Chapter 11 #2
Sutton grins.
Finn opens the trailer ramp, and Dusk comes off carefully.
He swings his head toward the arena, then the corrals along the far fence, then the barn.
His ears work through all of it. Finn stands at his shoulder and doesn't pull him forward.
Doesn't shift his weight. Doesn't do a single thing except stand there and let Dusk look at everything he needs to look at before they do anything else.
I step back from the trailer ramp and give them the space.
Eight new names, eight new horses, and none of it touches the one thing that's actually had my attention since I woke up this morning.
Across the lot, the side-by-side pulls up to Petra's trailer.
I know what he's thinking about. I know because I'm thinking about it too, what he said before, the kiss after, the way he tucked himself back into his jeans before he stepped back like he had all the time in the world. Heat crawls up my neck. I look away and go find something useful to do.
***
The equipment is staged along the arena fence, pulled and ready the afternoon before. The bridge sits on the tractor flatbed at the gate. When the clients come back from settling their horses at the corrals, we put it all in together.
Sawyer puts Rhea and me on the far end with Macy and Jo, and Levi and Kade take the near end with Finn and Sable.
Everyone gets assigned a section. The crew knows what goes where, and the clients learn why as it goes in.
I'm somewhere in between, following Rhea's lead and figuring out the rest as we go.
The tarp goes down first. Levi rolls it flat across the arena floor while Kade and Finn pin the corners as it goes out. From the near end, Cal says something I can't hear from here. Finn looks at the sky. Kade walks two steps away. That tells me enough.
Across from them, I'm setting the pool noodle frame with Rhea and Macy, adjusting the height on the uprights while Macy holds them steady.
"What happens when a horse sees this and decides absolutely not?" Macy asks.
"That's why it goes early in the course," I tell her. "Not the end. You want to find the no early so you have the rest of the session to work through it."
She nods, looking at the noodles. "Clover is going to have thoughts about these."
"Most of them do."
"Jo's mare is going to walk through like it's nothing and not even look at them," Macy says. "She's going to be so smug about it."
From the other side of the frame, Jo doesn't look up. "I'm not going to be smug."
"You're going to be a little smug."
"I'm going to be appropriately satisfied."
We adjust the height twice before it's right.
Macy holds the upright straight and watches me set the pin and asks good questions the whole way through it, and by the time we're done, she understands why the frame is built the way it is.
That matters. Clients who understand the why ride the obstacles better than clients who just follow instructions.
Then the bridge comes in on the tractor flatbed.
Sawyer calls six of us to the center, crew, and a few of the clients. The bridge is heavy enough to need the extra bodies. I end up across from Levi on the carry, and we don't look at each other.
When it's set, he rocks it with his boot to test the give. The bridge moves just enough to matter.
He looks up.
I'm looking at him.
Neither of us says anything. We go back to our ends.
The poles go in after. Levi brings them across from the storage pile with the blocks, and Rhea and I set the height on each one. Every time he crosses the arena, he hands the pole directly to me instead of setting it down first. Every single time. I take them without comment.
On the fourth pass, his fingers don't let go right away, and mine don't pull back. Half a second longer than a handoff needs. He's close enough that I can hear him breathe. I keep my eyes on the pole placement.
"This one needs to come up a notch," I tell him.
"I know how to set a block, Cass."
Rhea is two feet away, setting a block. She goes still for half a second. She doesn't look at me. She goes back to the block and doesn't say a word. I keep my eyes on the spacing like I didn't notice any of it.
He goes back across the arena. I set the pole. He comes back with the next one, and his fingers don't let go any faster than the last time.
Rhea is smiling. I don't acknowledge it.
Sable asks Kade a question about the bridge placement and the angle of the approach. Kade walks her through it. Macy talks through the entire build and somehow gets more done than anyone in the arena at the same time.
