Page 38 of Bonetide

I shake my head. “No. He was off the track in a clearing. I waved at him like an idiot, of course. He just looked at me so I kept walking. Got the feeling he wasn’t that friendly.”

He looks at me for a long second.

“Your feeling was correct. He’s not friendly, and you’re not to go near him.”

“All right,” I say, though I feel that pathological avoidance thing that Maddie is always talking about rearing its ugly head, that urge to do the opposite of what I’m told to do.

He studies me, squinting for a moment, as if he can read this defiance on my face. “I mean it. He’s wild. He bites.”

I open my mouth, then close it again.

The part of me that read The Black Stallion thirty times in the third grade is sitting up in the back of my head, alert. He bites is a challenge, she’s saying. He bites is exactly the thing the hero says to the girl in the book before the girl tames the horse no one else can ride! As you can see, I have not entirely outgrown her.

The other part of me, the part that’s grown some sense in the last year since I got my ass handed to me by life, points out that wild horses in the Scottish Highlands are not Walter Farley’s wild horses, and that he bites is what people say when they’re trying not to alarm you. There’s something worse than biting.

“Okay, I get it,” I respond carefully. “I’ll stay away.”

He watches my face. I can see that whatever he sees doesn’t fully satisfy him, but he lets it pass.

“I came to ask you something,” he admits.

“You said you wouldn’t come to the cottage again,” I point out.

“And I haven’t.” He looks around. “I’m not even sure if this is Galloway property or crown land.”

I give him an expectant look. “Alright, well what did you want to ask me?”

“To come down to the rocks tonight. The flat black ones at the foot of your spit.”

“What? Why?”

“You asked me what ready meant. I’m giving you a place and a time. After dark, I’ll come up from the water. If you’re there, I’m there. If you’re not, I go home.”

“That’s the offer?”

“It’s not an offer.” His reply has all the patience in the world. “It’s a place and a time.”

“But…why the rocks?”

“Because I told you I wouldn’t come to your cottage till you asked. The rocks aren’t your cottage.”

“That seems like a loophole…”

“I’m good at those.”

Yeah, I can see that.

“Right but…” I rub my lips together, trying to figure out what to say because I’m not even sure what he’s saying. “Don’t you think you could just…try to be frank with me? Because so far, every time we’ve met, you’ve had the most cryptic, vague shit coming out of your mouth.”

His brows raise, but he doesn’t say anything. I guess I am being a bit blunt, but hell, he could use it.

“And that’s an issue for you?” he eventually asks.

I raise my shoulders and give my head a shake. “I just want to know what you want. Are you…interested in being friends? More than friends? Neighborly acquaintances? Why can’t you come to my cottage, you’re the one who makes the rules, don’t you? Why do I have to meet you at the rocks? Why are you always swimming? Really just…what do you want with me?”

The horse shifts its weight beneath him. Alasdair gives me a tiny curve of a smile.

“You want to know what I want with you?”