“Ready, on one… two… three…Muahh!!” Sadie blew an exaggerated smooch into the phone.
Danny did it back. “Love you lots like jelly tots! Byeee!”
“Byee!”
He handed the phone back with both hands, his face warm from smiling so hard his cheeks ached.
Sadie is the bestest of friends.
Wilbert tousled his curls. “You’re a popular boy.”
Danny just beamed and sipped his grape juice, making a little slurping sound.
After the call came the best part. Wilbert tucked him into the cozy nook beside the window, Rainbow snug under one arm and the sun spilling golden stripes across the floor. The scent of grass and chlorine drifted in through the open screen. He hoped they would have some time to swim tomorrow. His adult mind told him that he should research a shoulder injury and swimming though. Right now, he snuggled into the nook and enjoyed the backyard smells, summer smells. It was how being home and safe smelled.
Wilbert’s deep voice read fromThe Amazing Adventures of Captain Starlight, and Danny’s eyes fluttered halfway shut.
He wasn’t at Rawhide Ranch anymore.
But it didn’t matter.
His Daddy was here.
His unicorn was safe.
And they’d already started talking about when they’d go back.
Chapter One
Present Day
The cab rumbled to a halt just shy of the black wrought-iron gate, and nostalgia hit Darian like a snowball to the chest. The impact cold, sudden, and too sharp to ignore.
Through the windshield, he stared at the overlapping Rs and bronze horseshoes mounted proudly on the arch. They glinted dully beneath a low winter sun. He rubbed his hands over his thighs, to ward off the chill in his bones that might have come from the cold outside, or it could be just him. The Ranch logo hadn’t changed. Neither had the towering mountains behind it, their snowcapped peaks cutting into a steel-colored sky. Or the way the gravel cracked beneath the tires when the driver inched forward.
But he had.
A lot.
Inside the guard shack, Jacob Andrews leaned into view like always, his breath puffing into a white cloud as Danny rolled down his fogged windowpane. Jacob’s ears and head were covered in a beanie hat and his hands were encased in gloves, but he still looked cold with a red nose and cheeks.
The moment his eyes landed on Darian, he straightened. The cheerful tilt to his mouth faded. He stepped outside into the cold.
“Well, I’ll be. Danny,” he murmured, adjusting his hat. “Been a long time.”
Darian gave a nod. It had been. Two years since he’d last come through this gate. That time, Wilbert had been beside him. “It’s “Darian” now, he said stiffly.
He didn’t smile.
Couldn’t.
His eyes burned, and he had to swallow around the lump in his throat. This return was nothing like his first visit.
Jacob’s gaze dropped, just briefly, to the large black backpack wedged on the seat beside Darian, then lifted again to his face.
Something shifted in the man.
He knows.
