Chapter 24 #2
“And you?”
She glanced at me. “What about me?”
“You good?”
She smiled faintly. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“That’s good. She’s obsessed with you.”
A few hours later, we turned onto a long dirt road.
And then a pasture opened in front of us, lush green and wide under the late afternoon sun.
It surprised me how familiar it looked. For a second, I just stared, the memory of a space similar to this made its way into the forefront of my mind—like I’d shut it behind some old door and only now realized it was never really locked.
I took in the smell of hay, leather, and dirt baked under years of heat and drought. Then the dust that was kicked up in soft gold sheets under the morning sun. And finally, my eyes focused on the horses’ shifting weight in the grass, tails flicking lazily.
I hadn’t realized how much of my body still remembered places like this.
Harper gasped, pulling me out of my memories, “Daddy… they’re real.”
I smiled before I could stop myself. “Yeah, bug. They are.”
After unloading the car and helping Harper into cowgirl boots, the ranch owner greeted us and led us down a weathered stone path towards the barn on the far end of the pasture.
She was about sixty years old and kept a wide smile on her face as she spoke enthusiastically, telling us about her family’s farm and introducing us to the farm dog that was basking in the sun.
I took in all of the details, allowing myself to soak it all in. But it wasn’t lost on me that after one conversation, Dani had not only remembered, she’d orchestrated the entire thing.
When we reached the horses and Beth, the ranch owner, introduced me to a dark brown horse named “Buck”, my eyes caught Dani’s as a knowing smile danced across her face.
At first, Harper clung to my leg.
“They’re big.”
“They are,” I said. “But they’re gentle.”
I stepped toward the fence and laid my palm against the first horse that approached. I could feel the warmth and the dense muscle of the horse under my hands. The animal shifted under my hand, alive and grounded and solid beneath my palm.
My body adjusted without thinking — stance wider, weight balanced, voice lower.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dani watching me carefully.
Her fingers flexed around the reins, then stilled. She let out a slow breath, barely audible, as if she was holding something in. Not with curiosity, but with recognition.
Like she’d just met a version of me I didn’t show.
“You’re different here,” she said gently.
“Different how?”
“You breathe differently.”
I exhaled through my nose.
“Feels… familiar,” I admitted.
She nodded like that meant something to her.
As we stood by the horses, Harper fed them apple slices, squealing every time one nuzzled her hand. The sound of her laughter in that open space did something to me. It wasn’t just joy.
It was relief.
Because for years, I’d believed feeling too much joy meant I was betraying something. My hand tightened unconsciously on the reins, fingers digging into leather, as if holding myself in check could keep the feeling at bay.
Elena’s face flickered in my mind: her smile, the way she’d teased me about being too serious, the way she’d squeezed my hand when Harper kicked for the first time.
Elena would’ve wanted this.
That thought landed heavy and light all at once.
Dani mounted beside me, posture careful but determined. Her jaw was set as if she’d rather fall off than admit she was nervous.
“You good?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
A beat later, her shaky voice cut through the noise of the leaves in the trees, “I might not be fine.”
I laughed, the sound surprising us both.
“Just breathe. Let the horse do most of the work.”
With her focused on the horse slowly trotting beneath her, I allowed myself to take her in as the wind moved through her blonde hair, and dust clung to the edge of her jeans. She looked out of place and perfectly placed at the same time.
She glanced at me over her sunglasses. “You’re smiling.”
“I don’t smile.”
“Well, you are now.”
Damn it.
If only she knew, it had nothing to do with the horses and everything to do with her.
We rode slowly along the fence line.
When my hand slid along the horse’s neck, its solid muscle and heat solid under my palm, something inside me went still.
The reins felt right in my grip.
The saddle leather creaked when I mounted.
My knees locked in on instinct.
For a while, a charged closeness pulsed between us, suspended in the hush of hoof beats. The space stretched, gentle and weightless.
“I always wanted to bring Harper somewhere like this,” I admitted. “Let her see where I came from.”
“Well, now you have,” she said simply before turning her focus back to staying upright on the horse.
At one point, her horse drifted closer to mine, causing our knees to brush. But she didn’t pull away right away, and neither did I. Nor did we look at each other, but the awareness was there; heat through denim, sun on skin, wind lifted her hair at the nape of her neck.
I wanted to touch it, touch her.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I focused on Harper’s unfiltered laughter as it was carried across the pasture, peeling out off-key, the same tuneless song she’d belted in the back seat earlier, bright and wild.
And in that moment, I didn’t feel like I was standing between her and the world alone. I felt like someone was standing with me. And I didn’t know what to do with that, because I hadn’t asked for that, hadn’t planned for that.
And yet here Dani was, buying matching cowgirl hats for her and Harper, planning trips two hours away without asking permission, and bringing my daughter into a piece of my history I’d kept shut.
Not trying to fix it, just standing inside it.
I’d spent years thinking joy was betrayal. Believing that if I let myself feel it, I’d be turning my back on Elena. But watching my daughter laugh under an open sky, I realized grief doesn’t leave when joy walks in.
It just moves over.
When we walked back towards Dani’s car a few hours later, Harper skipped ahead, dirt-smudged and glowing, and Dani fell into step beside me. She was close enough that I could practically feel the heat of her arm through the thin space between us.
“Thank you,” I said.
She blinked. “For what?”
“For all of it.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I didn’t do it to earn anything.”
“I know.”
That was another problem; she wasn’t keeping score, she wasn’t maneuvering. She just… gave. And I didn’t know what to do with someone who didn’t require repayment.
Dani reached up then, hesitant at first, and adjusted the brim of my hat, allowing her fingers to brush my temple.
If she moved any closer, I would’ve felt her breath.
If I moved any closer, I wouldn’t have stopped.
Instead, her hand lingered, then dropped, as she continued to hold my gaze.
Then, as if sensing the tension of the moment, Dani broke it. “C’mon, cowboy,” she said, her manicured fingers tapping my hat once before walking away.
Damn the things this woman did to me.
My feet refused to move for a moment as I took in the ranch and the scenery once more. I stared at my daughter, at Dani, at the ranch behind us.
At the version of myself that existed here.
And something in me loosened.
Not all the way, but enough.
Harper popped up, interrupting my thought. “Can we come back every weekend?” Her eyes wide and hopeful.
Dani didn’t respond; she just laughed softly.
“You’re asking for a lot, bug.”
Harper just kept looking at me, impatiently awaiting my answer.
“We’ll come back,” I said.
Harper squealed.
Dani didn’t. Instead, her lips parted like she might say something—then closed again, gaze lingering, caught on mine for one breath too long.
She just watched me.
Like she knew that wasn’t the only promise I’d made today.
Because somewhere behind the words I spoke to Harper, I made quieter promises too—one to Dani, that maybe I could finally try to let her in, and one to myself, that it was time to stop holding back from the life still in front of me.
As we drove home, the Bronco rumbling beneath my hands, Harper singing in the backseat, Dani watching the horizon like she wasn’t pushing anything.
I realized the terrifying truth.
This wasn’t just help.
This wasn’t just temporary.
This was something forming around us.
And I didn’t want to shut it down.