Chapter 3 #2
"Watch her feet," I said. "See how she loads the inside hind before she turns? She's not reacting to the cat — she's ahead of it. She knows where it's going before it does."
Jack sipped his coffee. Watched.
"And the balance." I leaned on the rail, pointing.
"That's not something you train. That's hardware.
She was born knowing how to read another animal.
" The cat darted left. Penny was already there, sliding into position like water finding a groove.
"God, look at that. She didn't even shift her weight. Just... flowed."
I was talking faster now. Couldn't help it. "You put her on cattle, and she'd be electric. I'd bet money she could work a cow right now, no training, just raw instinct. A horse like this — you don't make her into something. You just get out of her way and let her show you what she already is."
Jack was quiet for a moment. Then: "Maggie and I have been talking about expanding. We just haven't had the vision for what bigger looks like." He glanced at me. "You've been thinking about this."
I caught myself. Heard the enthusiasm in my own voice and pulled back — because wanting something you didn't have yet was a good way to feel like an idiot when it didn't happen.
"Nah. I'm just a broken bull rider with opinions about horses. Dangerous combination." I grinned. "Ask me again in a year when I've run out of things to complain about."
Jack didn't laugh. He just looked at me with that steady, seeing expression that made me understand why Maggie was with him.
"I'm asking you now," he said.
I didn't have a smart answer for that. So I clapped him on the shoulder and changed the subject to fence repairs, and Jack let me, because Jack understood the difference between a man who didn't have an answer and a man who wasn't ready to give one.
But something was sparking. A current running under my skin — the same electricity I felt before a ride, but quieter. Steadier. Less like adrenaline and more like direction.
I filed it away — next to Momma's kitchen-table seed and Hunter's quiet faith — and let it sit.
Mending fence line alone was a mistake because alone was where my brain went places I didn't authorize.
It went to Callie Monroe.
Not the rejection. Not the "my shop is closed" speech, though that had been so perfectly delivered I'd replayed it twice just to admire the craft.
My brain went to the cornhole game. The way she'd stepped into each throw, hips turning, competitive fire in her eyes, laughing at Weston with her head thrown back.
How she'd bumped my shoulder on a pass and smelled like soap and vanilla and something that made me forget what my hands were doing.
How she'd caught me staring and said "You're staring" with a grin that dared me to deny it, not embarrassed, not flattered — amused.
Like a woman who knew exactly what she looked like and didn't need me to tell her.
And Maisie. That kid grabbing mine and her mom's hands and announcing our future to the entire party like it was already settled.
The trust in her grip. The way Callie's face had gone soft and helpless at the same time — this child will be the death of me — and the laugh that followed.
That reluctant, helpless, beautiful laugh.
I hammered a fence post and thought about dry humor and a woman who'd friend-zoned me with a beer clink and a smile.
I'd been flirted with, chased, propositioned, and adored by women since I was old enough to realize what the grin could do. It had always been easy. Effortless. A current that ran in one direction — toward me — and all I had to do was stand in it.
Callie Monroe didn't stand in my current. She stood upstream, arms crossed, watching the water go by with a smile that said she'd already calculated the depth and decided it wasn't worth wading into.
But she'd laughed. She'd trash-talked me into missing a throw.
She'd bumped my shoulder like we'd known each other for years instead of hours.
And when I'd offered friendship with no angle, she'd studied me with those intelligent eyes and said okay — not because she trusted me, but because she was brave enough to try.
I was in trouble.
Evening settled over the ranch — slow, gold, the sun dropping behind the western hills in that way it only does in Texas, like it's got nowhere else to be.
I was on the porch. Boots up on the rail, beer untouched, watching the sky do its thing. The house was quiet behind me — Momma and Dad somewhere inside, the low murmur of their voices carrying through the screen door the way it had every evening of my entire life.
Dad came out. Owen Blackwood, fifty-eight years of weather and work and love mapped across a face that warmed every time he looked at one of us.
He sat in the chair beside me the way he always sat — unhurried, settling his weight, a man who'd earned every creak in his joints honestly.
He had a whiskey. He set it on the armrest and looked at the sky.
We sat. The crickets were starting up, a slow chorus that would build until the whole night buzzed with it.
"Good party," Dad said.
"Yeah."
He reached over and squeezed the back of my neck. Brief. Warm. The way he'd done since I was a kid — his shorthand for I'm here and you're mine and that's enough.
"You thinking about what's next?"
I looked at him. He wasn't looking at me — he was looking at the hills, at the land he'd built his life on, at the sky that had watched him do it.
"I don't know what next looks like, Dad."
He nodded. No surprise. No concern. Just a nod and the quiet certainty of a man whose whole world was the family he'd built and the land he'd built it on.
"That's alright, son. It'll come."
We sat and watched the dark come in. The ranch settled around us — cattle lowing somewhere in the south pasture, a horse nickering from the barn, the windmill creaking in a breeze I couldn't feel from the porch.
The sounds of home. The sounds I'd spent years hearing only in memory, from motel rooms and arena parking lots and a hundred towns that weren't this one.
Dad didn't offer advice. Didn't list options or suggest timelines or tell me what he thought I should do.
He just sat beside his son on a porch they'd sat on together a thousand times and let the evening be enough.
That was Dad. His whole philosophy of fatherhood could be summed up in three words: I'm right here.
He'd said it when Wyatt was struggling with the ranch.
He'd said it to Liam after his parents died.
He'd said it to every one of us at every crossroads, and it never got old because he never stopped meaning it.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, when my brain went looking for something to want, it didn't find the chute.
It found a woman with blue eyes standing at a fence in the dark, grinning at me like I was an idiot.
It found a little girl in pink cowboy boots who'd claimed me like I was already hers.
Dad finished his whiskey. Stood. Put his hand on my shoulder — one squeeze, brief and firm — and went inside.
I stayed on the porch. The stars came out, one by one, like someone was turning on lights in a house I couldn't see.
For the first time in twelve years, I didn't dream about the arena that night.
I dreamed about a laugh in the dark and a porch light left on for someone who wasn't home yet.