26. Holden
HOLDEN
“Iwant to take you somewhere,” I murmur.
Sage snuggles deeper into my arms, eyes still closed. “What time is it?” she asks, her voice husky with sleep.
It’s still dark, but I can tell by the occasional bird call that it won’t be too long until the sun rises. “Early.” I trail my fingers down the smooth skin of her back, doing my best not to let it distract me.
I woke about an hour ago with her soft body curled up beside me and an impulse I hadn’t expected. I’ve been debating it ever since, listening to her breathe like some kind of stalker. All it took was one contented little sound from her, and my mind was made up almost before I realized it.
Her lashes brush my skin as she opens her eyes and angles her face up to mine. Her features are shadowed in the predawn darkness, but I can make out her sleepy eyes and the gentle curve of her mouth. “I’d like to go,” she says.
“You don’t want to know where I want to take you?”
Her lips purse. “You’re not planning to throw me off the side of a mountain, are you?”
“Not anymore.”
She props herself up on one elbow, brows raised. “Oh, I see how it is. You got lucky, and now you want to keep me around.”
Chuckling, I pull her down and kiss her, ignoring whatever’s happening in my chest when I do. I graze my fingers up and down her back and consider tossing out my plans so I can spend the morning making her come instead.
She hums as if she can read my mind. “If there’s somewhere you want to take me, Holden, then I trust that it’s somewhere I’ll want to go.”
There’s that word again. For someone who’s been given plenty of reasons not to trust people to want what’s best for her, she’s still so damn generous with it.
The idea that she could be taken advantage of again makes me want to wrap her up in my arms and keep her safe here on the ranch with me forever.
My mind stumbles over that last thought.
Forcing myself to focus, I trace my thumb along her cheekbone. “We have to leave soon if we’re going to get there in time.”
She frowns at the window. “It’s still dark.”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I do.” She sighs. “But I didn’t know you were going to make me leave your warm, cozy bed to go out in the middle of the night.”
Smiling, I shake my head. “Technically, it’s early morning, not the middle of the night.”
“Oh, in that case…” She’s already moving, sliding out of bed, completely naked.
Blood rushes to my dick, making me rethink my decision once again. But if I don’t do this now, it’ll be too easy to talk myself out of it later.
I climb out of bed, watching her as she hunts for her clothes. “Feel free to wear my shirt again.”
She peeks over her shoulder at me. “We might not get far if I do that.”
“Good point.”
It doesn’t take us long to get dressed, even factoring in how many times I distract her by pressing my lips to various parts of her skin. Now that I’ve tasted how sweet she is all over, it’s hard to stop indulging.
As we drive down to the ranch, the faintest light behind the mountains warns me we don’t have much time to spare. Luckily, the place I’m taking her isn’t too far on horseback.
“We’re riding?” she asks as I pull my truck up in front of the main stable.
“Yeah. It’s the best way to get there.”
After we saddle Cozy and Whiskey, we mount up, and I lead Sage to a partially overgrown path that climbs into the foothills. The trail narrows once we leave the ranch behind, winding through pine trees still damp from overnight mist.
We ride mostly in silence at first. Sage keeps Cozy close behind Whiskey, the soft sound of hooves on damp earth blending into the quiet mountain dark around us.
“So… do you do this often?” she asks eventually.
“Drag women I spend the night with into the mountains before sunrise?”
A quiet laugh carries from behind me. “Something like that.”
I glance farther up the trail, and my lips curve. “You might just be the first.”
She’s quiet again, the only sounds the creak of our saddles, the muffled hoofbeats of the horses, and a growing chorus of bird calls as dawn approaches.
I let a few minutes pass before admitting, “I looked you up after you got here.”
She straightens in the saddle. “You did?”
“Wanted to make sure the strange woman living next door to me wasn’t secretly an axe murderer.”
A laugh bubbles out of her. “And?”
“And apparently axe murderers don’t usually get their work shown in galleries.”
She hums. “Depends on the gallery.”
I shake my head, smiling, but it fades as I remember the photos I found of her a little too clearly: gallery openings, fancy rooftop parties, Sage in a long black dress standing beside one of her photos, her ex on her other side, his arm around her waist, his hand gripping her hip possessively.
She looked beautiful. Elegant. Like she was part of a world I could never imagine living in. “You looked different,” I say before thinking better of it.
“Different how?”
I shrug one shoulder, feigning nonchalance. “Like you belonged there.”
“You mean in New York?”
“In that world—art, galleries.”
She draws a quiet breath. “I thought I did.”
The words hang in the air between us for a moment. I don’t let myself dwell on where she thinks she belongs now. Instead, I ask about something I’ve been wondering since she told me she started photography as a hobby. “What made you pick up a camera for the first time?”
“Oh, well, my grandmother gave me one of those kids’ Polaroid cameras for my birthday. I used up all the film that first week. Pretty sure my parents were happy about that part.” She laughs. “Unfortunately for them, I was already addicted.”
“There are worse things to be addicted to.”
