1. Chapter 1 #2
The first hill is steep. Jules grips her saddle horn and Dane rides close to steady her and I love my cousin but she rides a horse the way I deliver a punchline, which is to say with enthusiasm and very little technique.
I lean forward. Shift my weight. Birdie takes the hill like a sidewalk.
Smooth, balanced, her hooves finding the right ground.
I move up the incline with ease. This is what I’ve always done.
Hills and creeks and rough ground and horses that need a steady hand.
This is the one thing I know I’m good at.
Raiford glances back. He sees me take the hill. His jaw does the thing again. The tightening. The recalculation.
The creek crossing comes next. The water is fast and the rocks are uneven and Raiford calls back over his shoulder: “It’s slick. Take it slow. Single file.”
I read the current. I pick my line. I know this water. Not this specific water, but water like it. Creek crossings on mountain terrain with loose rock and fast flow. I’ve done a hundred of them. A thousand.
I put Birdie through at a steady trot. Legs tight, hands quiet, trusting the horse and the line and the years of experience that live in my body like muscle memory. We come out the other side clean. I pull up next to Raiford on the bank.
“Good creek,” I say. Because it is a good creek and because his face is doing something I want to see more of.
“You ride,” he says. Not a question. A revision. He’s rewriting me in real time, crossing out the draft he had and starting fresh.
“I ride.”
“You didn’t mention you ride.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The corner of his mouth moves. I have been watching this mouth for approximately forty-five minutes and this is the first time it has done anything other than form clipped sentences and frown. The movement is small. But I caught it.
“Where’d you learn?” he says. Again. Because I didn’t answer the first time and Raiford Wylde is not a man who accepts nonanswers.
“My family’s ranch. Virginia. Third generation.”
“You grew up on a ranch.”
“I grew up on a ranch. My parents sold it last year.”
Something crosses his face. Something that isn’t the jaw tightening or the frown or the begrudging respect. Something softer. The expression of a man who understands what it means to carry a piece of land inside you and what it costs when the land is gone.
“I’m sorry,” he says. And he means it. I can hear it. Two words and he means them with his whole body the way some men mean nothing with a hundred.
“Thank you.”
We look at each other. The creek is loud beside us. The horses are standing. Jules and Dane are crossing behind us (Jules shrieking, Dane laughing, a whole production). And Raiford Wylde is looking at me with an expression I have never seen directed at me by any man on any ranch in my entire life.
He’s looking at me like I just told him something important and he’s holding it carefully.
“We’ve got another six miles,” he says. “The ridge trail. It gets narrow.”
“Lead the way.”
He turns his horse. I follow. The trail narrows and the trees close in and we’re riding single file and I can see his back and his shoulders and the way he sits a horse, natural and deep, the posture of a man who learned the same way I learned: young, on family land, with someone patient teaching him.
We have that in common. The learning. The land. The losing.
I don’t know his story yet. I don’t know why he runs this ranch alone or why his face is so guarded or why a man with fifty employees and twelve thousand acres looks like a man carrying something he can’t set down.
But I know the weight. I recognize it. It’s the same weight I’ve been carrying since my parents sold the ranch and I became a woman with third-generation skills and no ground to put them on.
His ground is under my horse right now. His land is stretching out in every direction. His grass is green and his fences are tight and his creek runs clean and this is the most beautiful ranch I’ve ever seen and I am not going to fall for a man because of his property.
I’m not.
The ridge opens up. The view goes forever. Mountains and valley and sky.
He pulls his horse up. He turns to look at the view and then he turns to look at me looking at the view and I catch it. The moment. His eyes on my face and the guard dropping by one millimeter, the smallest crack in the stone, and in that crack something warm and surprised and completely unplanned.
He looks away fast. He clears his throat. He says “trail’s this way” in the gravel voice and he rides on and I follow and my heart is beating in a way that has nothing to do with the elevation and everything to do with a man who just looked at me a certain way.
I follow him down the ridge. Birdie moves easy under me. The mountain is huge and green and patient around us. I feel more relaxed than I have in months.
Maybe Jules was right. Maybe I did need some time on the mountain.
She texts me that night from her bedroom.
Jules: Status update. Raiford Wylde hasn’t said more than four words at a time in three years according to Dane, and today he talked to you for six miles. Dane is in shock. I am composing the voiceover. The mountain is going for seven.
Me: I was just riding a horse, Jules.
Jules: You were riding HIS horse on HIS ranch and discussing HIS fencing and he looked at you like you were the deed to a property he’s been searching for his whole life. I know that look. Every woman on this mountain knows that look. Screenshot. Saved.
Me: You’re being dramatic.
Jules: I’m being accurate. Welcome to Wylde Mountain, Elise. The mountain’s been waiting for you.
I put the phone down. I’m in the guest room at Dane and Jules’s cabin.
The window looks out at the mountains. The same mountains I rode through today on a horse named Birdie with a man named Raiford who has a voice like gravel and a jaw like a fencepost and eyes that looked at me on a ridge like I was something worth seeing.
I came here to visit my cousin. I came here to ride some horses and breathe some mountain air and figure out what comes next after you lose the only home you’ve ever known.
I did not come here for a man with twelve thousand acres and a scar on his jaw and a mouth that barely moves.
I’m not staying. I’m visiting. I’m here for a week. I have a job waiting in Virginia on someone else’s ranch with someone else’s horses on someone else’s land.
But the view from the ridge. The grass. The fencing. The creek with the clean water and the smooth rocks. The barn and the horses and the land that stretches out in every direction like it’s been waiting for someone to come home to it.
And the way he looked at me. Just once. For just a second.
I pull the blanket up. I close my eyes. I think about Birdie. I think about the creek. I think about a man on a gray horse who said “I’m sorry” and meant it.
I’m not staying.
I’m definitely not staying.