I picked up the guitar again, and this time the chord rang out clear and true. No cracks, no hesitation. Just music. Just me.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I felt like myself again. Not the product, not the brand, not the victim.
Just Stephy with a guitar and something true to say.
The notebook already had three songs sketched in it by lunch. By dinner, there were five. By the time the sun set, painting the Texas sky in shades of pink and gold, I had the bones of an album. A real album. Mine.
"Thank you," I told Liam as he made dinner, me still playing, unable to stop now that I'd started. "For the notebook. For believing. For everything."
"Always," he said, and I knew he meant it.
The music flowed through the evening, through the night, through the healing and into something new. Something better. Something real.
I was coming back. Not to who I'd been, but to who I was meant to be.
One song at a time.
Chapter 10
Liam
“You ready for this?”
Stephy stood beside Poet in the barn, and God—she looked like part of the morning itself. Sunlight slipped through the gaps in the old slats, painting her in uneven stripes of gold and shadow. The dust in the air danced like glitter around her, catching on her damp lashes, her pink cheeks, the fine tremble of her breathing.
Her hand rested on Poet’s neck, fingers buried deep into that white-blond mane that looked like it had been spun out of fire and morning frost. But her other hand—her free one—twisted the hem of her shirt. A tiny, nervous fidget. A tell.
She looked at the saddle like it was a wild predator instead of leather, metal, and years of Blackwood history. Her throat bobbed on a hard swallow. Her shoulders rose on a shallow breath.
Three weeks since I’d brought her home. Three weeks of building trust—between her and Poet, but more importantly, between her and herself.
We’d worked up to this moment inch by inch: Morning groundwork in dew-wet grass. Whispers to Poet while brushing her coat to a shine. Exercises in the round pen where Stephy learned how Poet “spoke” without words. Laughter when the mare followed her across poles like they were connected by an invisible string.
But riding? Actually getting in the saddle?
That was the step Stephy had been quietly terrified of.
“I haven’t been on a horse since I was twelve,” she confessed, her voice a blend of embarrassment and bravery. “And that was a trail ride at summer camp where the horse basically followed the one in front like a slow-moving train.”
Her laugh was shaky. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear twice—her nervous habit—then glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, like she was checking if I noticed.
I noticed everything.
“Poet’s different,” I said gently. “She’ll take care of you.”
At her name, Poet flicked an ear, then turned her head toward Stephy, those pale blue eyes full of softness and… affection. Hell, maybe even protectiveness. The mare pressed her velvet muzzle against Stephy’s shoulder, streaking green alfalfa foam across her white cotton shirt in a messy arc that looked like abstract art.
Stephy froze. Blinking. Processing.
Then she laughed.
Not the careful laugh from her first week—the one that never quite reached her eyes.
Not the brittle, polite-little-smile she used with strangers.
A real laugh. Loud, startled, impossibly alive.
It burst out of her like a spark catching dry tinder—bright, warm, contagious.