By the time the last pole is set and the standing box is squared at the finish end, the course matches the map Sawyer gave me. I walk to the center and take the whole thing in. The course runs the full length of the arena.
Levi walks over, stops next to me, and looks at the course. It's just the two of us standing in the center of what we built.
"It's a good build," he says.
"It is," I agree.
He doesn't move away, and neither do I, and I'm aware of exactly how close his shoulder is to mine before Sawyer calls something from the gate end and we both go back to work.
***
The dining hall porch fills up at the end of the day, the ranch winding down around everyone.
Rhea has her boots up on the rail. Londyn is in the rocker by the door.
Sawyer and Logan are in the two chairs at the far end, Logan with a beer, Sawyer with her boots crossed on the lower rail.
Darla and Mandy come out of the kitchen with their own drinks, and the whole property has that ease to it, the first-day quiet after everyone is settled.
Levi's on the steps with a beer. Kade's leaning on the far post. Macy's voice carries from somewhere down by the cabins, her laugh going up into the evening air and then fading.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I look at the screen and step off the porch toward the fire pit without saying anything. Far enough that the porch voices drop behind me.
I answer.
"Hey, bug." Dad's voice is warm and easy, the same voice he's used my whole life for the same word. "How's my favorite training assistant?"
"Hi, Dad. Working hard," I tell him. "New group today. Trail and Obstacle."
"How's Cricket doing?"
"Cricket's great." I drop into one of the chairs at the fire pit and look at the mountains going dark at the tops.
"I've been thinking about coming back out. It's been a long time since I've seen the place."
My stomach drops.
"Yeah?" I keep my voice easy.
"You'd like that?"
"Of course," I say. And I mean it. I do mean it.
I love my dad. I want to see my dad. I also know that the second he looks at my face, he's going to know something is different.
He's my dad. He's always known when something is different.
He's not going to make a scene about it.
He's going to be warm and easy. At some point, when it's just the two of us, he's going to say it, plain and quiet.
That Levi is thirty-one and I'm nineteen.
That he's my father, and he needed to say it.
I already know how that conversation goes.
I just don't know how I'm going to sit through it.
"Good," he says. "Because I already called Sawyer. There's a cabin with my name on it. I'll be there Thursday."
"You already called Sawyer."
"Yeah, yesterday. I needed to make sure I had a place at the ranch or needed to get a room in town."
"Dad."
"I wanted to make sure the timing worked, also." His voice has the warmth in it that means he's smiling. "She said you were settling in well and the clients like you."
"She didn't tell me she talked to you."
"I asked her not to. I wanted to surprise you."
I tip my head back and look at the sky for a second. "You surprised me."
He laughs. "I'll see you Thursday, bug. Tell Cricket I'm bringing her those peppermints she likes."
"She's going to remember you did that."
"That's the idea." He’s quiet for a moment. "You sound good, Cassie."
I don't say anything for a second because he always does that, lands the true thing right at the end when I don't have a response ready.
"I am," I tell him. "I really am."
We hang up, and I sit at the fire pit and do the math.
Thursday is two days. Two days before Dad walks through that gate, looks at my face, and knows.
He won't need Levi to say a word. He won't need me to either.
He's going to know the second he sees me, and I'm going to spend the whole visit waiting for the quiet moment when it's just the two of us.
I go back to the porch and stop at the rail.
"My dad's coming Thursday," I say. Aimed at Sawyer mostly, loud enough for the porch. "Already called and arranged a cabin and everything."
Sawyer looks up from her drink. "Yep. He called yesterday."
"I'm aware of that, now."
She smiles into her drink. "He just wanted to see the place again."
"He wanted to see me," I say. "The place is an excuse."
I don't mean to look at Levi. I look anyway.
Two seconds. That's all. Dread moves across his face before he pulls it back. He takes a pull from his beer. Says something to Kade. Whatever Kade says back makes him laugh, and it's gone.
Two seconds of something real before he put it away.
I don't like what I saw in them.