“Relax. Open your hips up. Feel Della’s movement and roll into it with her. Keep your back straight, but your hips relaxed.”
Ruth’s entire body jerks awkwardly as she tries to follow my directions. I pinch my lips together to fight a smile. This might take a little more than just one session. I step left, to where Grover is tacked up and ready, drinking from a water trough and snorting quietly.
“Come on, boy,” I murmur to him. It’s not often I ride him, but he’s no stranger to it. I swing myself onto his back with ease and walk him up alongside Della and Ruth.
“Look at the line of my spine and my hips,” I say. I exaggerate my posture just a little. “Open hips, tall back.”
“Wait—whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You’re riding too… you mean I’m riding on my own?”
“You thought this was an only-one-horse trope? Honey, this is Texas. There are plenty of horses to go around.”
“But I don’t know how.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s instinctive. Anything that’s not, Della will teach you. Here, dig gently with your left heel against her flank. Like this.” I gesture down at my own left foot, nudging Grover until he begins to trot slowly. Della follows with a gentle snort. I glance behind me to see Ruth’s white-knuckle grip on the reins as Della catches up and falls into step beside her son.
“Follow her lead, Ruth. Roll where she rolls.”
“It’s kind of peaceful,” she says after a moment. “The motion of it. Her. You’re a good girl, aren’t you?”
“That’s my Delly,” I say, chest puffing out with pride. I dig my heel a little harder, and Grover picks up his pace. Della follows suit, immediately understanding that she’s to follow my lead, despite riding a different horse.
We ride in a wide, slow circle, looping back to the stables where we give both horses a quick groom and a handful of treats. Then, we head back out in the side-by-side I left parked up around the back of the outbuilding. We ride that to my cabin, where we swap it in favour of my old Chevy, and head out into town.
We reach Miss Celia’s diner just in time for an early lunch. Miss Celia herself intercepts us as we walk in, greeting me with a wry smile and a hand on her hip, demanding an introduction to mylunch companion. I feel the hair of my mustache brush my upper lip as it twitches into a smile.
“This is my friend, Ruth.”
Miss Celia scoffs. She never was one for subtlety. “Just a friend?”
“It’s new,” Ruth says quietly. A pink flush rises in her cheeks, and I slide my hand to the middle of her back, guiding her fully through the door.
“Don’t have to be old to be more than just friends,” Miss Celia says with a conspiratorial wink. “New things can be more, too.” She whips a menu from somewhere and places it on the nearest table—my favourite window booth—and invites Ruth to take a seat.
“I’ll be right back to take your order,” she promises with a grin, before limping away.
“Is it always like that here?” Ruth asks. She eyes me curiously as I smile after Miss Celia, and then jumps almost out of her skin when an old school friend knocks on the window beside me to wave. I wave back before answering.
“Everyone knows everyone in Skillett. They can sniff out a newcomer from a mile and a half away. If they don’t know you, they will.”
“Very… busybody.”
“It’s their business to know everyone’s business. Welcome to small town Texas, I guess.” There’s a little piece of me wondering what Ruth thinks of that. Wondering whether she’s okay with it—with the fact that by now, at least half of the business owners on Skillett’s Main Street will know I’m in here with a woman, and in the next ten minutes, everyone else in the town probably will, too. There’s anagging slice of worry that it’s too much for her, that the big city isn’t like that.
But then she hits me with the most breathtaking smile as she lifts the menu from the table and says, “Well, I’m glad they know I’m here with you, and not someone else.”
And that’s when I know for certain.
The other half of my heart has been walking around in Ruth Bevan’s body her whole life, and I’ve never been more sure of anything than I am of this: I want to spend the rest of my days with her, and her heart, right beside me.
Chapter thirteen
Ruth
Lo swipes through thepictures on my phone, grinning and kicking her feet in time with the drumbeats in Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” coming from my record player. Katy and Amie hang over her shoulders, squealing periodically.
“Go back, go back!” Amie insists. “Damn, that man fills out a pair of jeans.” Katy nods appreciatively, whistling between her teeth.
“That is one nice peach.”
