Page 48 of Take a Chance (Blue Creek Ranch #1)

Malachi

L ife solidified somehow. Like the flow I’d been going with started to settle. It still moved, and I moved with it, but it didn’t scare me anymore.

I worked where I was needed, but most of my time was used in training. Apparently I had a knack for it. Nothing like Hawk—that man was half horse himself—but I guess I had something innate that helped, too.

Gemma was happy with the easier cases and some of the rehabilitation, while I took on some of the younglings so Hawk could concentrate on the specific training for other people’s horses.

Hawk and I worked together, too, with desensitization and the agility course, which we had already started to plan an extension for.

People were interested in having more solid trail riding horses, and we could definitely both make safe alternative obstacles next to the course we already had, but also figure out a route in the woods behind the events barn.

We just needed to have the time for mapping that first, and right now Hawk didn’t have it.

He’d taken off with Russ for a nearly two-week journey across half the country and back.

They’d hit a few auctions on the way and then end up at an appaloosa breeder in Kentucky who had what Hawk’s client, who the training barn called Goddamn Cahill at this point, wanted.

They just weren’t willing to part with the mare that easily, so Hawk wanted to check some auctions first. Just in case.

He was hesitant to take a horse out of a place where it was loved, which I understood.

If they didn’t want to sell, would it be fair to insist and keep offering whatever he needed to until they caved?

I wasn’t sure about the ethics of that, either.

Either way, Gemma was in charge, but she’d told me this was a joint endeavor for both of us, and I had the same responsibility and rights she had for the time Hawk was gone. It felt good to be trusted like that, but boy was it kind of intimidating, too.

I’d begun to train Ezio who had recovered from his gelding, and he was turning out to be a smart, easygoing horse. Once he was fully grown, he’d make a perfect stock horse, but I’d seen Bodhi visit him a few times, so I was pretty sure he’d end up being Bodhi’s eventually.

It was late in the afternoon, but since Crew had had something to do in town, he was going to pick up Payton from daycare on his way back. Since I didn’t need to go anywhere, I’d decided to stretch my day a bit and work with Rowdy a little more.

Hawk had almost barred me from taking on the gelding. Not because he was too difficult for me, but because he’d realized I’d sort of used Rowdy as penance.

“Rowdy doesn’t deserve being something negative to you,” he’d told me the second time he’d seen me struggle with the gelding in the arena.

That had clicked my brain into a different position, and I’d felt ashamed. Rowdy was just a horse. A tricky one, but still an animal who didn’t know any better. He’d just gone through a gate that I’d forgotten to close properly.

And that’s why I was in the arena with him.

I’d decided to try clicker training him, just to see if we could find a good starting point.

Our sessions were short, because his attention span was atrocious, but we didn’t just work in the arena.

The previous day, I’d taken him to the agility course just to see what he’d do, and he’d had a great time exploring without much direction.

Today, though, I was trying to teach him how to pick up items for me. Well, I was at the point where he was figuring out that the click-and-treat combination meant good things.

I had a bandana with a tennis ball inside it that I used for a target. It had taken Rowdy one session to realize clicker meant treats, but it was hilarious watching him figure out what the causation was between the bandana and the rest of it.

He nosed the item, and I clicked immediately, giving him a treat. He munched on a piece of carrot, then asked for more.

“Pick it up,” I told him instead. I’d decided to skip the “touch it” command, because I would need that for other things later. He was having enough trouble with one thing.

I let him puzzle it out, and clicked and gave him a treat as soon as he repeated touching the thing. Two more tries, and suddenly it was as if a lightbulb turned on.

He took a treat, then immediately lowered his head and booped the bandana with his nose.

“Good boy!”

I grabbed the target and made sure he was paying attention, then tossed it away maybe ten feet from us.

Rowdy snorted.

“Pick it up.”

He looked for a treat, and I didn’t go for the treat pouch attached to my belt. He puzzled. Then moved, and figured it out again.

“You’re such a good boy!” I patted him on the neck and gave him a few more treats.

Then I picked up the target and let him mouth at it like I’d done in the beginning.

When he tried with his teeth, I clicked and rewarded.

Tomorrow, if I had time, I’d try to combine the things, but today, we were both done.

“Hi, Daddy!” Payton called from the fence. “What are you doing?”

“He’s clicker-training Rowdy,” Crew explained as he helped Payton climb up until he was leaning his little elbows on the top rung.

“Oh, is Rowdy the one who scared the moms and the babies?”

Little ears, I swear….

“Yeah, that’s right. He’s a rowdy boy.” Crew smiled.

Suddenly it clicked in Payton’s head that the gelding was rowdy and called Rowdy. He started to laugh so hard that Crew had to catch him in his arms and prop him against the fence so he wouldn’t fall off.

“Jesus Christ you goofball.” I shook my head fondly and walked over to them. I gave Crew a kiss and then smooched Payton’s cheek.

“How’s it going with him?” Crew asked, nodding at the gelding behind me.

“It’s good. He’s not fast to learn, but when it clicks, he’s very into it.” I smiled and held my arm out as soon as I heard Rowdy stepping behind me. “That’s enough,” I said firmly, and he snorted softly, but stopped approaching. “Good boy.” I handed him a treat without looking.

“Can I give him one?” Payton asked.

“Sure. You know how.”

He held his palm flat and I put a treat on it. Then he smiled wide as Rowdy approached to nimbly pick it off.

“He’s funny. And tickles!” Payton announced.

I nodded. “That’s all true. Let me go put him back in the paddock and I’ll meet you at the cabins.”

“Okay!” Payton started to climb down, and Crew did his best not to hover too much. It was very cute.

