit the guys always do to the kids doing grunt work all summer, but I’ve taken a surprising liking to this one.
“He’s been here long enough not to forget to fill water buckets,” Tanner says with a lazy eye roll.
“And if I had been here to see you during your first weeks at this place, I’d bet you forgot the same kind of shit. Give him a break, or you’ll meet the side of me Otis should have warned you about before spewing off about my non-existent training abilities.”
His eyes widen just enough to let me know he’s heard me. “I’ll lay off, but I can’t promise the same for everyone else.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Or rather, I’ll make Rowe spread my message for me. They’ll listen to him before me, anyway. That’s the way it’s always been around here, as decent as these cowboys are compared to some others I’ve come across.
Tanner adjusts his hat and turns to face the same direction as I am, staring out at Rowe and the horse he’s with.
I rap my knuckles against Diesel’s paddock gate to get his attention and smile at him.
The urge to just skip the plans I have tonight in exchange for a few more hours with him nips at me before I shove it away.
I force myself to leave the stable altogether.
“Hey—thanks for the advice,” Tanner says.
I lift a hand and give him a thumbs-up before stepping into the warm sun. It’s a bit from setting still, but I only give it another hour. Rowe’s truck is parked where I left it earlier, the bed still full of our camping shit, and the front windows are cracked a few inches.
Hooves clop on the dirt behind the stable while a few truck doors slam shut. I don’t pay any of the noises much attention as I cross the road and lean against the wooden fence. Rowe’s too busy to notice me, so I watch him instead. I’m content like this, just . . . being.
The last week has been just like this. From the moment we got out of his truck and went back into the rodeo, I couldn’t seem to stop touching him.
He surprised me and all of our friends when he hauled me onto his lap right there on the bleachers, only offering grunts as explanations when Shade poked and prodded like an ass.
I’ve avoided Ash’s texts since too, not knowing exactly what to say to him.
From his patience while I’ve been ignoring him and lack of immediate disgust when he saw us like that, I’m assuming he’s okay with it. If he felt differently, I know he’d have shown up already and tried to run Rowe over or some other alpha male, brother-type bullshit.
We’re too grown for that, I think. Maybe if I’d acted on my teenage crush back before Rowe went away, it would be a different story. But now? I’d be embarrassed if Ash showed up here guns blazing, ready to start a fight.
We’ll know his feelings for sure tonight. The camping trip he and Lacey pretty much begged us to have at our family grounds is going to have us too close and personal to try and ignore his questions.
“You just gonna stand there and watch me, hellcat?”
I blink, then let my lips split in a grin.
Rowe’s giant figure blocks out the sun as he steps up to the fence and drapes the saddle blanket over the top post. He takes my cheek into his hand and cranes my head back, kissing me in that same rough, possessive way that I can’t get enough of.
I run a hand up the back of his damp work shirt and sigh, relaxed.
“I prefer this to staring,” I murmur.
His chuckle is low and rough as he retreats. “Yeah, you do.”
“Don’t act like you’re not obsessed with me.”
“Is that what you are? Obsessed with me?” he taunts, wrapping my braid around his knuckles.
I let him tilt my head to the side, unable to hide the pleasure I get from being manhandled by him. “Maybe. Or I could just want to keep you around for your huge dick.”
“Right. Make sure to tell that to your brother when he asks why my hands are all over you tonight.”
“I was already planning on it.”
He gives my exposed throat a few lingering kisses before backing up and releasing my braid. I lean further into the fence, drawn toward him in a way I couldn’t begin to try and make sense of. The distance is minuscule, but it still feels too far.
“You’re a brat, Tilly. Gonna turn my head grey far too early.”
“I expect that change will take some time. Years, maybe,” I say carefully, keeping the real question I want to ask trapped inside.
Do you plan on sticking around long enough for it to happen?
His eyes tighten at the corners as he sweeps them over my face. “I assume so. Keep playing these coy games with me and it’ll happen quicker.”
“I’m not playing games.”
With a disbelieving chuff, he grabs the blanket. “Go get your ass in the truck, then. I’ve gotta shower before we go, unless you want to share a tent with me like this.”
“Not a fat chance. You smell like a bucket of manure.”
“You flatter me,” he grunts.
“Isn’t that one of the reasons you love me so much?”
It comes out so easily, so innocently, that I almost miss it.
I’m halfway turned away from the fence when it finally sinks in.
My cheeks flame with heat as I clear my throat and let the words die on their own.
I don’t look at him, and when the gate creaks open, he joins me without a word, an answer not coming anytime soon.
I want to reach for his hand as we walk across the road, but I chicken out. A familiar sense of heat finds it a beat later. Thick, strong fingers curl through mine as Rowe holds my hand, soothing every doubt springing to life in my head.
He may not have spoken, but I got the answer I needed for now.