Chapter 7BOONE #3
I lean on the stall door and watch her move. She hasn’t done this in years, but she falls right into rhythm. Hands steady. Movements sharp and sure. Like no time’s passed at all.
She brushes Ellie down with long, even strokes, checks her hooves, tosses the saddle blanket over like it weighs nothing, then swings the saddle up and cinches it tight. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little impressed. But then again, I’ve always been impressed by her.
I refocus and turn to Hudson. “Alright. Your turn.”
We start slow. I hand him a brush and show him how to sweep it down Springsteen’s side. He takes it seriously, brow furrowed, nodding like he’s taking mental notes. I show him how to check the hooves, and he grimaces but doesn’t complain. Good sign.
When it’s time to saddle up, I keep it simple. “Pad down first,” I tell him. “Saddle next. Tighten the girth, but don’t rush it. You spook the horse, you spook yourself.”
He listens. Pays attention. By the time we’re ready, he’s standing a little taller. Still nervous, but not frozen.
“Now for the fun part,” I say, tapping the stirrup. “Left foot in. Grab the horn. Swing your right leg over.”
He eyes the saddle like it’s Everest. “You make it sound easy.”
I grin. “Everything’s hard ’‘til you get good at it.”
He gives it a shot. Doesn’t quite make it. Tries again. Gets a little closer.
“Use more leg,” I say, steadying him with a hand on his ankle.
Third time’s the charm. He swings over, lands in the saddle with a wide-eyed look that hits me square in the chest.
“Holy crap,” he breathes. “I’m so high up.”
I chuckle, cinch everything one last time, then swing up behind him. “Alright, now hands here—loose grip, don’t choke it. Reins are for talking, not yelling.”
He nods, hands tight on the leather.
“You ready?” I ask.
He nods again, more sure this time. “Yeah.”
I give Springsteen a small nudge with my heels. He moves.
And just like that—we ride .
We ease into a walk, the horse’s gait steady beneath us.
It’s muscle memory at this point—automatic, familiar—and it settles something tight in my chest. I glance back.
Lark’s behind us, sitting easy in Ellie’s saddle like she never left.
Her posture’s loose, confident. She always rode like the horse was an extension of her.
Fast, fearless, and so damn fluid it used to stop people in their tracks. Used to stop me, too.
She hasn’t lost it. Not even a little.
Hudson leans back into me slightly, his shoulders relaxed. “This is so cool.”
I smirk. “Yeah? Not bad for your first ride, huh?”
He shakes his head. “No way. Can we go faster?”
I chuckle, guiding Springsteen with a gentle pull on the reins. “We’ll get there. One step at a time.”
We follow the fence line. Fields wide open on both sides, the mountains cut sharp in the distance. Sun’s dropping lower, casting everything in that late-afternoon gold. The kind of light that makes the ranch feel almost holy. Been seeing it my whole life, and it still gets me.
I wonder if he feels it too.
“What’s your favorite part about living here?” Hudson asks.
I think on it for a second. “Mornings. Before the noise starts. Just me and the sky. And the space out here—it matters. Nobody breathing down your neck. You make your own way.”
He hums like he’s filing that away. “Sounds nice.”
I glance down at him. “Besides baseball, what else are you into?”
He shrugs. “Movies. Mom and I watch a lot of them.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
He smirks. “The good ones. She made me watch Jurassic Park when I was little. I’ve probably seen it a hundred times.”
I let out a laugh. “Figures. She used to make me watch it too. That’s actually where Ellie got her name.”
His head snaps up. “No way.”
“Swear to God. Your mom went through this full-blown dinosaur phase. Used to carry plastic raptors around in her backpack. ”
He groans. “That’s kinda embarrassing.”
“Don’t tell her that. She’ll hit you with a lecture and a National Geographic documentary.”
Hudson laughs, and it punches me straight in the ribs.
“What’s your favorite movie?” he asks.
I think for a beat. “ Tombstone. ”
He squints. “Never seen it.”
I pretend to be horrified. “What? What the hell’s your mother been teaching you?”
“Stuff that doesn’t suck,” he says, smirking like he knows exactly how to get a rise out of me.
I bark out a laugh. “Alright, we’ve got some work to do.”
He goes quiet again, looking around. His voice is softer when he says, “This place is cool. It’s different.”
I nod. “Yeah. It is.”
“Bet the stars look crazy out here.”
“They do,” I say. “No light pollution to ruin it. Just sky and silence.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then glances up. “Maybe I can see them sometime.”
That one lands hard. I don’t let it show.
“Yeah, kid,” I say, voice low. “I’d like that.”
