40. Sage
SAGE
The mid-afternoon sun hangs warm across the valley by the time Taryn and I ride through the south pasture gates.
The horses’ hooves beat a familiar rhythm as the wind bends the tall grass into slow waves around us. Ahead, near the creek, the cattle graze lazily while birds chatter from the fence posts.
When I arrived on the ranch, I’d never even sat on a horse. Now Cozy’s steady motion beneath me is soothing.
Taryn pulls her hat down lower. “You officially look like a real cowgirl.”
I laugh. “Good to know.”
“I’m serious.” She smiles at me. “The first time I saw you on Cozy, you looked like you were worried she was plotting your death.”
“Actually, there’s a good chance she was.”
“Fair.”
A smile tugs at my mouth as Cozy picks her way carefully across the uneven ground beneath us.
Taryn glances sideways at me. “You know, Holden was convinced you’d quit after your first ride.”
Hearing his name still feels like someone pressing directly on a bruise. I swallow past the tightness in my throat. “Wow. Supportive.”
“He said, and I quote, ‘She’s probably going to fall off once and be done.’”
I snort, but the ache is back.
Taryn’s expression falls. Of course she notices. I’ve started to realize this girl notices everything.
We’re silent as the horses continue along the ridge overlooking the lower valley. After a while, she adjusts her reins loosely. “I’m glad you’re staying.”
“Me too,” I say softly, shooting her a smile.
She sighs. “I always wanted a sister.” Then she gives me a sideways look. “And before you ask, yes, everybody knew.”
I roll my lips together, and Taryn snorts.
“You didn’t actually think you guys were being subtle, did you?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “We were trying.”
“Maybe you were. But my brother?” She smiles, though it fades too soon. “I thought it was proof that he’d finally stick around. That you both would.”
For a moment, I can’t quite bring myself to look at her, so I focus on adjusting my reins.
“I’m pretty sure he’s miserable, by the way,” she says.
I exhale through my nose. “Taryn—”
“I’m just saying. He sounded awful the last time I talked to him.”
The pain in my chest sharpens. “He left.”
Hurt flashes across her face as she looks back toward the trail ahead. “I know.”
I regret my response immediately. She’s hurting too. The whole family is.
Silence stretches between us for a while after that. The only sounds are hoofbeats and cattle shifting through pasture grass.
Part of me is still angry at Holden for leaving. The other part misses him so badly it’s a physical ache. Which is ridiculous considering he made his choice perfectly clear.
“You know he hasn’t always been like this, right?” she says quietly.
I glance sideways. “Like what?”
“Leaving.”
The word lands heavily between us.
She shifts in her saddle. “Before Mom died, he was always laughing. Always having fun, you know?”
I nod. I’ve seen the photographic evidence.
“But after the accident, he moved out to his cabin and started focusing more and more on bull riding. After he graduated, he began entering more events and staying away between them. Then he just… stopped coming back.”
My heart twists. How much pain must he have been in to make leaving easier than staying? She stares ahead as she keeps talking.
“It was hard. Dad was in a bad way but trying to hold it together.” She exhales deeply.
“Sterling stepped up and did the best he could to help Dad manage the ranch and the rest of us. And we didn’t make it easy on either of them.
I was too young to do more than cry a lot.
Chance and River and Quinn acted out, got into trouble.
Nothing really bad; just lashing out, I guess. But Holden, he just… checked out.”
It’s like a vice is squeezing my lungs. I knew how hard their mother’s death was for him. But the rest is new to me, and the details make the situation hit even harder.
Taryn hesitates, her fingers tightening around the reins. “He got detention that day—for fighting with Gage Ashland.”
I steel myself for what’s coming.
She lets out a breath. “Mom went to pick him up. It was an accident, just bad timing. But…”
Oh god.
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
“It was just before his seventeenth birthday,” she murmurs. “After that…” Her throat works, her swallow audible. “I think he decided that if he hadn’t screwed up, she’d still be alive.”
