Chapter 23 #2
Tai stepped up to the cutaway portion of the stall’s front wall. For a moment, Magpie simply looked at him. Then she whiffled through her nose and took a few steps forward.
“Hey, Magpie,” Tai said. “Want to be the first horse I’ve ever sat on?”
Magpie came to him and bumped his shoulder with her nose. Tai chuckled, and she bumped him again.
“Is that a yes?” he asked Kayla.
“Definitely. Let’s tack up.”
“Uh, do what now?”
Before they’d even set out on the trail, Claire was more in love with Tai than she’d ever been.
He had no idea what he was doing, but he gamely helped Kayla tack up Magpie while Claire did the same for Pitch.
Of course, Kayla checked Claire’s work, stuck a few fingers between Pitch’s barrel and the cinch strap, before pronouncing both horses ready to go.
She left Magpie and Pitch in crossties and went to tack up her own mount, and Claire walked straight to Tai and kissed him.
He took her mouth with a deep kiss that brought her up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. Then he pulled back.
“Any particular reason for that?” he said with a grin.
“You’re adorable around horses,” Claire said. “Instinctively talking to them like they’re people, willing to help and learn, not annoyed when you get corrected five times in two minutes.”
“Why would I be annoyed?” He patted Magpie’s neck. “Hey, here’s something I do know. Magpie’s a Paint, right?”
“She might be a Paint, but she’s definitely a pinto.”
He blinked. “Forget it. I don’t know anything.”
Claire laughed. “Pinto is the spotted coloring, and it can be present in a lot of different breeds. Specifically, Magpie’s an overo pinto. Paint is a breed with this coloring; there’s a registry for them that traces bloodlines, pedigree. So every Paint is a pinto, but not every pinto is a Paint.”
“I think I followed that, actually,” Tai said.
Kayla joined them in a few minutes, walking a tacked-up bay with a showy blaze and three white stockings. “Okay, y’all, we’re ready to hit the trail.”
“Who’s this?” Tai nodded to the bay.
“This is Burrito.” Kayla turned to him and blew his forelock off his face, and the horse whiffled in response.
“Is Burrito his legal name, or just what we call him at home?”
Kayla laughed. “Just what we call him. His registered name is Arpeggio.”
“Now that is a great name.”
Kayla and Claire mounted, and then Kayla instructed Tai to do the same. He was a natural, going to the horse’s left side before he was told, easing his weight down to the saddle carefully.
“Heels down,” Kayla said from Burrito’s back.
“Yep, good, and your stirrups are the right height. There you go, Tai, you’ve got a perfect seat.
Most vampires do. Now, if we stay on the trail, you don’t have to do a lot of steering.
These horses know exactly where they’re going, and they follow each other almost all the time.
But in case something random happens, let me give you a few pointers. ”
Kayla taught Tai the basics, and then they set out with him in the middle, Claire bringing up the rear.
She closed her eyes to enjoy the feeling of Pitch’s back, his shifting muscles and steady stride.
She spoke quietly to him, and his ears swiveled back and forth.
Her easy rapport with horses had always felt special, but despite Kayla’s earlier description, she’d never gotten the sense that any horse fawned the way some humans did.
Around her the trail smelled of sun-warmed dirt, outdoor air, dozens of different plants and trees as they walked along under a sporadic canopy of high branches.
Of course, she smelled Kayla and the horses too, warm-blooded and vulnerable, the way every non-apex creature smelled.
And she smelled Tai, his salt-and-vinegar vampire scent, familiar and pleasant.
In front of her his back was straight yet relaxed, and his black hair was almost glossy in the sunshine.
Yes, he looked good on a horse, but she had yet to find a situation where Tai didn’t look good.
Claire ran her thumb back and forth on the leather reins, rested her free hand on her thigh, and enjoyed the view of trees and the little creek that followed the trail.
“This is restful,” Tai said after a few minutes, raising his voice just enough for Kayla to hear ahead of him.
Kayla glanced over her shoulder with a smile. “No argument here. Horses are my happy place.”
“Would you want to come again?” Claire said. “Or it might be too soon to ask that, I guess.”
“No, I’m in. We should make this a regular hobby.”
Her heart sang and kept singing for the next two hours, out to the end of the trail and then back to the barn.
She and Tai helped untack, then watched while Kayla returned each horse to its stall and gave them each a final pat.
Before they left, Tai reserved another ride for them, only a month from today.
Claire managed not to clap her hands, but she couldn’t hold in the grin as she began the drive back to Tai’s condo.
“Thanks for today,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d take to riding.”
“Neither was I. Didn’t know what I was missing.”
He invited her up when they got to his place, and the day had been so sweet, so peaceful, Claire decided finally to ask something she’d kept to herself for weeks.
“Tai?”
“Hmm?” His head was down as he unlaced his work boots and left them by the door. Claire did the same with hers.
“Do you remember, when we were at the overlook…?”
His head came up, and his eyes glinted with sudden seriousness, but he didn’t look upset by the topic.
“You told me all the mountains and trees had a melody of their own, and it was playing in your head.”
He nodded. “And I still haven’t played it for you.”
“I haven’t wanted to ask, since that day was so heavy. I thought it might take you back there. But if it wouldn’t…”
“I needed a couple days to separate them—the heaviness and the melody. But it won’t take me back now.”
“Then would you play it for me?”
A smile spread over his face, warmed his eyes.
