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ct

“Excellent work today, Alex.” I praise the girl and high-five her. Alex has been taking lessons with me for almost a year and is a natural. I think she has a future in horses if she wants to go that route. But I don’t want to be the person who pushes anyone into anything they don’t want to do.

“Thanks, Uncle Cade!” she chirps and heads over to untack General.

I shake my head at her. She’s taken it upon herself to call me “Uncle Cade,” and no one has bothered to correct her.

I assumed Quinn would have, maybe not wanting to get Alex’s hopes up that I would eventually be like an uncle to her, but the woman never had. I admired the way she is able to have that much confidence in her and Graham’s relationship. That isn’t easy.

She and my dad are in the house working on the fall festival details when I hear a truck engine outside the barn.

“Stay here a minute, I’ll be right back,” I instruct Alex and head to the entrance.

I step out of the barn and squint at the truck, my hat shielding my eyes, but it’s a truck I know well.

It is old and on the smaller side, but it was one I’d driven, ridden in, and—ahem—done other stuff in for several years.

Maybe she sold it? Maybe it wasn’t the woman whose heart I broke six years ago at all, but just someone who coincidentally had her truck and brought it over. Hell, maybe it was one of her cousins.

But no, through the windshield, I could see her bright-blonde hair, her pink-painted nails clutching the steering wheel.

“Dani?” I ask, my tone unsure yet almost hopeful.

Every moment that’s passed since the moment I broke up with her, I’ve regretted hurting her like that. I didn’t want to hold Dani back. I didn’t want to hurt her anymore, and I knew my emotional unavailability had been killing her. So, I’d done the stupid thing and dumped her.

Regret was a heavy pill to swallow.

She mouths something back to me, and I take a step forward, trying to casually walk up to her.

Her hand moves, and I hear the truck switch gears. I pause for a moment and watch as the truck quickly reverses. I take a few more steps, unsure what my plan is but knowing I don’t want her to leave.

She came here. She came home.

Fuck . I take a few more steps, wanting to run after her, wanting to stop her from leaving me.

It’s been so fucking long since I’ve seen her that looking at her now is almost like seeing her for the first time. Except I knew what it felt like to run my hands through her long blonde hair, I knew what it felt like to hold her close as we danced, I knew what her lips felt like against mine.

As I watch the dust kick up and her brake lights fade down the road, I stand dumbfounded, hurt, and angry, and confused as hell.

What could she have been here for?

I haven’t even seen Dani since that day. I’ve avoided places where she might be. I’ve not once set foot in her parents’ store, left the shopping for Dad or made a trip to another town.

There was so much I wanted to say to her, so many things I needed to make up for, but I couldn’t find a way to do that when I didn’t have a solution to this problem .

Hell, I didn’t know if she’d moved on. Maybe she was happily married with a kid…

I pause to think. Fucking hell. The thought alone sends a stinging sensation behind my eyes. I knew it wasn’t true. Even if Dad and Graham had both avoided bringing up her name to me, they would have told me if she had moved on. They would have been honest with me.

She wasn’t married.

But…there was pain in her gaze when it met mine through that dusty old pickup’s windshield. There was hurt, heartbreak, fear.

As much as I want to know what happened, what would push her to come to me, I wouldn’t push.

I’d leave her be.

It was the least I could do.

Despite the rough day before, it was Sunday and now family dinner night. This was a tradition my dad started when Graham and Quinn had gotten together last year. Quinn’s parents lived near Denver, so she didn’t get to see them much, and Alex’s dad had moved to London a while ago for his work .

Even though he was attentive, it was definitely something that I could tell bothered the girl, so we tried our best to make family a priority now that they were here.

I did it for my brother. When our mom died, he had only enough leave to be home for a couple of weeks, only long enough to be there for the funeral before he was shipped back to his deployment.

I’d held on to that with more resentment than he deserved, and I regret how I treated him over the last few years. He didn’t deserve that, and I’m working now to atone for that.

“Hey, how’s it going?” My brother claps me hard on the shoulder, and I grin at him.

“All good.”

He quirks a brow. “Really?”

I nod, pursing my lips and giving him a questioning look. “What?”

He shakes his head, his lips pulling into an indifferent frown. “Nothing. Just heard about Dani and wondered what was going on.”

