Chapter 10
Liam
“You ready for this?”
Stephy stood beside Poet in the barn, and God—she looked like part of the morning itself.
Sunlight slipped through the gaps in the old slats, painting her in uneven stripes of gold and shadow.
The dust in the air danced like glitter around her, catching on her damp lashes, her pink cheeks, the fine tremble of her breathing.
Her hand rested on Poet’s neck, fingers buried deep into that white-blond mane that looked like it had been spun out of fire and morning frost. But her other hand—her free one—twisted the hem of her shirt. A tiny, nervous fidget. A tell.
She looked at the saddle like it was a wild predator instead of leather, metal, and years of Blackwood history. Her throat bobbed on a hard swallow. Her shoulders rose on a shallow breath.
Three weeks since I’d brought her home. Three weeks of building trust—between her and Poet, but more importantly, between her and herself.
We’d worked up to this moment inch by inch: Morning groundwork in dew-wet grass.
Whispers to Poet while brushing her coat to a shine.
Exercises in the round pen where Stephy learned how Poet “spoke” without words.
Laughter when the mare followed her across poles like they were connected by an invisible string.
But riding? Actually getting in the saddle?
That was the step Stephy had been quietly terrified of.
“I haven’t been on a horse since I was twelve,” she confessed, her voice a blend of embarrassment and bravery. “And that was a trail ride at summer camp where the horse basically followed the one in front like a slow-moving train.”
Her laugh was shaky. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear twice—her nervous habit—then glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, like she was checking if I noticed.
I noticed everything.
“Poet’s different,” I said gently. “She’ll take care of you.”
At her name, Poet flicked an ear, then turned her head toward Stephy, those pale blue eyes full of softness and…
affection. Hell, maybe even protectiveness.
The mare pressed her velvet muzzle against Stephy’s shoulder, streaking green alfalfa foam across her white cotton shirt in a messy arc that looked like abstract art.
Stephy froze. Blinking. Processing.
Then she laughed.
Not the careful laugh from her first week—the one that never quite reached her eyes.
Not the brittle, polite-little-smile she used with strangers.
A real laugh. Loud, startled, impossibly alive.
It burst out of her like a spark catching dry tinder—bright, warm, contagious.
That sound slammed into me, clean and sharp. I hadn’t heard it since Austin—since that one night in that ridiculous penthouse, when she kissed me senseless and walked away in the morning, leaving my world as I knew it ruined.
“I think she just wiped horse spit on my shirt,” she said, staring at the green smear like she wasn’t sure whether to gag or take a picture.
Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes sparkled. Her nerves didn’t disappear, but they shifted—made room for something lighter.
For the first time since LA, she looked like someone ready to try.
To trust.
To live.
"That means she likes you. It's an honor, really. Not everyone gets the Poet stamp of approval."
"An honor." She scratched Poet's favorite spot, that place right behind her ears where the hair grew in a little whorl. "You hear that, pretty girl? You're honoring me with your grass slime."
Poet made that little rumbling sound horses make when they're completely content, pressing into Stephy's touch hard enough to move her back a step.
The mare's eyes went half-closed, pure bliss, and I watched something ease in Stephy's face.
They'd bonded faster than I'd expected, but then again, both of them needed each other.
Stephy needed something to love that wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't want anything from her except presence and carrots.
And Poet—well, Poet had been waiting for her person since the day she was born.
"Come on," I said, checking the cinch one more time, adjusting the stirrup to account for Stephy's legs. "Let's get you up there. Left side, left foot in the stirrup, hands on the horn and cantle."
Getting Stephy in the saddle took some doing—not because she was scared, but because she was determined to do it right. No hauling herself up, no ungraceful scrambling. Foot in stirrup, bounce once to get momentum, swing up smooth.
First try, she got her foot tangled in the stirrup and nearly hopped backward.
Second try, she got halfway up before losing her grip and sliding back down, Poet standing patient as a saint through it all.
Third try, she overcompensated and nearly went over the other side.
But the fourth time, she settled into the saddle like she was coming home, and the smile on her face could've powered half of Texas.
