Page 59 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

N OAH

One Year Later

“Okay, I’ve narrowed it down. Primary Motor Cortex, which would be movement-related, Cortex for short. Or Broca’s Area, which is all about expression through speech, Broca for short.”

“You’re not naming your horse after brain parts,” I replied and tried to shoot her a warning look from the corner of my eye.

Esra sat cross-legged in the passenger seat and tapped her pen against her notepad, where she’d doodled more swirls than listed actual name options.

I only knew that those “names” were terms for brain sections because she’d hosted trivia night a few weeks ago and turned out to be better as a participant.

All her questions had been incredibly niche.

“Why not? All this information in my brain has to go somewhere, and both would be therapy puns. Physical therapy or psychotherapy. Get it? The horse helps you move and express your feelings.”

“Part of therapy is bonding with the horse. I’m not asking someone to bond with Primary Motor Cortex .”

“Killjoy,” she huffed .

“Better name than Cortex, but not exactly trust-inspiring.”

I turned the car on to the road where we were picking the horse up, checking back over my shoulder to make sure the trailer made it around the corner without issues.

“What if we let him choose?” Esra suggested. “I’ll call out a bunch of names and we’ll see which one he responds to.”

“Just because you pitch your voice higher on ‘Cortex’ and he whinnies in response, doesn’t mean he actually likes the name.”

“Can you be certain? Have you ever asked your horses if they like their names?”

I parked the car near the paddock’s gate, and only then turned to Esra and tried to give her my most exasperated look, but the way she was grinning quickly stole the air from my lungs.

“Come here, woman.” I leaned over the center console and pulled her to me by the collar of her shirt.

My shirt. She was always wearing my shirts.

I was constantly doing laundry, but it was so worth it for the caveman part of my brain getting tickled by the sight of it.

I kissed her, fist still wrapped up in the fabric, and her mouth readily fell open.

She was breathing hard by the time she pulled back. “Slipping me the tongue won’t win you the argument. Nice try, cowboy.”

“I have my ways of persuasion.” Hands around her waist, exactly where they belonged, I lifted her out of her seat and on to my lap. She squealed but easily slotted over me, my hips between her knees.

“Oh, do you?” she challenged and popped open the top button of her shirt. “What if I keep moaning Primary Motor Cortex in your ear until you love the sound of it?”

“I’m willing to let you try.”

She crushed over me in another deep kiss. Her hair fell around our faces and her hips ground down on mine until I was willing to let her name even our future children after body parts.

A sharp knock on the car window interrupted our anatomy lesson.

“Sorry. That was… sorry,” Esra laughed when she popped the door open and climbed out of my lap.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen men buy their girlfriends horses before.” The middle-aged woman who was selling the horse rolled her eyes at us. “You can continue thanking him later.”

Esra grinned at me over her shoulder and reached her hand out to tug me along toward the paddock. Neither of us mentioned that, technically, her parents were buying her the horse.

I’d first met them when we visited them for their New Year’s celebrations.

While I was fairly certain that Esra’s father hated me before I’d even opened my mouth, solely because she lived with me and didn’t have a ring on her finger, her mother seemed to be more accepting after interrogating me.

I wasn’t divorced, nor did I have any illegitimate children.

I owned land. I had savings. And thanks to many late nights around the kitchen table with Esra, Zuri and Sinan, we had a structured business model for the ranch.

They’d also flown in for Sinan and Zuri’s wedding in the spring, which we’d held at the ranch.

Esra had introduced her parents to everyone, and both of them seemed genuinely surprised by the laughs and the hugs and the bubbling excitement she garnered– which seemed ridiculous, because Esra was easy to like.

I’d just taken longer than everyone else to realize that, but I made up for it now by loving her more than anyone else could.

She also gave them the grand tour before the reception.

We’d renovated most of the house by then and even had some of Zuri’s family staying in the guest bedrooms. Seeing everything in person seemed to change something for her parents.

Especially when Esra sat her dad down to show him her two binders full of research into equine therapy.

One binder was about managing the symptoms of hypermobile EDS through physical therapy, and how horseback-riding actually covered most of those needs.

The other binder was full of market research on how most therapy ranches weren’t even equipped to provide for people like her, because every single one of her joints had different support requirements and even the shape of the stirrup could determine whether or not she’d walk pain-free the next day.

She flat-out told her father that she needed a specific kind of horse, narrow with a long gait, and specific gear, so she could become the leading expert on the topic.

Her words. She said, if he was going to pay for her degree, he might as well pay for a horse, because she wasn’t going back to school but she was going to publish her research one day, and it was going to change the life of every little girl with hEDS who never got the chance to become a “horse girl” because she was too afraid to fall, when she just needed the right tools and skills to stay in the saddle .

I’d leaned back against the fridge with a big smile on my lips and watched her plead her case, so fucking proud of her. Even if her father was going to say no, she’d found something she was passionate about and she wasn’t too stubborn to ask for the support she needed to go after it.

Three months later, we found her this chestnut-colored Missouri Fox Trotter on a ranch just a few hours north of Wild Fields.

We’d visited last week to make sure he was as calm and easygoing as the ad had promised.

I didn’t exactly know how, but Esra and that horse had fallen in love at first sight.

Today, he rushed over the second she climbed up on the gate and clicked her tongue at him.

“Hi Peanut,” she cooed at him, both hands immediately on his face while she peppered kisses on his forehead.

“Peanut?” I asked.

“Peanut Butter, technically. Peanut for short,” Esra explained with a big smile.

“You had that name picked out all along, didn’t you?”

She giggled and scrunched her bunny nose up at me. “You just make it so easy.”

“All right then,” the previous owner sighed and scribbled the new name on to the stack of papers in her hands, “Peanut Butter is all yours. Do y’all need help loading him up into the trailer?”

“That would be great,” I said.

“Do we have to already? Can I get five more minutes with him out here?” Esra called over her shoulder without looking away from her horse, completely besotted with him.

“Oh jeez…” The woman smacked the stack of papers at my chest. “I’ll be in my truck. Five minutes, then I’m leaving.”

I rolled the papers up and stuck them in my back pocket, so I could wrap my arms around Esra from behind. She stood on one of the gate’s rails, meaning I didn’t have to bend down to her for once. Peanut only acknowledged me with a huff, too focused on getting ear scritches from Esra.

“You’ll have plenty of time with him, princess. He’s all yours now,” I said and kissed the back of her head.

“I know,” she sighed, “I just wanted him to have a good memory of meeting me before he gets taken away from his home.”

“He’ll have a new home and you’ll make a lot of good memories together there,” I whispered in her ear.

“Speaking from experience?” she asked and leaned her head back to brush her lips against mine.

“Mm-hmm, yeah,” I replied, trying to catch her mouth under mine, but she tilted her face, and I kissed her cheek instead.

“Noah?”

“Hmm?”

“He’s mine. Don’t even think about stealing my Peanut Butter, got it?”