Chapter 15
Lucas
The week wore grooves into Luc’s days—sun up before the birds, boots on, coffee scorched black, check the north fence before the heat could chase a man inside.
By eight he and Beau had the side-by-sides loaded: posts, wire, a bucket of insulators clanking under a rag.
Mara rolled in with two heaping pans from her mama’s kitchen and a list in her hand that brooked no argument.
“Lanterns strung from the big cottonwoods,” she told them, dark braid swinging. “Power cords taped down so nobody sues you. And I’m not changing my mind on the hand-washing stations.” She pointed her pencil. “Luc, that means now.”
He grunted and got to it. It was easier to follow orders than think about the crowd Dahlia had promised—the ATVs, the horses, the music.
Easier to keep his brain pinned to tasks: test each GFI outlet; move the portable corral panels to the east pasture; stake the signs Dahlia painted in her looping script—TRAIL START, COOKOUT, DANCEFIELD—bright on salvaged barn wood.
She worked beside them, paint on her wrist, gloss gleaming on her mouth.
Dahlia moved with a choreographer’s memory, one eye on the work crews from the Haven’s Chicks and the other on her clipboard.
When she laughed, people sped up. When she frowned, they did too.
All week it felt like that—Luc’s ranch bent into a little town under her will.
On Thursday a white horse trailer the length of a city bus rolled up the lane and parked next to the pens.
Out climbed Thee Teylor Skye Beaumont, as she introduced herself to everyone inside of three minutes.
Beige hat immaculate, shirt starched, bronze skin sunkissed, those jewel-toned eyes that smiled before her mouth did.
Crownless, yet everything about her said queen.
She hugged Dahlia hard and kissed her cheeks, then set to work as if Blaze Haven had been her childhood chore.
“Where y’all keep the spare barrel covers?” Her voice carried over the thud of boots and the chuff of horses. “And who do I pay for hay bales? We’ll need a photoline.”
Beau, amused, tossed her the keys to the supply shed. “You runnin’ this event or ours, Miz Beaumont?”
She winked. “Depends who does it better.”
Beau Whitaker never worried about anything until it was worth a holler.
Six-four, broad as the barn door, beard threaded with red, he usually had a joke lodged under his tongue.
Mara Santiago balanced him. She planned for catastrophes, carried vet wrap in every pocket, and saw trouble before it stomped through a gate.
Luc trusted them both; they had earned it.
By Saturday the ranch breathed a different rhythm.
The road in had a dust plume that refused to settle.
Trucks lined the fence lines. Kids cried at goats, then fed them anyway.
Someone’s auntie set three iron pots over a trench of coals, steam perfuming the air with sausage, corn, and hint of bay.
Music testers thudded the speakers while riders warmed up their mounts.
On the drive, Draven—the neighbor and leading fool—arrived bareback on his sorrel, grinning, his fiancé Cashea shining in an orange top that announced she had opinions.
Dahlia wore cutoffs and a tee with Blk Riders Rise across the front, a huge bow pinned in her hair that should’ve been ridiculous and instead looked ceremonial.
She moved from crew to crew, hush-praising an elder rider on his gaited gelding, fixing a mic cable with gaffer tape, hugging little girls who wanted their braids tied with the same ribbon as hers.
She made a point of it—call out the names folks forgot when the story of the West got told.
She booked a parade of Black cowboys and riders to open the night, and made sure their mamas had reserved seating and plates loaded first.
Luc tightened the cinch on Blaze while he watched her.
Working gave him calm. Two fingers under the latigo so it wouldn’t pinch, then saddle pad smoothed flat, bit adjusted.
Blaze shook his head at the noise, ears flicking.
“I know,” Luc muttered. “We’ll cut out to the creek once they hit the trail. ”
“Boss.” Beau stepped in, smelling of sweat and charcoal. “You good?”
“I’m good.”
Beau studied his face anyway. “You want me to put someone else on gate duty?”
“I said I’m good.”
Beau didn’t push. He clapped Luc’s shoulder and went to wrangle the ATV line that already had three cousins arguing.
By sunset the scene blazed. Lanterns pooled honeyed light in the trees.