"Oh fuck," she breathed, looking down at me from her new vantage point, hands gripping the horn white-knuckled. "I'm really high up."
"You're five-foot-five on a fourteen-hand horse. You're not that high."
“Don’t laugh at me, it feels high!” But she was grinning, that infectious joy that used to light up Austin dive bars spreading across her face. She gathered the reins like I'd taught her, soft hands, elbows bent, shoulders back. "And she's moving. Why is she moving? I'm not telling her to move."
"She's breathing, Steph. Horses do that."
She nodded, and stared down at the stirrups like they’d come alive any second. ”Right. Breathing. Normal horse activity. God, I must sound like an idiot.”
I swung up onto Cherokee, my solid bay quarter horse who'd seen everything from tornadoes to rattlesnakes and stayed calm through it all.
Sixteen hands of pure reliability, the kind of horse that made you look like a better rider than you were.
"We'll take it slow. Just walking, let Poet follow Cherokee. She knows the drill."
We started in the paddock, walking circles while Stephy found her balance.
The morning was warming up, but not yet brutal—that sweet spot of Texas spring where the humidity hadn't yet turned the air to soup.
Poet was perfect—steady as a metronome, patient as a grandmother, matching Cherokee's pace without being asked.
Her ears swiveled back to listen to Stephy's voice, forward to watch Cherokee, a constant conversation between horse and rider.
Within ten minutes, Stephy was sitting straighter, her spine finding that alignment that made everything easier. Her hips started moving with the horse instead of against her, that natural roll that matched Poet's four-beat walk. Her death grip on the reins eased into something softer.
"Can we go out?" She gestured toward the open pasture, where wildflowers had exploded into color after last week's rain. "Just walking, but... out? Into all that?"
"That's the plan. Need to check the south fence line anyway. Might as well make you useful."
We rode out through the gate, and I watched her face change as the ranch opened up before us.
Absolute gleeful joy. Five hundred acres might not be much by Texas standards, but when you've been trapped in a glass house in LA, surrounded by cameras and walls and people who want pieces of you, it might as well be the whole world.
The sun was warm but not yet brutal, the kind of warmth that soaked into your bones and reminded you why people had fought and died for this land.
Texas in late spring could be perfect like this—Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets painting the meadows in shocking color, grass still green from recent rain instead of burned brown, sky so blue it looked fake, like someone had cranked up the saturation in post-production.
"This is incredible," Stephy said softly, like speaking too loud might shatter it all. "I forgot how big the sky could be. In LA, there's always something in the way—buildings, billboards, smog. But this..."
"LA doesn't have sky like this."
"LA doesn't have anything like this." She reached down to pat Poet's neck, and the mare's ears flicked back at the touch. "The space to breathe. The quiet that isn't empty but full of... life sounds. Does that make sense?"
"Perfect sense."
The quiet she meant was everywhere—cattle lowing in the distance, hawks crying overhead, the creak of saddle leather, the steady four-beat rhythm of hooves on packed earth.
Wind through the mesquite trees making them whisper secrets.
A mockingbird running through its entire repertoire from a fence post. Life happening without cameras, without agenda, without anyone trying to package and sell it.
We rode the fence line slowly, me pointing out where repairs were needed, Stephy asking questions about ranching. How did you know when to rotate pastures? What did the different grass types mean? Why did some sections have electric fencing and others just wire?
And I answered them all.
"You really love this," she smiled, watching me dismount to tighten a sagging wire. I wrapped the loose end around the post, using the fence pliers to twist it tight, feeling the satisfaction of something fixable being fixed. "The ranch. The work. All of it."
"It's honest," I said, testing the wire's tension. "You fix something, it stays fixed until weather or cattle mess it up again. You take care of the land, it takes care of you. No politics, no games, no backstabbing or image management. Just work and results."
"Must be nice." There was a wistfulness in her voice that made me look up.
She was silhouetted against the sky, hair escaping from her ponytail to catch the light like copper wire, looking like something out of a dream.
Or maybe a memory—the girl she'd been before Nashville, before LA, before the world tried to package her into something sellable.
Just Stephy on a horse, beautiful in her simplicity.