Tears sting my eyes. Now all those years of distance make a terrible kind of sense. I let out a shaky breath. “I wish he’d told me.”
“Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t.”
Surely, he wouldn’t have thought I’d blame him. Or maybe opening up so completely to someone he expected to walk away afterward was too hard? Either way, I feel scraped hollow all over again.
Taryn scans the horizon. “Doesn’t mean leaving was the right thing, though. I don’t think he understands how much it hurts us when he does it.”
The simple honesty in her voice nearly undoes me. She isn’t asking me to excuse him. Just understand him.
Before I can answer, she pulls her horse to a stop and holds up her hand. “Hold on.”
I bring Cozy to a stop too and listen. At first, I can’t hear anything. Then a thin, distressed sound, almost like a baby’s cry, wavers through the air, followed a moment later by the deeper call of a cow.
“Calf might be stuck,” she says. “We need to check it out.”
She urges her horse forward, and I follow. Before long, we crest the top of a rise and spot a black cow pacing along the opposite side of a narrow gully.
She calls out again, and the calf answers from somewhere below her.
Taryn slows, eyeing me. “Careful. We don’t want the mom to panic when she sees us.”
My stomach twists, but I nod and follow her as she angles us wide so we approach from the side rather than head-on. When the cow spots us, she swings her big head our way, and her eyes roll, but she doesn’t make any aggressive moves.
Taryn dismounts, and I slide off Cozy, leaving her beside Taryn’s horse, then creep along behind her. As we get to the edge of the gully, the calf comes into view, lying about five or six feet down in a trickle of water running along the bottom, covered in mud.
Taryn grimaces. “Poor little guy tired himself out trying to escape.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
She looks back the way we rode, surveys the angle of the sun, then looks back at the gully. “Yeah. I think we can get it out.”
“Just us?” I ask.
“I’ll call River. But it’ll take a while for anyone to get out here, and that calf’s already exhausted. He can’t be more than a week old. He’ll need to nurse.”
The calf lets out another cry, and the mom calls back, still pacing.
Taryn plants her hands on her hips and scans the terrain. “The slope gets a little gentler down there.” She points farther along the gully, toward a section of the opposite bank that isn’t quite as steep.
Squinting, I assess the situation too. “Do you really think we can get him out?”
“Yeah. But we’ll probably get dirty.”
“I’m okay with that.”
She flashes me a grin. “Okay. Someone needs to stay up here and use a rope to guide him, and someone needs to climb down and push him along from behind.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Well, you know what you’re doing with the rope, so maybe I should go down.”
Taryn nods slowly. “You’re a bit taller than me too, so you’ll have an easier time keeping him on his feet.”
I blow out a breath. “Right.”
She grasps my arm, giving me a concerned frown. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not comfortable. If you’d rather wait until my brothers get here, we can do that.”
The calf cries again. Waiting for the others means leaving him down there even longer. “No, it’s fine. We’ve got this.”
Taryn’s frown disappears, and she eyes the side of the gully. “Think you can get down there in one piece?”
It’s fairly muddy, so I imagine I’ll slide pretty easily. “Fingers crossed for no broken bones. Just give me a minute.”
While she calls River and explains the situation, I lie on my belly and wriggle backward toward the gully until my legs hang over the edge. With my toes digging into the dirt, I ease lower. My foot slips as a chunk breaks loose beneath my boot, and my heart lurches, but I manage to steady myself.
“Careful,” Taryn says. “The banks are soft.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that.”
When I can’t hold on to the side anymore, I let go. But my boots stick in the mud, and my momentum carries me backward so I land on my ass.
Cold water immediately soaks through the denim. Ugh, the ride home isn’t going to be pleasant.
“Sorry,” Taryn calls down, though she’s grinning.
I squint up at her. “Thanks.”
Pushing myself up, I extricate my feet. Then I work my way through the muddy water and over the occasional slippery rock. “Easy,” I murmur as I crouch beside the calf.
The poor thing’s sides heave rapidly beneath his patchy coat, water and mud caking it nearly black.
