His eyes weren’t cold.
That would’ve been easier.
They looked wrecked. Hungry. Miserable.
“Take my truck. Go back to the house,” he said, voice rough. “Get dry.”
“Grant, wait?—”
But he was already gone.
Izzy stood alone in the tack room, her arms crossing over her bare breasts.Her skin was still flushed, tingling from the rough abrasion of his calloused hands.
The smell of him still hung in the air. The heat of his mouth still burned on her lips.
But little by little, the warmth drained away.
Not because it hadn’t been real.
Because it had.
And he’d still walked away.
* * *
Grant worked on the stall where the yearling had nearly kicked the sliding door off the track, tightening the hinge bolt harder than necessary while rain hammered the tin roof. He tried not to think about Izzy standing half-dressed in the tack room, looking at him like she was peeling back every single layer. It didn'twork. His hands usually knew what to do—on a rope, on a colt’s halter, on a set of reins. Tonight they’d been on Izzy’s bare skin, and all he’d done was fight himself.
Grant had grown up hearing Sam Talley’s truck before he ever saw it.
Trailer rattling behind him.
Sometimes horses in the back.
Sometimes, just the farrier tools were stacked loosely in the bed.
By the time Grant hit high school, Sam had shod horses for half the county.
Including his.
Grant had always been more interested in horses than cattle, and Sam guided him down that path early.
“You’ve got good hands for ‘em,” he’d said once while rasping down a gelding’s hoof outside the barn. “Most people fight horses. You listen to ‘em. They trust that.”
Grant never forgot that.
Over the years, he saw Sam constantly.
Sales.
Auctions.
Shoeing appointments.
Fence-line conversations that lasted ten minutes and somehow covered everything and nothing at all.
But even when Grant was younger, he’d always known something about Sam felt… sad.
Not dramatic.