It’s not a promise, not really. But it’s something. And after twelve years of missing everything—his first steps, his first words, every damn milestone—I’ll take something.
We ride on. Springsteen keeps a steady rhythm, Hudson sitting a little taller the longer we’re out. I point things out as we go—the ridge line, the old oak where my dad carved his initials back when he was a kid. Hudson soaks it all in, his eyes moving constantly.
I don’t say it, but I hope like hell he sees what I see.
Hudson’s taking it all in—eyes moving nonstop, questions firing out like he’s trying to memorize every damn inch of this place.
And all I can think about is how I wish Jack could’ve seen this.
He should be here .
Riding right next to us. Teasing Hudson about his posture, giving me shit for getting soft.
He should’ve seen the ranch. My ranch. The one I told him about a hundred times when we were lying on our backs in the dirt, out in the middle of nowhere, dreaming up lives we didn’t think we’d ever get to live.
I wish I could call him.
Wish I could pick up the phone at the end of the day, tell him Hudson saw the ranch for the first time. That he asked about the cattle and the soil and why the hell I haven’t fixed the broken gate yet. That he leaned into the saddle like it was second nature.
I wish I could tell him, he loved it, Jack. You would’ve loved it too.
I wish he could see this life I’m trying to build—this slow, quiet, real life we used to talk about like it was a pipe dream. A stretch of land, a good horse, a kid who looks at you like you might actually know what you’re doing.
But he’s not here.
And he should be.
So I hope to hell he’s watching.
“That pasture over there?” I nod toward the fenced-off stretch of land. “That’s where we keep the cattle once winter hits. Grass holds better in that spot—keeps the herd fed when the snow piles up.”
Hudson squints at it, thoughtful. “You’ve got a lot of cows.”
I huff out a laugh. “It’s a ranch, kid.”
He grins. “Yeah, but like…a lot of cows.”
We keep riding. The land stretches wide around us, the quiet kind that gets into your bloodstream if you let it. Just the rustle of wind through the trees, hooves hitting packed earth, the occasional snort from the horses.
I start pointing things out—casual, easy.
Tell him about the time Wren got thrown and came back cussing like a trucker with a broken wrist. About the tree house Ridge and I built that nearly flattened both of us.
About summers spent out here, just me and a saddle and more space than I knew what to do with.
By the time we hit the creek, Hudson’s cheeks are flushed and his hair’s a mess, windblown and sticking up in every direction.
He’s still holding onto the horn like it’s his lifeline, but the grin stretched across his face damn near knocks the air out of me.
Springsteen lowers his head to drink, and I glance back to see Lark riding up, easy and steady like she never left this land.
“This here’s Sugarwater Creek,” I say, nodding to the slow-moving water.
Hudson frowns. “Why’s it called that?”
Before I can answer, Lark pulls up beside me, brushing a strand of hair out of her face like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.
“Because the horses always loved drinking from it,” she says. “We used to joke there was sugar in the water.”
The way she says it—soft, automatic—it hits me in the chest. Like she’s still got all those summers stored somewhere in the back of her mind, same as I do.
I watch her out of the corner of my eye.
The way the light hits her braid. The way she keeps stroking Ellie’s neck without thinking.
It’s the same image I’ve had in my head for twelve years—her in the saddle, this exact spot.
And damn if it doesn’t feel like the clock rewound and dumped me back to seventeen again.
She turns, catches me staring. “What?”
Heat creeps up the back of my neck. I blink. “Thought I saw a bug in your hair.”
She reaches up, fingers running through her braid, eyes narrowing. “Are you screwing with me?”
“Maybe.”
She gives me that look—the one she used to give me when I’d toss frogs in her backpack just to get a rise out of her. “You’re insufferable.”
Hudson perks up like he just heard a new curse word. “What’s insufferable mean?”
Lark smirks. “It means he’s a pain in the ass.”
Hudson gasps, delighted. “Mom! You can’t say that!”
She shrugs. “I can. You can’t. ”
I laugh, shaking my head. “That’s solid parenting.”
Hudson’s still watching us, studying the way we talk, like he’s trying to do the math on whatever this is between me and his mom. “You two were good friends, huh?”
My grip tightens slightly on the reins. I glance at Lark. She pauses, just long enough that I notice it. Her lips press together, and when her eyes meet mine—green today, clear and sharp—they hold a flicker of something I can’t name.
Something between a yes and a maybe and a whole damn mess of things left unsaid.
I clear my throat. “We were.”
Hudson tilts his head. “Are you still?”
Lark shifts in the saddle, rubbing a hand along Ellie’s neck. “We’re getting there.”