Chapter 4
LEVI
I'm at the arena water trough when I see Cassie coming from her cabin toward the dining hall. I turn off the hose and head toward the barn. Our paths cross in the middle of the property.
"Morning," I say.
She looks up. "Morning."
"Sutton's already been to the barn twice, and it's not even seven. He's interviewing the horses."
She looks at me the way she'd look at a weather forecast. She waits a beat, then keeps walking toward the dining hall.
Yesterday at the arena rail, she gave me a full conversation. We talked about Drift, about watching horses, and she was actually there for it. This morning, it's like it didn't happen.
I've walked away from teachers, friends, and nervous clients, knowing exactly where I stood with every one of them.
She's looking directly at me and finding nothing worth engaging with. That's the thing. That's so much worse.
I stick my hands in my pockets and head to the barn.
***
Logan has me helping him deliver hay to the cabin corrals in the side-by-side. Hard enough to keep my hands busy. Easy enough that my head goes wherever it wants.
We're pulling up to the first corral when Sutton appears from the gap between the equipment shed and the south fence line. No warning, no buildup, like he dematerialized somewhere else and came out here. Bingo launches himself at the back of the side-by-side before it fully stops moving.
Logan turns and looks at Sutton.
Sutton climbs in without being invited, and Bingo scrambles up after him. Logan looks at both of them.
"You helping today?" Logan asks.
"Yep," Sutton says. "Bingo too."
Bingo shoves his nose into the hay bale and takes a bite.
Sutton wheels on him. "Bingo. No!"
Bingo takes another bite.
Sutton looks at us. "He doesn't listen."
"Has he ever?" I say.
"Nope," Logan says, not looking up.
We move to the second corral, Sutton points to where the hay goes, like we might have missed it. On the next run, Sutton gets quiet for a minute, which means something is being prepared.
"I picked a name," he says. "For my horse."
"Yeah?" Logan says. "Let's hear it."
"Ranger."
Logan nods. "That's a solid name."
Sutton looks at me.
"You're getting a horse?" I ask.
"Dad said maybe."
"So you named a maybe."
"No! I’m naming him Ranger. Geez!"
Logan's shoulders are shaking. He doesn't turn around.
We pull up to the next corral, and I climb out and grab the bale.
My eyes drift toward the arena. Sutton’s saying something.
I catch the tail end of it, and none of the beginning.
I get back in the side-by-side. My eyes stay on the arena.
Logan's elbow connects with my ribs before I'm fully seated.
I look over at him. He's already facing forward, smiling at the property.
He doesn't say a word.
On the next run, I go quiet, and Sutton, to his credit, lets it go for a stretch before he doesn't let it go anymore.
"What's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
"No. Nothing."
"You're quiet."
"I'm always quiet."
Sutton stares at me with his eyebrows scrunched together.
"Liar."
Logan grins.
I almost say something about Cassie. About how I keep making moves that don't land.
About how I've been at this since she stepped off that trailer, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it, and I can't figure out why that's the only thing I keep thinking about.
I load the last bale instead and look at Logan.
He's looking at the fence line and lets it go.
That's the most useful thing Logan has ever done for me.
The wind shifts and carries Sawyer's voice across the open stretch.
The instruction cuts through the morning noise.
I don't turn toward it. I know what's over there.
I know without turning that Cassie's in the arena the way she was yesterday.
Already where she needs to be before the horse decides anything.
Already where she needs to be before Sawyer points her there.
I tell myself I put something down I didn't realize I'd been carrying.
It's not lighter.
Sutton's still sitting in the back with Bingo in his lap. I drive us back, and I'm already thinking about tonight.
***
Lunch pulls everyone in. The dining hall is loud, mid-clinic loud.
Darla's got brisket sandwiches lined up along the counter, and Mandy's working down the line behind her with potato salad and a pitcher of sweet tea.
The line moves fast, plates filling up, and people scatter off to their tables the second they've got food in hand.
I'm at a table with Kade, Sutton, and Londyn. Who has made the mistake of asking Sutton about his morning.
"He ate hay," Sutton says. "On purpose."
"Dogs do that sometimes," Londyn says.
"He spit it out."
"Also normal."
"He ate it again."
I look at Kade. Kade picks up his sandwich.
"He's going through something," I say.
