What I wasn’t prepared for was the way she stayed in my body after she left it.
The phantom press of her hands on my chest.
The weight of her thighs around my hips.
The sound of my name in her mouth—Lee—like she was reaching for something deeper than the word.
I showered. Changed. Stood in my quarters and pressed my palms flat against the wall and breathed, and her scent was still on my skin like a brand I can’t scrub off and don’t want to.
The compound is quiet without her.
I didn’t realize how much space she’d started to fill until the space went empty.
Even the barn sounds different.
The rhythm is off—I don’t hear her truck first thing in the morning, no boots on the aisle, no low voice greeting the horses like colleagues she respects.
Just me and the animals and a silence that used to feel like sanctuary and now feels like something I’m rattling around inside.
I do the evening rounds.
Feed. Water. Check on Passage—the gray mare is fully recovered, bright-eyed, eating well.
Check on the bay—standing calm in his stall, ears forward when I approach, no flinch.
Check on the paint, the geldings, the yearling.
Everyone is stable and everything is in order.
I go back to my quarters and sit on the bed.
The photo of Rose watches me from the nightstand—blonde hair, blue eyes, the smile that could talk you into anything.
I look at her face and the ache is there. The same ache, but it’s different now.
Layered.
Complicated by the memory of dark hair, calloused hands, and a body that is nothing like hers pressed against mine in a tack room that still smells like both of us.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I know what I did—I know what it felt like, what it meant, how the earth moved and how the walls came down.
I just don’t know what happens next.
I’ve spent years knowing exactly what my life was—grief, work, horses, the ring, the silence—and in one evening Bex took all of it apart with her hands and her mouth and the way she looked at me after, and I don’t know how to put it back together.
I’m not sure I want to.
I pick up my phone.
Not to call anyone.
My thumb moves on its own, navigating to a place I haven’t opened in years.
The voicemail folder.
The graveyard of every call I refused to answer, every message I refused to hear, every attempt Bex made to reach me through the walls I’d built.
