Page 7

He looks up from inside the stall, hay rake in hand. "Ma'am?"

"Cassia. I'm gonna take care of her from now on. All of it. Every bit of it. Feed, turnout, tack, hay, baths, the whole thing." I say it like I've been planning it, like it's not a sentence assembling itself in real time out of guilt and caffeine. "Just… point me to her current diet, would you please? So I don't mess anything up?"

If it was embarrassing to admit I don't take care of her, this last part lands as absolutely criminal.

How do I not know what my horse is eating?

That's irresponsible.

Hell, that's dangerous.

"Sure. Okay," Jimmy says. "Her schedule and nutrition is all on the whiteboard in the feed room." It comes out easy as he wipes his hands on his jeans. But there's a beat of confusion in his face. Like he's recalculating his whole morning. "Am I… not doing a good job with her?"

"No!" I say quickly. "That's not it at all. You're doing great. It's just… I don't have much to do around here these days. It should be me taking care of her. She did, after all, take care of me on all those eventing courses. Never once did me dirty. Honest as the day is long."

His face softens. You don't get to work with our horses if you aren't a horse person. So this is a language he speaks. "Yeah. She's like that. A really nice girl." Then he sighs, and offers me the rake.

I take it, thank him, then stand there watching him walk off, thinking… what the hell did I just do?

Feeding at dawn. Hay nets strung and restrung through the day so she's never without. Turnout schedules that have to work around the other horses, the footing, the weather.

Baths in summer, blankets in winter, tack that needs saddle soap and conditioner rubbed into it by hand or it cracks.

Mucking—every single day, more than once.

And the last check at night, after dark, when everyone else has already gone to bed and it's just you and a flashlight and a horse who doesn't care that you're tired.

I did this every day for four years at school. Up before the sun, boots crusted in shavings, hands raw from cold water in February. I never once resented it there.

I've just never done it here. Not once. Not for Cassia, not for anyone, not in thirty years of living on this ranch with horses in every pasture I could see from my bedroom window.

And that all changes right now.

This is my ranch.

I am responsible for all the animals—same as Cash, same as Wyatt.

And I need to stop taking it all for granted and start being invested.

About damn time, Savannah.

CHAPTER 3

Cash and I are just a couple miles out from the ranch when he says, "How much does Savannah know?"

"About what? Brick?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"Everything."

"Everything?"

"That day I showed up all covered in red dirt? That was the day. That's when I went lookin' for my book."

"What book?"

I kinda laugh. "You didn't know about the book?" He shakes his head no. "Well, recall back to that day when you and I were standin' by the horse arena while Mercy was gettin' a lesson?"