My head snaps to the side, and I eyeball my brother. “What did you hear about Dani?”

Graham clears his throat and nods his head toward Quinn, who is helping my dad put together the casserole for dinner. “Quinn and Alex saw her today at the bakery, said she was beaten up a bit.”

My spine stiffens, and I turn so I’m fully facing my brother. “Beat up how?” My voice comes out as a growl, and Graham lifts his hands in defense.

“Whoa, easy, brother.” Shaking his head, he says, “She told them she got thrown off her horse. Nothing bad.”

“Thrown off her horse? Was she hurt? Bad?” I ask, reaching into my pocket for my phone, my fingers ready to punch in the one number I know will help me find answers.

“Some scrapes on her arms is what Quinn said,” he says, a sigh falling from his lips. “Dude, I didn’t realize you’d be this worked up.”

“I have to make a call,” I snap over my shoulder, not meaning to take it out on my brother, but my fear is overriding my logic.

I step out onto the porch and press call on the name I pulled up.

“Yup?” Answers a voice I know all too well.

“Logan, what happened to Dani?”

“What?” I hear some shuffling on the end of the line and the telltale sound of his daughter’s voice in the background. “Hold on, honey, I’ll be right back. ”

I grind down on my teeth, impatience making me go crazy.

“All right, sorry. Who knew middle school math got so hard?” He chuckles, but I’m not in the mood to joke.

“Logan, focus.” I spit into the phone, my gaze resting on the sunset as I wait for my friend’s attention. “What happened to Dani?”

“To Dani?” Worry and confusion coat his tone. “I have no idea. What happened?”

“Graham tells me she got thrown from her horse, that she was all banged up.”

A sigh echoes through the phone line. “Fuck. Seriously? Did she come to see you?”

“She—” I bite my lip, shaking my head. “She came…and she didn’t.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I can tell Logan is getting frustrated but, well, join the club, buddy.

“She showed up, didn’t get out of her truck, and peeled out of here.” It still hurts to think about.

“Ah, shit,” he mumbles. “I was hoping she could handle seeing you.”

“Logan,” I grit out. “What is going on? Why does she need me?” I pinch my eyes closed. Why did that phrase make my chest hurt ?

“Her horse has been giving her shit. She’s trying to get her ready for a show, but she keeps spooking. So, I suggested she come to you, and well, I guess that didn’t work out.”

I pause, pressing my hand into the railing on the porch and taking a deep, foreboding breath. “She needs me?”

Logan chuckles. “Fuck. I just opened a can of worms, didn’t I?”

“I gotta go.”

Yelling a quick goodbye to my family, I run out to my truck with only one destination in mind.

The old farmhouse where the Wests live is lit by only one porch light. The inside looks dark except for the TV light that is splashing across the front porch. I know this place well enough that I don’t need much light to be able to know where I’m going.

Bernard, the family’s Great Pyrenees, barks at me, and I soothe him as I let him sniff on my hand. The large dog wags his tail and lets me up the porch steps.

I knock on the door, knowing full well I could be facing the couple who I used to think of as family, the couple who wanted me to call them Mom and Dad at one point, knowing—or hoping—I would one day be their son-in-law.

I brace myself, noting my dusty boots and jeans and wishing I’d taken two seconds to change.

Fuck. Why the hell didn’t I try to look nice? This could potentially be the first time I’m seeing the woman I used to worship in six years, and I didn’t even try?

The door creaks open slowly, and my eyes connect with hers. My breath catches in my lungs, and any thought about what the hell I was wearing flees from my brain.

“Hi, Dani,” I croak, clearing my throat and shuffling my feet, tucking my thumbs into my front pockets.

“CT,” she replies, opening the door a little wider, revealing her long blonde hair wrapped in a bun on top of her head, her makeup worn but still bringing out her gorgeous blue eyes. She’s wearing a tank and shorts, and her feet are bare, and I’ve never seen anyone look so fucking amazing in my life.

“Sorry to show up like this.” I throw a thumb over my shoulder and shrug. “I thought I’d stop by and…”

She shakes her head and lets out a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. “I shouldn’t have shown up the other day. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You can come over anytime you need.” I say the words without thinking, without realizing how pushy I sound.

“No.” She frowns. “It’s not fair to…” She shakes her head. “Anyway.”

