Not gently, not carefully—a full-force yank that rips me off my feet and spins me away from the stall wall.
His other hand catches the bay’s halter on the swing—I don’t know how, the timing is impossible, but his fingers close on the nylon like he was born reaching for it—and he redirects the horse’s momentum just enough to turn the shoulder away from where I was standing.
The bay crashes past.
His hip clips the stall door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
He circles to the back of the stall, blowing hard, trembling, but the circuit broke.
He’s standing now. Shaking. Not circling.
I’m against the opposite wall.
Lee is the reason I’m not on the ground.
He pulled me into him when he pulled me clear.
Instinct—the same instinct that grabbed the halter, the same instinct that moved before his brain could calculate.
And now his arm is around my waist, tight, my back against his chest, and we’re pressed together against the stall wall in a tangle of limbs and adrenaline and the pounding of two hearts that aren’t beating at the same speed but are both beating way too fast.
His chest against my back.
Solid. Warm.
Rising and falling with hard, fast breaths that I feel along my entire spine.
His arm locked around my waist, his forearm pressed against my stomach, his hand gripping my hip with fingers that are digging into the curve of me hard enough to bruise.
His other hand is still extended toward the bay—halter released now, but the arm out, protective, a barrier between me and the horse even though the horse has stopped moving.
Rain hammering the roof. Thunder rolling away east. The bay trembling in the corner.
My heartbeat in my ears, in my throat, in the places where Lee’s body is touching mine.
He doesn’t let go.
That’s the thing.
The horse has stopped.
The danger is past.
The logical, professional, distance-maintaining thing to do is drop his arm and step back and ask me if I’m hurt and then retreat behind the wall he’s been building over the last few years.
That’s what the Lee Simms of the last three weeks would do—the one who won’t touch me, won’t look at me, won’t stand in a room with me without calculating the exact distance required to maintain deniability.
He doesn’t do that.
His arm stays.
His hand stays on my hip.
His chest stays against my back.
And I can feel the moment he becomes aware of it—the full-body contact, the intimacy of the position, the fact that we’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh—because his breathing changes.
Shifts from the hard panting of adrenaline to something slower. Deeper. Deliberate.
