That sound slammed into me, clean and sharp. I hadn’t heard it since Austin—since that one night in that ridiculouspenthouse, when she kissed me senseless and walked away in the morning, leaving my world as I knew it ruined.
“I think she just wiped horse spit on my shirt,” she said, staring at the green smear like she wasn’t sure whether to gag or take a picture.
Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes sparkled. Her nerves didn’t disappear, but they shifted—made room for something lighter.
For the first time since LA, she looked like someone ready to try.
To trust.
To live.
"That means she likes you. It's an honor, really. Not everyone gets the Poet stamp of approval."
"An honor." She scratched Poet's favorite spot, that place right behind her ears where the hair grew in a little whorl. "You hear that, pretty girl? You're honoring me with your grass slime."
Poet made that little rumbling sound horses make when they're completely content, pressing into Stephy's touch hard enough to move her back a step. The mare's eyes went half-closed, pure bliss, and I watched something ease in Stephy's face. They'd bonded faster than I'd expected, but then again, both of them needed each other. Stephy needed something to love that wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't want anything from her except presence and carrots. And Poet—well, Poet had been waiting for her person since the day she was born.
"Come on," I said, checking the cinch one more time, adjusting the stirrup to account for Stephy's legs. "Let's get you up there. Left side, left foot in the stirrup, hands on the horn and cantle."
Getting Stephy in the saddle took some doing—not because she was scared, but because she was determined to do it right.No hauling herself up, no ungraceful scrambling. Foot in stirrup, bounce once to get momentum, swing up smooth.
First try, she got her foot tangled in the stirrup and nearly hopped backward.
Second try, she got halfway up before losing her grip and sliding back down, Poet standing patient as a saint through it all.
Third try, she overcompensated and nearly went over the other side.
But the fourth time, she settled into the saddle like she was coming home, and the smile on her face could've powered half of Texas.
"Oh fuck," she breathed, looking down at me from her new vantage point, hands gripping the horn white-knuckled. "I'm really high up."
"You're five-foot-five on a fourteen-hand horse. You're not that high."
“Don’t laugh at me, it feels high!” But she was grinning, that infectious joy that used to light up Austin dive bars spreading across her face. She gathered the reins like I'd taught her, soft hands, elbows bent, shoulders back. "And she's moving. Why is she moving? I'm not telling her to move."
"She's breathing, Steph. Horses do that."
She nodded, and stared down at the stirrups like they’d come alive any second. ”Right. Breathing. Normal horse activity. God, I must sound like an idiot.”
I swung up onto Cherokee, my solid bay quarter horse who'd seen everything from tornadoes to rattlesnakes and stayed calm through it all. Sixteen hands of pure reliability, the kind of horse that made you look like a better rider than you were. "We'll take it slow. Just walking, let Poet follow Cherokee. She knows the drill."
We started in the paddock, walking circles while Stephy found her balance. The morning was warming up, but not yetbrutal—that sweet spot of Texas spring where the humidity hadn't yet turned the air to soup. Poet was perfect—steady as a metronome, patient as a grandmother, matching Cherokee's pace without being asked. Her ears swiveled back to listen to Stephy's voice, forward to watch Cherokee, a constant conversation between horse and rider.
Within ten minutes, Stephy was sitting straighter, her spine finding that alignment that made everything easier. Her hips started moving with the horse instead of against her, that natural roll that matched Poet's four-beat walk. Her death grip on the reins eased into something softer.
"Can we go out?" She gestured toward the open pasture, where wildflowers had exploded into color after last week's rain. "Just walking, but... out? Into all that?"
"That's the plan. Need to check the south fence line anyway. Might as well make you useful."
We rode out through the gate, and I watched her face change as the ranch opened up before us. Absolute gleeful joy. Five hundred acres might not be much by Texas standards, but when you've been trapped in a glass house in LA, surrounded by cameras and walls and people who want pieces of you, it might as well be the whole world.
The sun was warm but not yet brutal, the kind of warmth that soaked into your bones and reminded you why people had fought and died for this land. Texas in late spring could be perfect like this—Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets painting the meadows in shocking color, grass still green from recent rain instead of burned brown, sky so blue it looked fake, like someone had cranked up the saturation in post-production.
"This is incredible," Stephy said softly, like speaking too loud might shatter it all. "I forgot how big the sky could be. In LA, there's always something in the way—buildings, billboards, smog. But this..."
"LA doesn't have sky like this."
"LA doesn't have anything like this." She reached down to pat Poet's neck, and the mare's ears flicked back at the touch. "The space to breathe. The quiet that isn't empty but full of... life sounds. Does that make sense?"