The sky ran from tangerine to indigo. Engines revved by the east pasture, a swarm of gnats in metal form.
Horses sidestepped and danced under riders who knew their cues.
A DJ set under the hay barn awning cued zydeco, then slid into a hip-hop set; the beat landed in rib cages and boots answered it.
Line dancers snapped to attention, rows forming and dissolving without a single PA announcement.
Teylor made a circuit with Dahlia, greeting old-timers who recognized her from rodeo circuits, grinning for quick selfies she barely paused for.
She was elegance and grit—jeweled belt, gloves tucked in her back pocket, nails flawless, attention hawk-sharp.
“We’re missing two volunteers at the first aid tent,” she told Mara. “I’ll cover until you steal somebody.”
“You’re a menace,” Mara said, affection ringing through the words. “Don’t disappear.”
“I shine,” Teylor corrected, then swished off again.
Luc worked the gate as the first trail group filed out, a line of riders and ATVs threading the fence gap into grass rippling under dusk.
He waved them through, counted heads, shut the chain, reopened.
Strobing lights from an overexcited side-by-side trailed starbursts on the oak trunks.
Firecrackers popped somewhere near the cook station—small, illegal, stupid—and laughter flared behind it. His stomach tightened.
Dahlia drifted to his side during a lull, sipping sweet tea from a mason jar, cheeks flushed. “You eating at all tonight?”
“Later.” He kept his eyes on the flow, hand on the chain. If he watched the crowd, the picture tilted.
She touched his elbow. “I can pull Beau if you need to walk.”
“I said later.”
The line reformed; he lifted the chain.
“My Type of Carryin On!” the DJ yelled, and the field screamed back, the song kicking from the speakers with a bass that rapped on bone.
ATVs bucked forward, riders whooping. Someone decided a doughnut near the gate was God’s will.
Luc gestured them off and they peeled away, mud spattering his jeans.
Another string of firecrackers went off near the grill.
He felt it without seeing—the pop-pop-pop punching the air, a cheap simulation with real teeth.
He forced breath in, four counts. Out, six. Soldiers taught themselves tricks. Sometimes they held.
The second wave lined up. “Country Girl!” the DJ promised, and the beat rolled, clapping hands synced across yards of grass.
Riders bounced in their stirrups, grinning.
A heel hit a muffler. Metal pinged. A woman shrieked in delight.
Luc’s vision narrowed, color leaching. He blinked, blinked again.
Someone was speaking to him—Beau?—but the voice came from underwater.
Teylor appeared at his flank, scent of clean sweat and powder, brimming with purpose. “I’m stealing your girl for a photo under the string lights when you’re free,” she announced, then caught his expression and paused. Her eyes gentled. “You want me to stand here a minute?”
“I’m good.” The words sounded wrong in his mouth, foreign.
A little boy ran into the gate path chasing his cap. Luc reached without thinking, snagged the collar, handed him to his mother, who said something grateful he didn’t catch. Another crack of backyard fireworks laced the beat, and the ground under Luc tilted.
Then the DJ, gassed by the crowd and not reading the room, hit his country set harder. “Boots on the Ground!” The hook zoomed out on a siren sample that stabbed the night; drums rolled in relentless cadence.
Luc’s neck locked. The song’s first verse punched through memory and ripped the scab from a year he had buried deep.
Heat flashed. Sand grit. The metallic taste of fear.
He wasn’t at the gate anymore. He was back by a burned-out market in Iraq, night stretched tight as wire, Ramirez missing after the blast. Radios hissed.
Someone was shouting over them. He smelled diesel and something else he refused to name.
He pivoted, searching for a silhouette that had not lifted his hand when roll was called. Ramirez, where you at, brother? Answer.
“Luc.” Beau’s voice again, closer. “Hey, man. Look at me.”
He couldn’t. He laughed instead, a sound scraped raw. His hands did inventory—rifle, mag, tourniquet—finding none of it. He braced on the gatepost that had become a wall, expecting heat against his cheek. The strobe on a side-by-side sprayed white across his eyes and they flooded with grit.
“Boss.”
