"That's what this week is," she says. "That's what you've been doing, in the barn, with the lessons. You haven't been teaching me to ride. You've been showing me the door."
"You did that," I say. "Not me."
She chuckles. "You left it open."
We trade scars in the dark after that. It is a long time since I've talked like that, the way you can in the dark when someone is already as close as they can get.
I can't remember the last time I wanted to.
six
Josie
TheHillCountryinSpring is something you have to see.
We ride out past the south gate into a long valley, and the whole thing is running wild. Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush flowers going on for acres, the kind of color you assume is exaggerated in photographs until you're looking at it in person and it isn't. Blue-purple-red against the limestone, against the live oak green, against a sky that goes on forever and makes you understand how people got religion out here.
I'm riding.
Not gripping. Not enduring. Riding. Weight in my heels, hands light, letting Bonnie pick her way down the trail with her own judgment. I've learned to trust her judgment over four days and she's earned it. I feel her gait under me like something I've been trying to translate since I am eight years old and have finally figured out the language of.
"You're smiling," Carson says.
"I'm aware."
"Looks good on you."
I turn to look at him riding beside me, easy in the saddle, the way he is easy in most things, the Hill Country behind him. The jaw I've had my hands on last night.
We follow a creek trail through a stand of live oaks and find a place where the water runs over limestone, and the shade is deep, and the whole world is this: water sound, the horses dropping their heads to drink at the bank, light coming through the canopy in pieces.
I think: I want to remember this exactly. The smell of cedar and horse and creek water. The way the light moves on the limestone. The man beside me has never once made me feel stupid for being afraid.
Carson dismounts and comes to my stirrup and puts his hands up, and I come down into them with a confidence I wouldn't have recognized in myself four days ago. His hands are on my waist, steady, and then I am on the ground, and we are very close and neither of us moves. I am aware of every point of contact, his palms through my shirt, the warmth coming off him, the way he is looking at me — not at my face, but at me, all the way through the professional composure and the careful management and three decades of keeping myself at arm's length from anything powerful enough to knock me sideways, and he isn't the least bit put off by what is underneath. That is the thing about Carson. He sees the fear and the fury and the stubbornness holding it all together, and he's never once looked like he wants something simpler.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi." His thumbs move against my waist. Just slightly.
He pulls a folded blanket from the saddlebag. He spreads it in the shade near the creek and turns back to me.
Last night in the cabin, he is deliberate, careful, taking his time like I am something worth being slow about. He gives meeverything and watches my face the whole time, and I come apart in ways I haven't known I am capable of. This morning I wake up in his bed with the spring light on the ceiling and his arm across my ribs, and I lie there for a long time not moving, not managing, not planning anything at all.
Right now, I'm done being patient. I kiss him.
He makes a low sound of surprise and then his hands are in my hair and we are pulling each other close and fast and the urgency of it catches me off guard even though I am the one who's started it. He walks me backward toward the blanket and we go down together, his body braced over mine, and I get his shirt open and push it off his shoulders and take a moment to just look at him.
He lets me, which is its own thing, a man who can hold still under that kind of attention without performing anything.
His chest is broad and warm, the muscles of his stomach tightening slightly under my hands, a scatter of dark hair tapering to the waist of his jeans, calloused hands resting on my waist. A body shaped by years of physical work, capable and unhurried in exactly the same way his mind is, and I want all of it without reservation, which is new for me. I've spent years treating want like a liability. Somewhere between the mounting block and this blanket by the creek, I've stopped doing that.
"You're beautiful," he says. Not a line. Just a fact he's decided to say out loud.
I kiss him instead of answering, and he meets me and deepens it immediately, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, and I feel the shift from patient to urgent, from careful to something that just wants.
He gets my shirt over my head. His calloused hands moving over my bare back make me shiver and he notices, he notices everything, his mouth curving against my throat. He unclaspsmy bra and his mouth finds the curve of my breast and I stop thinking about much of anything.
"Carson." His name comes out with more breath than I've meant to give it.
