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Ty appears a few minutes later, leading two horses.

I stop walking and swallow nervously. “What do you have planned?”

“I was hoping you’d say yes to a snowy ride in the pasture. A few of these young ones need exercise and socialization.”

My feet carry me forward before my brain has a chance to weigh in. I find the mare’s neck, and I stroke it, my hands then finding the halter automatically. I tighten the cinch and adjust the stirrups. It’s only after I’ve finished that I realize I never had to think about any of it.

Ty watches me with an amused smile. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

I stare down at my hands. “I didn’t forget. It just wasn’t fun for me when we were younger.”

“We can make it fun again.”

I smile and say softly, “Okay.”

Soon we’re riding through snow-covered pines, our horses picking their way along trails I haven’t seen since I was a teenager.

Everything feels quieter after the snowfall. The only sounds are the rhythmic crunch of hooves and the horses breathing beneath us.

Ty glances over. “I didn’t take you for a horse girl when we were in Vegas.”

I laugh as I reach down and stroke the neck of the horse I’m riding. “I love horses.”

He looks genuinely surprised. “What made you want to go to L.A? It’s like a whole other world out there, the opposite of this.”

He’s not wrong. Maybe that’s what initially drew me to California for school. It was different, and I could escape my father and the destruction he brought to the ranch.

I run my gloved hand along my mare’s neck. “The horses weren’t the problem.”

I look out across the mountains stretching endlessly ahead of us. “My father was.”

I tell him everything. How Dad treated every chore like a test and how mistakes earned longer days with more chores piled on. How my brothers and I worked until we were too tired to stand. And how somewhere along the way I stopped seeing horses as fun and started seeing them as unbearable work a child has no business doing. We worked this ranch so hard it would have taken a grown man down, let alone children. We knew hard work under my father’s abusive hand. It wasn’t all that different from Ty’s upbringing.

“When people ask why I left,” I say quietly, “they think it’s because I hated Wyoming. But I never hated the ranch.”

Ty doesn’t interrupt. He just rides next to me and listens.

I look over at him. “I stopped seeing the mountains, hearing the creek, and noticing the horses. Nothing was fun about the ranch back then. I was a kid who missed her mom and was abused by her dad.”

Ty rides closer. “That’s not what ranching’s supposed to feel like.”

“Nope. And that’s not what childhood is supposed to be like.”

We ride in comfortable silence for another minute before he looks over and reminds me with a murmured, “We’re going to take back Christmas and love it again.”

We stop at the top of a ridge overlooking Bridger Falls. The entire town glitters beneath fresh snow far off in the distance.

It’s breathtaking, and I’d forgotten how beautiful this place is, especially in the winter. I’d forgotten all the beautiful things about the ranch. Or maybe... I’d forgotten how beautiful it feels when it isn’t tangled up with painful memories.

“What?” I ask when I catch Ty watching me instead of the view.

“I like seeing you happy.”

My heart squeezes. No one’s ever said something so simple and made it mean so much.

He moves closer on his horse and leans over, pulling me toward him.

“So...”