“I’m going to throw the rope down now,” Taryn says. “Just loop it around his chest. He’s pretty tired, so hopefully he won’t struggle much.”
The cow’s calling has gotten louder and more urgent since I got close to her baby, but I tune her out, focusing on the rope Taryn throws to me. Once I have it, I tentatively slip the loop over the calf’s head.
He starts to struggle, letting out another high-pitched cry. His mama responds, her hooves scraping dirt near the edge of the ditch. Breath held, I glance up, hoping to god she doesn’t fall on top of us.
The calf gives up its fight after a few seconds. As soon as he calms, I ease the loop down over his shoulders and carefully work it behind his front legs until it rests around his chest.
“Good job,” Taryn calls. “I’m going to put a little pressure on the rope. You might have to help me get him standing.”
Nodding, I move back a few feet.
Once I’m in position, she looks down at me again. “Ready? I’m going to pull.”
She grunts, and the rope tightens around the calf. It scrambles to his feet, and I steady his wobbly back end. Thank goodness he stays upright.
“And again,” Taryn says.
This time when she heaves, I push at the calf’s butt. He protests loudly but takes two reluctant steps forward. I grin. “It’s working.”
Her laugh echoes along the gully. “Of course it is.”
We maneuver the calf a step or two at a time toward where the slope gentles. Taryn works the rope like she’s done this a hundred times, applying pressure when he stalls and giving him slack when he moves, while I steady him whenever he stumbles over a slippery rock.
“Okay,” Taryn says when we’ve guided the little guy to the right place. “Nearly there. You’ll have to take the rope off, then point his head in the right direction and shove.”
“Right,” I mutter to myself as I loosen the rope. I tug it over his head and drop it, grateful when the calf remains standing. He’s swaying, clearly exhausted, so if I don’t get him moving now, I may have to wrestle him back onto his feet.
Guiding him so he’s facing the opposite side of the gully, I give him a gentle nudge forward.
The mom calls down from the bank above us, successfully encouraging her baby to move.
As he scrabbles for purchase, nearly slipping before finding his feet, I give him another shove from behind.
It’s a little tricky, since my boots keep sliding in the mud, but he lurches up, almost goes sideways, then lurches again.
With one final shove from me and a burst of effort from the calf, he tumbles up and over the edge.
He lets out a loud cry, and his mother snuffles over him as if to make sure he’s okay.
A laugh escapes me. “We did it.”
I turn back toward Taryn. She’s still standing above me on the other side, hands on her hips and a grin on her face. “Yeah. We did.”
I flex my aching shoulders, then survey the steep bank I still need to climb to get back to her.
“By the way,” Taryn says as I grab a thick hunk of grass near the top. “Remember when I said you looked like a real cowgirl?”
“Yep.” I give the grass an experimental tug, and it holds.
“I was wrong. Now you do.”
I choke out a laugh as I heave myself up the side. “I was just missing the mud, huh?”
“Yep.”
Halfway up, a clump of dirt crumbles away beneath my boot. Taryn extends her hand. I shift my weight and reach for her.
The instant my fingers brush hers, the bank gives way beneath my feet. The world tilts violently, and for one terrifying second, all I see is sky. Then a sharp pain cracks across the back of my skull and white light flashes behind my eyes, the air vanishing from my lungs.
Taryn screams my name, and I try to answer, but nothing comes out. The clouds above me spin strangely, and nausea rolls hard through my stomach.
The world around me sounds distant. Muted.
Taryn slides into view above me, panic written all over her face.
“Oh my god. Sage—”
“I’m okay,” I say, but the words come out slurred.
Her eyes are wide and frantic. “Don’t move. You hit your head on a rock.”
I try to answer, but this time, the words won’t come at all.
Overhead, the clouds drift slowly. Darkness pulls softly at the edges of my vision.
“Sage, stay with me, okay? My brothers are on the way.”
I want to tell her not to worry, but the world tilts sideways again. She’s calling my name as my vision goes dark.