He took her hand and gave it a little tug of invitation, and she followed him to the baby grand piano in his study.
She loved this room, where his instruments lived along with his vinyl collection, sound system, bookcases holding a few dozen books, and an old wingback chair upholstered in a navy fabric bearing an abstract gray print that looked vaguely like music staff.
The chair was a cozy place to curl up, but for now she stood behind Tai as he slid onto the bench.
Watching the man’s hands make art with his piano keys was one thing that would never get old, not if they were together for the rest of their lives.
The song he played didn’t build slowly. It was immediately broad and loud, block chords that conveyed the stunning vista as it struck you the first time you saw it. The drop, the distance, the height. The beauty.
Then the force of his hands eased on the keys, a decrescendo that grew gentle, soft.
Here was the sparkle of the lake under the sun.
Here were individual branches and leaves catching the light, rustling in the breeze.
And here was the mockingbird in the tree, high notes from Tai’s right hand imitating three different birdsongs before running down the keys to the middle again.
Claire thought the song was ending, but it grew again.
Not broad and bold this time, but broken chords that flowed like the trickle of a stream…
or a stream of tears. This wasn’t the music of the overlook.
This was the music in Tai’s soul that day as he finally let himself cry.
The sorrow in the song melted to only a few quiet notes at a time, slow and tired, but then the dynamic rose again—not big and impressive as it had been, but steady and sweet and sure.
Tai’s left hand brought back the refrain of the trees, of the faraway mountains, quieter this time.
His right hand developed the new melody, the one that had come after the tears had ended.
Ours. She knew. He had composed a melody for them.
The final note didn’t feel like an ending. It was a beginning somehow, a promise of more music. He pivoted on the bench to look up at her.
“I knew it would be beautiful, Tai, but it’s so… It’s so perfectly…”
“Us,” he said. “There at the end, it’s us.”
She leaned down to kiss him, sank onto the bench next to him, her back to the keys.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. He kissed her hard, all the depth of feeling pouring from the music into this kiss, still alive in his hands as they left the piano keys to cup the back of her head, to travel down her sides and grip her waist. She leaned in, curled her fingers in the front of his hoodie. This kiss was the sequel to their song.
She pulled back and took his face between her palms. “Tai Aksel Kristiansen,” she said, “I love you.”
He’d already said the words. He’d waited for her to say them.
Now, instead of saying them again, Tai drew her closer until she was pressed against him, and his kiss became hungry, rough, insistent.
Next thing she knew, she was in his lap.
It was like that first surprising kiss, when Claire had discovered this man was truly her physical equal.
She met him this time too, equally hungry, equally rough, pushing and pushing him.
His lips traveled to her jaw, her ear, her neck, and then he pushed aside her shirt, and his mouth found the dip between her neck and shoulder.
His teeth grazed her skin, and she nearly lost her mind.
“Yes,” she said. “Tai, yes.”
He pulled back, and Claire growled her frustration, sounding more wolf than vampire. He rested his forehead in the crook of her neck where he’d nearly just left the silver scar of the bloodbound covenant. Claire pushed her fingers up into the hair at his nape.
“Please, Tai,” she whispered. “You want to. You just proved it.”
“Wanting isn’t the problem.”
“I trust you. I trust us, that we’re meant to be eternals. Can you trust us too?”
Tai’s fingers wandered to the piano keys and began to play again, a soft melody that sounded like mourning. He was trying to tell her, but maybe he lacked the words.
“I just want us to stay like this,” she said. “Together like this.”
His fingers went still, withdrew from the keys. He looked down at her, and his mouth was pulled into a grimace. “I’ll never leave you, Claire.”
“You can’t know that,” she said. “Not without the covenant.”
It was happening again, just as it had on the phone with Ember, talking about his insistence they couldn’t be bloodbound.
Panic was clogging her throat, squeezing her heart.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on too tightly, as if he were a ship in a storm, and she was the anchor, trying to keep him from being stolen by the waves.
“I do know it,” Tai said. “With or without the covenant, when I give my word to stay, I stay.”
“My dad said he would stay,” she whispered.
Tai cupped her head, stroked her hair. “How old were you when he said that?”
“Nine and a half. I didn’t understand in the moment, he was just talking. He always just talked. Half the time he didn’t even remember what he said within a few days of saying it, because it was just whatever was in his head, in the moment. But he gave his word too, Tai.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s just a fact. Vampires can walk out on each other any time. We’ve been doing it for centuries. We get bored with monogamy.”
His hand tightened on the back of her head. “Some of us do. I won’t.”
“In the moment he said it, my dad thought the same thing. But he had no reason to stay. If they’d been bloodbound, he would’ve had a reason.”
Tai tipped up her chin and placed the gentlest of all kisses on her lips. “Claire Elisabeth, you were his reason to stay. You. His child. And you are my reason. I can’t seal my word with the bite, but it’s still my word.”
Tears pooled, overflowed, fell down her cheeks as she loosened her desperate hold around his waist and wrapped her arms loosely around his neck instead. She kissed him back.
“I trust you,” she said.
“I’m going nowhere.”
He kissed her again, and for a moment Claire let it be light, then hardened her mouth on his. He had nothing to fear. Not ever, not with her. Not even the bite.
She did trust him. She trusted he meant what he said. But he might not know what she knew, that his word might not be enough. For now she’d give him time to trust himself. She slid from his lap to the bench, facing the piano this time.
“Play me our song again.”