I put on the radio to have some sound for the sibling duo and sat on a bench to sort through the rest of the shit. There were couple of items I wanted to save, like a few horseshoes that we could use as ornaments, a couple of brushes that I could fix, and the bottom of the bin had some horse hoof nails that had likely spilled on the floor and someone had swept them up with the rest of the dust and poured into the bin.
As I picked through the stuff, I wondered how Lake would handle the rescue’s current situation. We needed to figure out what to do with the money stuff, how to raise more now that Ruth was gone and a couple of the regular large yearly donors had backed out right after they heard about it. It was shitty of them to do that, of course, but in a way I understood.
We hadn’t known who would take over after Ruth. The information wasn’t available yet, as we were in flux. Whether Lake kept the rescue or not was one thing, but how would Lake run the place? With my help, obviously, and Sierra’s and even Hudson’s. But the fact remained, Lake wasn’t his aunt, wasn’t a seasoned horse person who knew the animals inside and out.
No, he was a bookstore clerk from New York who had once lived on a mini farm and had visited this place one time as a kid.
I was pretty sure I could remember that, actually. The wide-eyed little boy of maybe ten or so. He’d had wind-swept hair and freckles on his nose when he’d shaken my hand with a serious expression on his young face. Lake had been accompanied by Ruth’s asshole of a brother and his wife. They’d been odd people. It had almost felt that they’d envied Ruth’s farm, even though it had been only ten acres then, before she managed to buy some fields off a neighbor a handful of years ago to double the size of the property.
Lake’s parents had given me weird vibes. But what could you expect from people who tossed out their kid for being queer anyway? When they’d seen that Ruth was working her ass off and didn’t have time to entertain them, they’d only stayed for two nights. It had been enough for me to feel a bit sad for the boy that clearly would’ve loved to stay.
Now that boy was here again, about to potentially fuck up my whole life in three months’ time. Yeah. The Lake of fifteen years ago was nothing like the Lake of now. Just like I wasn’t a twenty-three-year-old guy who thought he was hot shit because he could ride the horses nobody else could.
Ruth had taught me that it didn’t matter if you could hang onto a horse who didn’t want you on its back. What mattered was the horse actually allowing you there and relaxing under the saddle, so you could both enjoy the experience and learn from one another.
Fuck, I missed her more than I had in a few days. When I had landed on the farm after trying and failing college and drifting around for a bit, she’d given me a job. She’d been a mother figure and a big sister to me, being nearly twenty years older.
She’d had the patience of a saint, because I hadn’t settled easily. She’d known what her vision was, and I’d thought that just because I had worked on some ranches in Texas before leaving the state altogether, I knew something about what she wanted to do. Or at least I knew better.As if.
There was a tiny office room in an old stall by the tack room. That was my preferred workspace. Ruth had always ribbed me about it, but I didn’t like the people part of the rescue’s main office building. Once I’d poured the trash into the actual trash can, I took the rest of the stuff to my office, then went to check on the drafts.
“Hey, kiddos,” I said quietly as I leaned on the door of the double-stall. “How are you doing?”
They were both gorgeous dapple grays with the mare being a bit lighter in color than her brother. She might’ve been a couple of years older, as sometimes darker horses turned lighter with age, especially if they were gray to begin with.
Both horses were relaxed now, munching on their hay and occasionally looking up at me for treats. I chuckled and went to the feed room to get some carrots I’d left there that morning. When I came back and clicked my tongue, the mare came closer immediately. She was braver, and her brother fell into step behind her pretty easily. That was why I tended to let her lead as much as possible with every exercise they tried. Hell, I was pretty sure that if the yard stayed silent, I could walk the mare over to the arena and the gelding would trail behind.
Sometimes I wondered if she could’ve been his mother instead of a sister, but there was no way to know. They’d been sold as a sibling pair, not that it mattered when someone had wanted to get rid of them. Selling them to a known auction where kill buyers, those who bought horses just to sell them to a slaughterhouse for horse meat, was more than I needed to know about whoever had had these two before.
The mare took the bit of carrot off my palm carefully, then munched it as I waited for her brother to come closer for his share. At least she was polite and didn’t try to hog both treats.
I stood there, still as a statue, breathing with the horses as the gelding pretended he didn’t care about the carrot and was naturally shifting his weight one leg at a time toward my hand.
“Who are these two?”
The gelding snorted and backed away quickly, while the mare barely twitched.
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. I closed my fist and felt the carrot snap in two.
“What thefuckdo you think you’re doing?” I hissed, turning to glare at Lake.
“I came to check out the stable,” Lake replied in an equally annoyed tone.
“Do you know how much work I’ve done with these two—”
“No, I don’t.” Lake glared back. “Which is why I’m here. Hudson said you’d likely be checking in on your favorites and I wanted to see who he was talking about.”
“Then read the fucking situation, Lake!” My voice snapped enough to cause the gelding to twitch. Even the mare raised her head from the hay to look at me.
“From where I stand, I did nothing wrong.” Lake gestured at the horses—slowly and carefully—before continuing in an annoyingly calm tone. “I came here quietly, I spoke quietly, I didn’t make any noise and at least one of them saw me before I got this close.”
I growled, dropped the carrot pieces through the bars and marched down the length of the aisle to get away from Lake.
Maybe the guy was right, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t be pissed off at him startling the gelding.
“Stop!” Lake whisper-shouted after me.
I snorted. The dogs all gathered around me like an entourage, except—“Bucky? Where are you going?”