Hands came in, firm, familiar. Beau on one arm, Mara on the other, one more ranch hand—Tomas—pressing in at his back.
Mara spoke first, a stream of calm, precise words, and somewhere in them she said “you’re at Blaze Haven” and “I’ve got you” and “inhale” and Beau matched his breath to hers so Luc could borrow the count.
It took too long. It took an age. The field muffled. Sound turned tinny at the edges. He ground his jaw. He did not weep. Mara’s thumb dug into a point on his palm she’d taught him to use when the grid inside his skull overloaded. “Anchor,” she commanded. He found the pain and clung to it.
Dahlia reached them at a run, bow a pale halo in his periphery. He sensed her before he knew it, the shift in air when she drew near. Her touch arrowed toward his chest.
He flinched back hard. “Don’t.” The word cracked. He couldn’t bear her softness on this mess. He couldn’t stand the pity that might follow.
“Baby, it’s me.”
“Don’t.” He dragged his arms free of Beau and Tomas and stumbled a step. “You can’t fix this with sage and sunshine.” His throat burned. “You should’ve never stayed this long.”
The small circle of dancers nearest them went silent, then that silence rippled outward. The DJ’s patter stalled. Night drew in, a cold rim after the heat of music, and he felt every gaze without seeing a single face.
Dahlia’s mouth parted. She didn’t cry. She didn’t reach for him again. That hurt worse than anything.
Teylor bristled, hustling up behind her, eyes spitting warning. “Watch your tone, cowboy.”
Beau shot her a small shake of his head that said wait. “Luc,” Beau tried, voice gentle. “We’ll clear the yard, okay? But don’t—”
“Get these people off my land,” Luc said. It came out a growl. He didn’t care. If he stayed, the past would consume the night and then it would devour the woman whose hand he had almost taken.
Beau opened his mouth, then shut it. He flicked a look at Mara and Tomas. Mara moved at once, her whistle slicing the air, her arm signaling. Volunteers peeled off to help. The word spread, and the crowd began to coil toward the exits, murmurs rising, the music bleeding out mid-song.
Luc tipped his hat brim down and shouldered past the curiosity.
Boots thudded turf. He didn’t see the auntie at the gumbo pots hiding her mouth in her hand.
He didn’t see Draven stepping toward him and Cashea yanking him back.
He didn’t see the little boy he had saved from the gate watching him with wide, confused eyes.
He only saw Dahlia, turned to stone, then motion as she spun and ran. The house caught her; the screen door flapped; Teylor pounded after, a string of fierce words lodged in her throat—“DeeDee, wait! He’s hurting, not thinking—girllll, open this door—”
Beau started after Luc again. “Let me—”
“Don’t,” Luc snapped without facing him. “Handle the crowd.”
“Luc.”
He kept walking, breath sawing, pulse still hunting a rhythm that wouldn’t arrive.
The cottonwoods whispered above the drive.
Somewhere a horse stomped and blew. A lantern clinked against its hook.
All of it felt miles away, unreal, as if the ranch he’d built with his own hands had shifted two inches left and would never fit him again.
Behind him, Beau raised his voice, carrying across the field. “Folks, we’re cutting the music early! Keep your groups tight and head to the parking lanes—trail bosses will guide you out. Save your plates; we’ll pack to-go. Thank y’all for coming.”
The engine noise thinned. Gates clanged. The night bled back into sounds Luc recognized—the creek, the insects, the distant hush of traffic on the county road. It should have helped. Instead, he felt flayed open under the stars.
He reached the barn and set his palm against a stall door until the rough wood bit. Blaze tossed his head and snorted. Luc said nothing to the horse, no apology, no promise. Words would not mend the split thing beating behind his ribs.
Up by the porch, the door slammed again; Teylor’s voice rang through the frame. “DeeDee! Don’t you hide from me. Open this door, hear me?”
Luc shut his eyes. He didn’t want to picture Dahlia crying, pressed to the other side of the wood because he had put his ghosts ahead of her living heart. He also didn’t want to picture her not crying.
Either way, the damage was done. He fixed his hat on his head and walked into the dark.