“Just the ones who don't know where their own pans are.”
I smiled into my mug. That was a fair point, and I was enjoying getting to see his sense of humor.
We ate at the small table with our knees touching underneath it. The eggs were simple but good. He'd toasted some bread in the pan with butter, and I watched him scoop his eggs onto his toast and take one bite at a time.
My notebook still sprawled out on the floor where it had fallen last night, pages open, notes visible. He'd seen them. I'd seen him see them. Neither of us mentioned it.
“About last night… you said the horses came from that supplier.” I wanted to follow the story and needed him to know that as much as I’d enjoyed what happened between us, I wouldn’t let it distract me.
He set his fork down and took a long drink of coffee. “What about them?”
“You said three years. Five events. What I can't figure out is how the paperwork looked clean enough to pass.”
His thumb moved along the edge of his mug. Back and forth. “Because it wasn't wrong enough to raise questions. Health certificates, vet signatures. They existed. They just might not have always belonged to the animals they were attached to.”
“Someone swapped records.”
“Matched close enough. Similar age, similar coloring. Nobody checks teeth at intake if the paper looks right.”
I turned that over. A shell game with documentation, moving clean records from legitimate animals onto others. Simple. Effective. Easy to slip through if no one was looking too closely.
“And you noticed because?—”
“Because the horses told me.” He met my eyes. “A horse that's been handled right doesn't flinch when you reach for its face. It doesn't matter what the certificate says.” He paused for a beat to let that sink in. “And that kind of handling doesn't happen overnight.”
“So the clay mare?—”
“Doesn't match her paperwork. Not even close.” He stood, took his plate to the sink, and ran water over it with his back to me. “That's all I'm giving you right now.”
I didn't push further. He'd handed me more in two minutes than anyone else in this town had in a week, and the shape of the thing was becoming clearer — not a single bad horse, but something looser and messier. Gaps where things didn't line up the way they should.
He dried his hands on a dish towel and turned, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. “I need to get back and check on that mare before the hands show up.”
“Okay.”
He didn't move.
I stood from the table with my coffee still in hand and crossed to where he stood. His eyes tracked my face, his jaw tight.
His hand came up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered at my jaw. “Rachel.”
“Yeah.”
His mouth opened, closed. He shook his head and kissed my forehead instead, long and firm. Then he grabbed his t-shirt from the back of the chair, pulled on his boots, and walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the frame and looked back at me standing in his flannel with coffee cooling in my hands and my notes scattered on the floor.
“Be careful today?”
“I will.”
He nodded, then ducked through the doorway and was gone.
I stood in the quiet he'd left behind and finished my coffee. The cabin felt different without him in it… smaller, warmer, and marked by him in ways I couldn't undo.
He hadn't given me a story. He'd given me something even harder to ignore.
I showered, dressed, and drove to the rodeo grounds with his words turning over in my head like a stone I couldn't stop rubbing smooth. Matched close enough... And the quiet certainty underneath it. He wasn't guessing. He'd been seeing it for a long time.
The morning was already warm when I parked outside the main arena. Construction crews worked the far fence line, and the smell of fresh-cut lumber and churned dirt hung in the air. I found Dawson in the livestock office which was really only a converted shipping container with a window unit fighting a losing battle. He sat behind a folding table covered in manila folders, a laptop open on top, and a pen tucked behind his ear.