“Yeah.” I can hear the smile in her voice.
I look over my shoulder at her. “Is your grandmother still alive?”
She shakes her head. “She passed away two years later. I wish she’d been here longer. She was my mom’s mom, and she was probably the only person in my family who really saw me, you know?”
Her wistful tone tugs at something deep in my chest. “Sounds to me like it’s your parents’ loss if they can’t appreciate who you really are.”
“I’m starting to realize they only really care when what I’m doing reflects well on them. I think that’s why they liked Graham so much. They were disappointed when we broke up.”
My hands tighten on the reins. I hate this fucking Graham guy, and I’m beginning to think I might feel the same way about her parents. “When you broke up with him.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t mutual,” I grit out. “I don’t give a damn if you think you should’ve seen who he was sooner.
The moment you did, you told him to fuck off.
If you were the kind of person who cared only about success, you’d have looked past it.
But you knew that wasn’t what you wanted, and you walked away—from all of it.
You need to give yourself credit for that. ”
She’s quiet for a beat, and when she finally speaks, her voice is thick. “Thank you, Holden.”
Silence stretches between us. It’s not awkward, but I don’t like the idea that what we talked about might still be weighing on her. “I tried riding a bull again before I came back here,” I confess.
Her indrawn breath is sharp from behind me. “Why?”
“Thought maybe the doctors were overreacting. It was about six months after the surgery, at a trainer’s property.”
“Holden.” The concern in her voice, mixed with reproach, makes me smile.
“I’m assuming it didn’t go well?”
I wince as the memory hits. The chute gate opening, the seconds passing that felt more like hours, the way my shoulder gave half a second before the rest of me, and the pain that ripped through me hard enough to blur my vision before I even hit the dirt.
“I stayed on five seconds and couldn’t move my arm properly for a week. ”
“And that’s when you knew?”
I look ahead to the curve in the trail. “Think I knew already. But yeah, that’s when I packed up and headed back here.”
“Lucky for me.” Sage’s voice is light. “Imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t been around to rescue me that first night.”
I tip my head down, a grin escaping me. “Yeah, imagine.”
Except no part of me wants to imagine someone else being sent to get her that night.
A few minutes later, we ride out into a small clearing. I help Sage dismount, then secure the horses nearby. With her hand in mine, I lead her through a narrow line of trees to the ridge’s edge.
One I haven’t visited in too many years.
“Where are we?” Sage asks.
It’s a fair enough question. With the sun not yet risen, the valley is still in shadow, the stars strewn across the sky just beginning to fade above the distant peaks.
It’s not the highest elevation, but it faces the perfect direction, and most importantly…
“It was one of Mom’s favorite places.” The words come out rougher than I intend.
She turns to me, surprise widening her eyes. “Really?”
I tip my head back and breathe in the cool mountain air.
“Yeah. She liked getting up early and going for rides. When I was young, I used to wonder where she was going and why. So I snuck out to follow her one morning.” I chuckle.
“I may have overestimated how easy it is to follow someone on horseback.”
Sage smiles softly at that, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Mom noticed me straight away, but she wasn’t annoyed. She just waited for me to catch up, then took me with her.”
“And this is where she came?”
“That morning, yeah. She had a few places she liked to go. But any time she felt like coming up here after that, she’d always wake me up and take me with her.”
I kick a stone toward the drop-off. “With a big family on a busy ranch, it’s hard to get one-on-one time with anyone. I liked that it was our little secret.”
“That’s lovely,” she says quietly. “Do you come out here much these days?”
I shove my hands into my pockets. “Haven’t been back since the last time.”
Sage hesitates, and I know she knows what “the last time” means. But my shoulders don’t tense the way they normally do when I talk about Mom’s death.
“Thank you,” she says, “for bringing me with you.”
There’s no pity in her voice. No careful sympathy. Just… warmth.
“We’re just in time.” I nod toward the horizon, where the first pale streaks of gold bleed into the dark sky.
She exhales, going still the way she does when she sees something that genuinely moves her. Like she forgets herself for a second.
The light spreads gradually across the mountains, soft pink and amber catching against the distant ridgelines while the valley below emerges from the darkness piece by piece.
When she reaches for her camera, I stop her with my hand on her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Her brow furrows. “Don’t do what?”
“Photograph it.”
She blinks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I step closer, close enough that the sweet scent of her honeysuckle shampoo reaches me even through the cool morning breeze. “Just… be here. With me.”
She searches my face, then slowly lowers the camera. “Okay.”
Something loosens in my chest, something I’m not sure I even realized had been tight until now.
I move behind her, my hands cupping her shoulders. “Close your eyes.”
She angles her head back toward me. “Aren’t we here to watch the sun rise?”
For a moment, I’m that young boy again, standing beside Mom and asking the very same question.
I slide one hand to her slender neck, thumb drifting along her jaw. “Trust me.”
She rolls her lips together, then faces the valley again, her shoulders rising and falling as she takes a deep breath and relaxes.