"Completely real."
"Millie."
She looked up at me with a smirk.
“Take your jacket,” she said. “It’s cold.”
I followed the fence line south the way Millie had described, hands in my jacket pockets, my breath making small clouds. The main house lights got smaller behind me. The property opened up around me—limestone and scrub and the sound of something moving in the dark that was probably a deer and definitely not anything to worry about but still made me walk a little faster.
I saw the trailer before I saw the paddock.
The light was on inside. Warm and small against all that dark, the same way it had been in June, and my stomach did something immediate and inconvenient.
Last time I'd been inside that trailer I'd had, objectively, the best sex of my life. I'd been taken apart methodically and thoroughly and then put back together and then taken apart again, and I'd lain there afterward listening to his heartbeat and thinking about how bad this was going to be with complete clarity.
And then I'd left before dawn and not called and let six months of silence do the coward's work for me.
I was not proud of that.
Sawyer was the kind of man who saidyou could have just calledand meant it simply, without accusation, which was somehow worse than if he'd been angry about it. He'd given me an easy out and I hadn't taken it and I hadn't explained myself and he'd just—absorbed it. Kept going. Because that was Sawyer.
I owed him better than I'd given him.
I didn't know how to say that yet. But I knew I owed it.
The paddock fence appeared out of the dark and I heard Bishop before I saw him—that soft exhale, the shift of weight. And then Sawyer, standing at the fence with his forearms resting on the top rail, looking out at the horses the way he looked at everything. Like he had all the time in the world and wasn't worried about any of it.
He heard my boots on the ground and turned.
“Is that a rising star I see in the dark?” he asked.
I laughed. “Oh, shut up.”
He turned back to the paddock, smiling. Bishop materialized out of the dark, drawn by our voices.
I came to stand beside him at the fence, our arms almost touching on the rail.
"How's he doing?" I asked.
"Good. Had a long year with that shoot out in New Mexico…but he’s getting the rest he needs."
Bishop pushed his nose into my outstretched hand, warm and solid. I stroked his head, remembering how it had felt when I’d first met this horse last summer…when I’d trusted Sawyer Holt completely as he scooped me into his arms.
Sawyer blew out a breath. “He doesn’t give a damn about most people.”
Bishop leaned into my hand.
“I’m not most people,” I said.
He looked right at me. “I know.”
I kept my eyes on Bishop. “So you think he remembers me?”
"Horses don't forget." He reached over and ran a hand down Bishop's neck, easy and automatic. "Especially not people who went limp for them."
"I went limp foryou."
He looked at me.
