Chapter 5
Asher
“Arg!” was the last thing out of Dusty’s mouth before gravity did its unforgiving work.
In an instant, he came down hard, smacking face first into the arena’s gritty substrate that instantly had me wincing out of sympathy. Dust kicked up just enough to color the air, clouding around his fallen form while he lay face down with his arms stretched out on either side of him.
Wrapped around both of his boots was a lasso tugged snugly at his ankles. At the other end of it stood Dallas, his grip steady on the rope, his expression flat and unreadable as he stared down at the boy he’d somehow gotten roped into—ha—catching.
If he had any particular feelings about the stunt he’d been pulled into, he sure as hell wasn’t letting them show. Like usual.
Not far off from them, Ryder was damn near keeling over, his entire body bending backward as he clutched his stomach. A sharp, wheezing laugh tore out of him. “You actually did it! You crazy motherfucker.”
“Language,” Laken shot at him, though there wasn’t much bite behind the warning. A wry smile tugged at his lips, betraying his own amusement. His attention shifted back to Dusty who still had yet to move. “You all right, kid?”
For a second there was nothing, just the slow settling of dust. Then, slowly, a single arm peeled up from the ground, sluggish and deliberate, before dirty fingers curled into a distinctive thumbs-up.
It had me shaking my head.
The cold snap had driven us all inside for the day, including the horses. With the morning chores done and the stables sealed up tight to keep the animals warm from the cold front blowing in, we’d all been left with too much time on our hands after lunch.
Getting a bunch of restless ranch hands packed together with nothing but boredom and an empty arena filled with tack to entertain themselves with, would always give way to this kind of chaos no matter how well-behaved the oldest of us was.
Case in point: Dallas getting himself talked into this mess to begin with.
Wilder and Sully only had themselves to blame.
In all fairness, though, Ryder could be damn compelling when he wanted to be.
It was the easy grin and innocent twinkle in his eye that made whatever came spilling out of his mouth seem like what he was suggesting was just harmless fun.
Games to entertain ourselves with until the time for end-of-the-day chores came around.
And somehow, he’d miraculously gotten Dallas—who was normally too levelheaded to entertain any kind of nonsense like this—to go along with it.
“Up you go,” Dallas muttered, unlooping the rope before hoisting Dusty back onto his feet.
Dirt clung the boy’s jacket and jeans, a streak of it coloring his flushed cheeks. He coughed into the crook of his arm to clear his lungs, tilting his head back around to lock his glare on the hand holding him upright.
You—” he started, dragging the back of his sleeve across his face. “You hogtied me!”
Dallas blinked, utterly unbothered while dropping his hand. “Yep.”
Dusty threw his arms out, exasperation practically radiating off of him. “You lassoed me! Like... like a goddamn steer!”
“Language,” Laken called again.
Dallas gave him another slow, deliberate blink. “Sure did.”
“And you fell for it.” Ryder barely managed to get the words out before another sharp cackle ripped from his throat. “Literally!”
He doubled over, slapping his hands against his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. His amusement was wild and infectious; hard not to contaminate the rest of us no matter how hard we tried to smother our smiles.
Poor Dusty.
It wasn’t the easiest being the youngest one in a group full of grown men, especially not out here.
At sixteen—rapidly approaching seventeen, as he liked to remind us all quite often—he was still stuck in that awkward in-between stage; too old to be treated like a kid but not quite grown enough to be considered one of us.
We all had years on him. Even me, the second youngest, still had enough time under my belt to put some distance between us despite us both technically being in the same age bracket.
For all his enthusiasm and eagerness to prove himself, he was still trying to catch up.
And he wanted to.
Desperately.
If there was one thing the kid had going for him, it was how he never let himself fall too far behind. He worked twice as hard, pushed himself just as much as the rest of us, and didn’t quit until one of us was forced to drag him back to the bunkhouse for the night.
As inspiring as it was to watch him come into his own—or try to, at least—we also refused to stand around and let him run himself ragged.
What kind of mentors would we be?
