I groaned. Why did she have to be so sensible about this? She laughed at me.
“I know I should, but I also don’t…” I sighed. “I don’t want to affect his decision of staying or going, Sierra. I can’t…like what if we talk and he stays because of me and then starts to resent me in the long run because he’s saddled with this place?”
She gave me this patented expression of a long-time friend and sort of baby sister and sighed. “And what if that doesn’t happen? You can’t live your life thinking about the worst-case scenarios, Theo.”
I dropped my gaze to my hands. She was right, of course, I knew that. But logic had nothing to do with how I was feeling.
She squeezed my fingers again. “His best friend just got a job in town. Do you think River would’ve done that if he didn’t believe they were staying?”
That made my brain perk up. I blinked a few times. No, River was too responsible a person to have found a job he was so excited about just to leave it in a couple of months. I looked at Sierra.
“That…that’s true.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know.”
We sat in a contemplative and oddly smug—on her part—silence for a while.
“Ben seems nice,” she said suddenly.
I turned my gaze to her. “Yeah, he seems okay. Something’s definitely going on between him and River.”
She perked up instantly. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Well, from River’s side at least. Some teenage thing from days past.”
She hummed thoughtfully. “They’d make a stunning couple. Riv’s that sort of gorgeous lanky pale boy with that bleach blond hair, and Ben’s all gingery geek with a jock’s frame.”
I shook my head and squinted at her. “Please don’t make an assessment like that of anyone else in my presence, ever.”
She giggled. “Sorry. I just…so many handsome men around here, I can’t help it.”
I pushed her shoulder and grinned at her. I loved her to bits. She had a wicked sense of humor, and she was fierce as fuck.
“I’m not saying they’re hard to look at, but you know…”
“Yeah, I know.” She knew I didn’t really feel attracted to people in the same way most others would. “Besides, you have one particular guy you want to gaze at dreamily.”
Yes, yes I had.
* * * *
In the next few days I found myself wanting to talk to Lake more, but things picked up both in his book project with Ben, River going to work, and the new mare having some surprising health issues.
Rey was self-soothing by cooking everyone meals while taking care of the kittens to the point that Sebastian said he’d never seen as diligent a caretaker.
Seb thought that the mare’s problems stemmed from her overgrown hooves being trimmed back by Poppy. Standing and walking like she should’ve, her hooves trimmed to the right angle—although one back hoof had been badly damaged and needed to be watched and reworked in a couple of weeks—made her whole body change position.
“Think of it like this,” Seb said while we stood watching her painful gait in a new, smaller corral we’d built for her and the donkey. “If you were suddenly forced to wear six-inch heels that were attached to shoes two sizes too small, wouldn’t your body adapt to that as best as it could?”
“Yeah.” I grunted. “And when someone finally took them off, my body would be all out of whack again.”
“Right.” He chuckled. “I talked with Rey about that earlier. He’s so fascinated with these things.”
I silently thought about twenty-five percent of the kid’s fascination might’ve been because of who Seb was as a person, including his appearance, but I knew Rey had been interested in horses even before he met our vet.
“Do you think he might go into veterinary school?”
Seb hummed. “I mean, if he gets over the agoraphobia somehow, why not.” After a moment of silence, he opened his mouth hesitantly.