Londyn laughs. Sutton considers this with genuine concern, which makes it worse. Kade takes a bite. He's fighting a grin. I'll take it.
"Bingo went through a grass phase his first month here," Kade says. "Lasted two weeks. He got over it."
"This is different," Sutton says.
"How?"
"This was hay!"
Kade looks at me. I look at Kade. Neither of us has anything to add to that.
That's when I see her. Cassie's at the next table over, talking to Rhea. She glances over, takes in the situation with that blank expression she's perfected, and looks back at Rhea.
I don't let it go.
Marcus comes through the door, and I don't let him get two words out before I say, "Marcus, on a scale of one to Rowdy, how are you feeling right now?"
Marcus points at me. "Rowdy. Full Rowdy."
The laugh goes around the table. Darla shakes her head from the counter. Sutton doesn't get it but laughs anyway because everyone else is. I look at Cassie. There's a small smile on her face, already fading, and she's looking away, back to Rhea, sweet tea in hand.
I pick up my sandwich.
She smiled because of me. She didn't mean to. She wouldn't claim it. I got the first one, and I felt it all the way over here. It's in there. It's not going anywhere. She knows I know, and that's why she pulled it back that fast.
I don't look over again.
I don't need to.
***
The fire pit gets going around seven. By eight, everyone's gathered around with cold beers, the loose end-of-day ease already in the air.
Darla and Mandy have the good chairs, and nobody's arguing about it.
Rhea has her legs stretched out toward the fire, boots crossed.
Logan has one boot propped on the ring of stones, and his hat pushed back.
Bingo is already flat on his side in the dirt like he worked cattle all day instead of eating hay and falling off things.
I've got my guitar and a beer going warm on the ground beside me because I keep forgetting it's there.
I play something easy, and Marcus calls over from across the fire. "You know anything from the nineties?"
"Depends on your definition of know."
"Play something."
I play the first four bars of two different songs back to back without committing to either one. Marcus points at me like I'm a problem.
"That's not knowing something," he says. "That's teasing."
"That's artistry, Marcus."
Darla asks me to play the one from last Tuesday, and when I play the first three notes, she nods at Mandy like she won something. I don't ask what.
Cassie is across the fire. She's talking to Darla.
Darla throws her head back and laughs. Rhea leans over and says something low.
Cassie grins at her boots. Sutton appears at her elbow, fully operational and completely certain nobody has noticed it's almost ten.
She listens to whatever he's saying like it's the most important briefing of her evening.
I watch her be like that all night.
She smiled today. At lunch, because of me, she pulled it back before I could call her on it, and now she's sitting across this fire like it never happened, laughing at everything Darla says, patient with Sutton, warm with Rhea, and I don't exist.
Not a glance.
Not one.
Cole tries to start a story about a trail horse he had in Wyoming. It goes nowhere. Even Cole seems to know it about halfway through. I play something to fill it, and Marcus gives me a grateful look across the fire.
"You ever play anything you wrote yourself?" Tatum asks.
"I wrote all of these."
"She means something nobody else has heard," Marcus says.
"Marcus."
"Am I wrong?" He looks at Tatum, then back at me.
I play the next thing without answering.
Sutton comes around the fire and plants himself next to me like he's been assigned there.
"Play the one about the horse," he says.
"There are several."
"The good one."
I play it. Sutton nods along, like he's evaluating the performance. Bingo doesn't move. Hasn't moved in forty minutes.
"Bingo's asleep," Sutton informs me.
"I know."
"He went to sleep before me."
"He did."
"That's not supposed to happen. I'm the kid."
"Nobody told Bingo that."
Sutton finds this mildly offensive. He looks at Bingo, unimpressed, and Bingo doesn't so much as twitch an ear in his own defense.
The night starts breaking apart after that, people peeling off in ones and twos, good nights going around. Logan scoops Sutton up mid-sentence and carries him toward his cabin without breaking stride, and Sutton's voice fades toward the cabins still going.
Cassie says her goodnights. Darla gets a wave, Rhea gets something that makes her smile, and Marcus gets a nod. She heads toward the cabins, hands in her jacket pockets, and I watch her go until the firelight stops reaching.
"Night, Levi," Darla says, and she and Mandy get up together.
I play two more bars of nothing.
I walk back to my cabin alone.