I have the feeling she doesn’t know what to say, that she’s just as lost as I am.

I bite my tongue and grip my pockets where my thumbs rest.

“Logan sent me,” I blurt into the silence, throwing my friend under the bus with little to no remorse. “He said something about a horse?”

“I uh…” She licks her lips, and my eyes trace her tongue. Hell, six years, and the urges I’ve felt toward her since we were fifteen still roar in my ears. I shake my head slightly and focus. “I may need some help,” she finally says.

My eyebrows furrow in concern. “Help? Are you okay?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says quickly, shaking her head, leaning against the doorjamb. It’s meant to look casual, but I can tell by her posture how tense she feels. “It’s not me, really, but my horse.”

I pause, biting my tongue so I don’t beg her to let me help and nod my head. I don’t know what to say to her or how to proceed. At least if we focus on the horse, I can help.

Horses are a hell of a lot easier to deal with than people.

Usually.

“Oh, all right. What’s the issue?”

Dani briefly explains her problem, and I listen intently, asking questions in between her explanations. I had no idea Dani still competed, but then again, I haven’t competed in ages, and I am out of the loop.

I was more than ready to get in it again. Seeing Dani at shows again, even if we weren’t together anymore, would be better than nothing.

Though I wouldn’t be mad if we could…

What am I thinking? That after all these years, we could finally reconcile? She didn’t owe me that.

Get your shit together, CT. She hates you.

I shake my head again at my internal thoughts. “Sounds like a spooked issue,” I reply.

Dani bites her lip and shrugs. “I don’t know why. As far as I know, nothing happened to spook her, so I’m not sure what the issue is now. A few weeks ago, she was amazing on the flag.”

I nod, loving the passion in her voice. Dani was always the type of person that put her all into everything, no matter what she was doing. Including our relationship. “When’s your next show?”

“End of June.”

“Okay, that gives us a little over a month.” I scratch the overgrown stubble on my jaw and think. I don’t have some sort of pricing sheet for horse training anymore and asking Dani to pay? I can’t fucking do that. “Listen, did you uh…” Fuck, it feels awkward to ask about this.

“What?” she asks, her voice soft.

I can see a bout of frustration or impatience rising in her eyes, but she reins it in. Seems she’s better than she used to be about controlling her temper.

I smile. “Did you get your therapy license?”

She blinks in surprise and opens her mouth, then shuts it before biting her lip. Stop looking at her mouth. “I did, yeah.” She shuffles her bare feet.

I nod and say, “Listen, I don’t really do a lot of training right now, so I don’t have any rates, but I have a favor to ask.”

She seems to hesitate and judging from her running away from the ranch, I would guess that granting me a favor isn’t high on her list of things to do.

“It’s not really me,” I continue, “ Graham, when he got out of the military, he had some bad injuries. It gives him a lot of pain, and I wondered, well, I’ve done some research on it, and I think working with a horse and a therapist would help him a lot.”

“He doesn’t ride anymore?” A color of shock lines Dani’s tone.

She knew Graham when he was just a kid, and we all used to ride together. Even if you don’t become a professional in this business, once you ride, it’s a hard hobby to shake, mostly because you never want to.

“No, not right now. But he wants to. We’ve talked about it before, and I think he’d be more inclined if you, someone he knows well, would be the one to guide him through it.”

She blinks and seems to mull that over. It feels good to talk to her like this. We’d always been great at talking business, both able to keep our heads and tackle issues logically. Hell, she was better at leaving emotion out of it than I ever was.

I’d love to talk about more than just business, and there is a spark of hope in my chest that tells me if I play this right, it could lead to something I’ve never even let myself dream of before. Could I let that spark grow? I knew that one tiny puff of positivity toward me from her, and it would become a raging inferno. I’d have to rein it in before we both got burned.

“You want to trade then?” she asks. “I work with Graham and get him on a horse again, comfortably, and you help me with Lady?”

I smirk. “Lady?”

She lifts her chin and gives me an almost teasing smile. “Yes. She’s a lady. Therefore, her name is Lady.”

I chuckle, trying to keep up the playfulness that used to come so easily and reach out a hand. “So, it’s a deal?”

Hesitating for a moment, she finally takes my hand, and as soon as her soft fingers touch the roughness of mine, I feel a sense of peace settle over me for the first time in a long time.

“Deal.”