“Fine. She’s good. Horses responded well. The yearling’s gait is already better.” I keep brushing. Long, even strokes. “Professional arrangement. That’s it.”
Shadow’s quiet for a moment.
I can feel him watching me in that way he has—not pushing, not prying, just being present while I pretend I’m fine.
“You know,” he says, “I told myself the same thing when it came to Grace. Keep it clean. Don’t let it get complicated, until I said fuck it to hell.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“I know.” He pushes off the stall door. “I’m just saying. The universe doesn’t always check with us before it sends someone.”
He walks away before I can respond, which is a good thing because I don’t have a response.
I have a ring on my finger and a horse in the stall and the phantom sensation of dark eyes tracking mine across a quarantine barn, and none of those things fit together in a way that makes sense.
The bay shifts in his corner. One ear forward. Watching me.
“Don’t start,” I tell him.
The horse blinks. I could swear he looks unimpressed.
I twist the ring and close my eyes, and dammit, I do want Bex to come back.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bex
I get to the Saints’ compound early for my second session because I want to watch him with the horses before he knows I’m there.
That’s the excuse, anyway.
The professional one.
I want to observe the rehabilitation process, understand his methods, and get a sense of where each horse is in its trust progression so I can plan my farrier work accordingly.
Sound reasoning. Solid logic.
The kind of explanation that holds up under scrutiny as long as nobody looks too hard at the fact that I’m parked outside the barn a quarter before six in the morning with the engine off and my hands around a gas station coffee, watching Lee through the open barn doors like some kind of deranged stalker.
He doesn’t see me.
He’s in the round pen with the chestnut mare, and he’s?—
God.
He’s standing in the center of the pen, completely still.
The mare is circling him at a walk, and he’s turning with her—slow, minimal, just enough to keep his body angled toward hers.
He’s not holding a lead rope.
Not holding anything.
His hands are loose at his sides and his weight is easy and his entire posture is an open door.
The mare stops.
Lee doesn’t move.