He always took our teasing in stride, bore the ribbing that came with being the youngest, and never once let himself sulk over it for longer than a few hours. But there were still moments, like now, where it was painfully clear just how much younger he really was.
“Ugh. I hate all of you,” Dusty muttered.
Ryder moved over to him, throwing an arm around his shoulders and tugging him close to his side. “Don’t lie. You love us.”
He merely got an eye roll in response.
I huffed out a laugh before pushing away from the wall. As fun as it was to watch my fellow ranch hands fuck around until Sully came down to scold us all for wasting time messing with the tack, standing around doing nothing was making me feel antsy.
Greyson used to tease me for it—my inability to sit still and how I always needed to be doing something before I was slowly driven insane.
A by-product, no doubt, of our older brother constantly shuffling us from one activity to the next just to keep us occupied while he worked. Back then it had been fun, every day packed with something new and exciting for our young pre-teen selves to experience.
But now?
Now that I was older, and those ingrained habits hadn’t settled like I kept expecting them to, it made relaxing feel less like a break and more like a damn chore.
Laken glanced over when I moved, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement. “Heading out?”
I shrugged. “For a bit. Wanted to check on the horses.”
His expression shifted, knowing. “You mean your horse.”
“The ranch’s horse,” I corrected, though we both knew it was a weak argument at best.
Laken hummed, unconvinced, but didn’t push the point. He didn’t have to when everyone on this damn ranch had teased me about the same thing since I’d first gotten her saddled and taken out on our first walk together. It didn’t matter how much I insisted otherwise, no one was buying it.
Not when I was the one who spent every spare second with her and the only one she trusted automatically and without question.
I’d worked damn hard to build a relationship with her.
Day in and day out with no expectations other than to show her that not everyone in this world would hurt her.
She’d shown me grace, slowly and painstakingly started to trust me.
She’d given me plenty of chances when I thought I’d fucked up irreparably trying different methods to rehab her, and now...
Now, she was my best friend.
So far, none of this had made its way back to Wilder. As far as I knew, anyway.
While he’d given me plenty of side eyes after catching me out in the paddocks well past dinnertime or finding me at the stables before the sun had even begun to crest along the horizon.
He never said much about it, never questioned it outright, but I could feel his attention lingering every time he caught me.
Still, he hadn’t banned me from working with her as of yet. Hadn’t redirected me toward more important duties or reminded me that I had other responsibilities to focus on that had nothing to do with horses at all.
If anything, he’d let it slide more often than I ever expected him to.
I tried not to think too deeply about it.
Not when my stupid crush had a bad habit of twisting things up in my own damn head, spinning ridiculous scenarios in order to justify my boss’s actions in ways I had absolutely no business reading into in the first place.
I knew better than to entertain the idea that he cared about Pelly’s recovery in the same way I did.
Wilder had too much on his plate, too much riding on his shoulders, to be concerned with one of the dozens of half-broken horses that came through Moonlit Sanctuaries and the ranch hand who had, against all logic, gotten too damn attached to one horse for it to be healthy.
With one last nudge from Laken, I headed out the back of the arena, the rest of my coworkers’ voices slowly fading.
The second I pushed the door open and stepped outside, a blast of cold air slammed into me, sharp and unforgiving, practically stealing the breath straight from my lungs. A violent chill raced down my spine, rattling my teeth and sinking straight down into my bones.
Even though it was well past noon, the temperature had barely budged from the low forties it had been hovering at all week. The weak winter sun did little to cut through the cold, offering brightness but none of the warmth I’d gotten used to over the summer.
Despite still being in the south, Texas cold was a different breed than what I’d grown up with in Louisiana.
Back home, winter came with a dampness that seeped into your clothes and clung to your body like a second skin. It was miserable, sure, but it was at least predictable. You knew what to brace for with a wet chill, what to expect with the kind of cold that came with the air feeling thick and heavy.
Out here, though?
It was dry and biting. The wind was a harsh slap to the face, racing across the thousands of acres Boone Ranch sat on with nothing in between to cut it down. It left cheeks red and burned and raw no matter how many layers you tucked around your neck.