My mom and Jenn had bonded even more over the phone after Payton told Mom that he now had a Mimi too.

That in itself was the best thing since sliced bread for Mom. It took me a while to realize that she’d still wanted more for us. It made sense; she’d been there for us until we lost the farm and not living on the same property anymore weighed on her mom and grandma senses.

Now that she knew we had Jenn and Payton had another grandma to dote on him, she relaxed some. Aunt Win told me that Mom had unclenched a little more, which was nice. I wanted the best for her and she’d been through the same things we had right next to us.

She’d agreed to come over for the Harringtons’ big summer party soon. Aunt Win had other engagements she couldn’t cancel, but she’d promised to come visit next time Mom headed over.

I spent every night in the same bed with Crew, whether that was his bed or mine. The intimacy was something I’d never really experienced before, and I reveled in every touch. I couldn’t wait for us to have just one bed to return to at the end of each day. One that was ours.

It was almost funny now how at first, when Payton and I had arrived on the ranch, I’d tried my best not to be interested in or attracted to Crew. Both of those things had been fully instinctual. I hadn’t been able to help either of them.

It took until one night when we were in bed after a long day, just lounging and too tired to do anything other than cuddle, for it to hit me.

“It wasn’t just the fact that you were my boss or a man,” I said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Crew turned his head to look at me in the light of his bedside lamp.

“It was that I could feel this.” I gestured between us.

“On some level, from the very beginning, I knew there was potential and it scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t even think to subject Payton to another parental figure leaving him, of course, but I…

.” Trailing off, I took a deep breath and then exhaled long and slow.

“It was never like it with Vera and me. She’s… not cold, but she just doesn’t have the capability to connect on a deeper level. Not with Payton, and not with me. There’s reasons for that, and that’s why I’m fine with how things happened with her, as much as it hurt at the time.

“But the thing is, I’ve never had this before. I haven’t had a partner who loves me like this just as I am, who wants me in every way, and who loves Payton, too.”

“And that’s scary?” Crew asked quietly.

“Yeah.” I snorted with no humor whatsoever. “If we fell apart, whether it’s two months, two years, or two decades from now, I know Payton would be fine. That kid’s a survivor. It’s in his blood.” From both Vera and I, I’d come to realize. “But I don’t know if I would survive. Not… not as I am.”

Crew cupped my cheek and kissed my lips gently. “I don’t think there’s a way to survive unscathed from the kind of love we have, Malachi. We just have to keep communicating and being honest, and… and love each other and Payton and everyone else through everything that life might throw our way.”

I kissed him back, then relaxed against my pillow. We were quiet for a while, then I asked, “Do you want more kids?”

The way Crew smiled at my statement was kind of amazing. “I love that you consider him mine.”

I grinned. “I know.”

He rolled his eyes. “Brat. But to answer your question, yeah. Probably. But not any time soon. We’re young. We have time. There’s no rush.”

“Maybe one day when we have a house and Payton is a bit older? I don’t care how we would have them, because they’d be ours anyway.”

Crew’s smile made a return and he gave me another kiss. “That sounds like a good deal, baby.”

Yeah, I loved it when he called me that.

Like I’d thought, Ezio and Jaina got along incredibly well.

He clearly thought she hung the moon, and it didn’t take me long to start going on rides, ponying him while I rode her.

He enjoyed every bit of scenery, was alert and interested, but took all his cues from her steady presence in a way that was amazing even to me.

One day, a couple of days before my mom was to arrive, I was out with the two horses and Payton on the back pasture.We’d gone to the creek and because I’d tested Ezio near the cows, I knew he wasn’t going to spook if we went to check on the herd.

Payton was pointing out things here and there, and talking about how excited he was about his Nana and Mimi meeting.

“Oh look, that’s a magpie!” He pointed at a bird flying overhead.

“Have you gotten more presents from them?” I asked, knowing it would set him off for a while.

“Yeah! There was a bottle cap near the feeding spot yesterday!” And off he went, recapping the handful of items he and Mike had gotten from the corvids.

Suddenly Payton stopped talking mid-sentence. “Oh no.”

“What is it?” I looked around but didn’t see anything, and the horses were calm, too.

“You forgot the stew.”

“Aw crap.” I rubbed my face with the hand that wasn’t around Payton, holding the reins and the lead rope.

“You could walkie-talkie to Crew?” Payton suggested before it even occurred to me.

I also found his use of walkie-talkie as a verb cute as hell.

“Good idea, buddy.” I unclipped the two-way and pulled Jaina to a stop.

Pressing the button, I said, “Malachi to CH.”

It took all of two seconds to get a response, which told me Crew was trying his best not to fret while we were out. “CH to Mal, over.”

“Can you pop by my cabin to turn the slow cooker to low? Over.”

Some people wouldn’t have minded if their stew was mush, but I sure did.

“Will do. Over.”

“Okay, thank—”

“You should say ‘I love you’ before you say over,” Payton piped up.

I laughed as at least three people joined the call with laughter and awws.

“I should?” I asked, letting everyone hear us.

“Yeah. That’s what people who love each other do,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“I suppose so.” I smiled and said, “Hey, Crew?”

I could hear the laughter in his tone. “Yeah, Mal and Payton?”

“I love you. Over.”

“I love you too. Over.”

“Press again,” Payton said, so I did. “Crew? I love you too. Oh. Over.”

“Love you right back, little man. Over.”

Someone sniffled down the line. Others chuckled or cooed. I put my radio back on my belt, and we continued toward the point where we’d turn back.

Payton started to hum a song by Bodhi’s friend, and I just couldn’t stop smiling.