Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The crunch of gravel under tires was loud enough to jolt me out of my own head.
The late afternoon had settled thick and golden, the kind of heat that turned the air syrupy and made even the horses drowsy.
A few of them had been my only company for hours—the occasional nicker, the swish of a tail, the soft blow of breath through velvet nostrils the only sounds in the barn.
Me and my mind and the smell of hay and leather and warm wood.
A car door slammed.
I peeked out of the tack room doorway, squinting against the slant of late sun cutting across the drive.
My boy scout was on his phone, smilin' at something, walkin' my way with the slow but relaxed stride of a man who'd put in a full day and wasn't bothered by it.
He had hay dust on his jeans and grease on his forearm and he looked so goddamn good it was annoying.
"I'll talk to ya later, Ma," he said, eyes findin' mine across the distance. "I gotta see about a girl."
He winked, shoved his phone into the pocket of his Wranglers, and covered the rest of the ground between us in a few long strides.
He smelled like summer and hard work and something underneath that was just him—warm skin and soap and the particular scent I'd been tryna stop associating with the word safe.
He pulled me to him without preamble, one hand at my lower back and the other palming the back of my head like he'd been doing it for years.
"I missed you," he murmured against my lips.
Then he kissed me like his goddamn life depended on it.
I kissed him back for exactly as long as I could justify it, which was longer than I'd like to admit, before I flattened both palms against his chest and pushed.
"Make yourself useful or go home."
He blinked. Took a second to come back online. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me." I twisted out of his hold and grabbed the pitchfork I'd leaned against the stall door not two minutes ago when the gravel crunch had pulled me away from it. "Been at it all day, and I'd kill for a shower but I still got three stalls left."
Brody glanced around like he was only just noticing the state of things. "Where the hell is everybody?"
"Rhett took the cowboys out to move the herd to the north pasture." I drove the pitchfork into a pile of soiled bedding and tossed it into the wheelbarrow. "Something about the grass being better up there this time of year. I don't know, I don't do cows."
"That's a full day job."
"Hence—" I gestured broadly at the barn around us. "Just me."
"Hate that you always get the shit end of the pitchfork."
I shrugged. "Not riding and it's what I signed up for."
He studied me for a moment with a look I couldn't quite read—something assessing in it, his eyes moving over me and then around the barn and back again. His jaw shifted slightly.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothin'." He grabbed the spare pitchfork propped against the opposite wall, turned it once in his grip. "Where do you want me?"
We worked through the last three stalls without much conversation, which shouldn't have felt as comfortable as it did.
The barn filled with the familiar sounds—the scrape of the pitchfork, the thud of soiled bedding hitting the wheelbarrow, the horses shifting and blowing softly in the stalls around us.
Brody worked efficiently and without being asked, moving the wheelbarrow when it got full, grabbing the fresh bedding before I had to.
Like he'd done this a hundred times. Like he knew the rhythm of it.
Like he knew my rhythm.
I noticed it without wanting to. The way he handed me the water bucket handle-first without looking up.
The way he stepped around me in the narrow aisle between stalls without having to negotiate it, his hand grazing my lower back as he passed.
Not grabby or performative. Just… there. Natural as breathing.
I told myself it didn't mean anything.
I was gettin' real tired of tellin' myself things.
When the stalls were done I moved on to the horses themselves—checking water, refilling hay nets, running hands along legs looking for anything that shouldn't be there.
Brody drifted alongside me, stopping at each stall.
He had a way with them that I'd noticed before but hadn't let myself sit with.
He didn't make a production of it. Just put a hand on a neck or a shoulder, murmured something low, let the horse come to him.
The animals settled under his touch the same way I did, which was an observation I kept strictly to myself.
I was refilling the last hay net when I caught myself watching his hands.
They were big, work-roughened, moving sure and steady along Speed's foreleg—fingers pressing and testing. The same hands that had been in my hair this morning. That had held my face like I was worth holding. Brody's horse had his head turned toward him, nostrils flaring softly.
I whipped my head back toward the hay net.
"See somethin' you like?"
I didn't look up. "Just making sure you know what you're doing."
"Uh huh." The amusement in his voice was insufferable.
He didn't push it. That was the thing about Brody—he noticed everything and pushed none of it. Just let it sit there between us, like he had all the time in the world to wait me out.
I was startin' to think he might.
I made my way to the back of the barn, checkin' the last of the water buckets, when I noticed her.
Maribel stood quiet in her stall, head low, ears soft.
She was a beautiful mare—dark bay with a white blaze running the length of her nose.
She was still in the way a horse would be who had once been handled with great care and was still waiting, patiently, for it to resume.
Her big dark eyes tracked me as I approached.
I stopped at the stall door.
She stretched her neck out slow, nostrils flaring. I didn't move toward her. Just let her take her time with it. Her breath was warm and steady against the back of my hand when she finally reached me.
"She likes you."
I startled slightly. Brody was leaning against the stall across the aisle, arms folded, watching us with a soft expression.
"She's sweet," I said carefully.
"She is." He pushed off the wall and came to stand beside me, reaching up to stroke Maribel's blaze with the back of his knuckles. The mare leaned into it immediately, eyes going half-lidded. "Hasn't been ridden in over a year. Since before Dad got sick."
I said nothing.
"She needs it." His voice was easy, conversational, like he wasn't about to say what he was about to say. "A horse like her, all that training, all that good in her—she gets stiff. Restless. She needs a job."
I kept my eyes on Maribel. "Brody."
"I'm just sayin'."
"No, you're not just saying."
He had the good grace not to deny it. "She's the gentlest horse I've ever known in my life. My dad spent years with her. Never raised his voice, never rushed her, never gave her a reason to be anything but exactly what she is." He paused. "She'd take care of you."
My heart stuttered. "I haven't been on a horse in twenty-two years."
"I know."
"I told you that."
"I know you did."
Maribel turned her head and gazed at me with those enormous, bottomless eyes. Patient and unhurried, like she had nowhere to be and no opinion about any of it.
Damn horse.
"She's barely been out of this stall," Brody said quietly. "Rhett feels too guilty to ride her and nobody else will touch her out of respect." He scratched behind Maribel's ear and she dropped her head further. "She's lonely, I think. If a horse can be lonely in a barn full of horses."
I looked at him then. The soft set of his mouth. The way he said it—not as a manipulation, just as a true thing he'd noticed and couldn't quite keep to himself.
"That's not fair," I said.
"No," he agreed. "It's not."
I looked back at Maribel. She was watching me again with that quiet, ancient patience.
Maybe she needed this as much as I did.
The thought arrived fully formed and settled in my chest before I could argue with it.
"Slow," I said. "Paddock only. And if I say stop, we stop."
Brody's expression didn't change much—a small shift at the corners of his mouth. "Yes, ma'am."
I pointed a finger at him.
"Sorry." He didn't look sorry at all. "Viper."
We tacked her up together, Brody talking me through it quietly like I didn't already know how, and I let him because it gave my mind something to focus on besides the tremble in my hands and the racing of my heart.
Maribel stood perfectly still through the whole thing, weight cocked on one hip, ears relaxed. Like she understood we needed a minute.
The early evening light was long and golden when we led her out to the paddock.
The air smelled like warm earth and dry grass and the specific sweetness of a summer evening in Montana that I hadn't let myself love yet.
Brody clipped the lead to Maribel's bridle and brought her alongside the mounting block.
I stood at the top of it and didn't move.
Twenty-two years. Far more than half my life. I'd been around horses every single day of my time on this ranch—fed them, groomed them, mucked their stalls, learned their moods and their quirks and the sounds they made when they were content. I'd let myself get that close. Told myself it was enough.
Standing here with one hand on the saddle, I understood the difference between being near something and trusting it with your body. With your life. That distinction had lived inside me like a splinter for twenty-two years, working its way deeper every time I got close enough to feel it.
My mother had done this countless times. And then once, she hadn't come back from it.
"Calvin."
I glanced down at Brody. He wasn't smiling. Wasn't pushing. He stood at Maribel's head with one hand on her bridle and the other hanging loose at his side, just looking up at me with those green eyes that didn't ask for anything I wasn't ready to give.