I shook my head. I wanted to know that, sure, but that wasn’t what I’d been asking. I couldn’t help being curious about the kind of man who could snare someone like Tucker Legare so completely. “No, I mean tell me about him. What was his name? What was he like?”
Tucker looked back out over the pasture, and I followed his line of sight to Poe. Had he been his husband’s horse? Just because he was a companion and wasn’t a racer didn’t mean he couldn’t have been ridden for pleasure. He was silent long enough that I was about to tell him he didn’t have to share anything, but then he spoke.
“His name was Raleigh.” It was barely above a whisper, and if the wind had chosen that moment to blow by, I would have missed it. But it was like the Earth had gone still, everything around us holding reverence for the man who no longer walked among us.
“He was my best friend,” Tucker continued, still mindlessly spinning the wedding ring on his finger. “He was loyal and kind. Never knew a stranger but always willing to help one. He loved the animals and this land so damn much. Too good for this world and definitely toogood for me. But somewhere along the way, I managed to convince him that I was all right enough.”
Those words brought a watery smile to his face, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was hauntingly beautiful.
“Granger introduced us, actually.” His eyes softened at the memory. “I’ve known Granger since we were teenagers. His dad used to work for another farm in the area, but I’d see both of them around at some of the showing events for the foals and stallions. When we were introduced, we hit it off pretty quickly, both teens living for the service of horses, ya know? But when that facility let his dad go, Granger left as well. He was twenty-one and headstrong. His dad decided to take early retirement, but Granger came to me, looking for work, and I managed to convince my dad to hire him on. When it was all said and done, we went to celebrate at a bar in town. He invited some of his old buddies from the other farm, and in walked Raleigh.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Raleigh worked at the other farm, too?”
Tucker gave a small chuckle. “His family owns it.”
My jaw dropped. “You married the son of your family’s competition?”
He leaned forward to rest his chin on his arms, a gentle smile tugging at his lips. “My momma likes to say I never could do anything easy. But Raleigh hadn’t been set up to take over the farm. His family’s super traditional and believes in that whole oldest son inheriting bullshit. Raleigh was the third boy, so in terms of birthright, he was low on the totem pole. But they sure didn’t appreciate it when we started dating.
“By the time things were serious between us, the relationship with his dad had deteriorated to the point he was nothing but nasty to Raleigh. My parents were surprisingly accepting, so they basically let Raleigh move in with us. I don’t think my dad had ever seen Raleigh’s family as true competition, but damn did they. You would have thought he’d shared all their business plans with us—which he didn’t, for the record.”
I lifted my hands up when Tucker gave me a stern side-eye. “I didn’t think he did. He sounded like a decent guy.”
“More than decent.” He sighed. “He was… He was really damn great.”
It was the most I’d heard Tucker talk about anything other than operational duties around the farm, and while I could listen to him narrate the phone book, there was a pinching in my chest the longer he went on. I knew where this story went, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it.
“Do you mind me asking how he passed?” I asked gently.
Tucker’s jaw ticked, and I waited to see if he’d tell me.
“Drunk driver. In the middle of the fucking day. Guy slammed into Raleigh going eighty in a forty-five.”
“Oh, god,” I breathed, knowing all the blood had drained from my face. “Did the guy…?”
“It was instant for both of them. Which was lucky for the guy because if he’d lived after Raleigh had died…” He hung his head as venom laced his voice. “I would have killed him myself.”
Then it was lucky for Tucker, too. It was lucky for me, and a whole host of other people, that he was still here and not locked behind bars. Or worse.
But, man, was that a complicated, fucked-up thought. My eyes trailed over the pasture, looking at all the living things around us with a whole new perspective. It wasn’t like I was ignorant to how fragile our existence was, but a certain detachment came from working with animals. The circle of life was just an inevitability you grew accustomed to. But it was hard not to see things a little differently after hearing how abruptly someone’s life could be ended.
I found myself glancing back at Tucker. His shoulders were rigid as he kept his head lowered between the gap of his arms, but I could see the demons he was fighting. The waves of anger that still lingered under the torrent of grief. And I felt helpless to do anything for him.
Stepping forward, I did the one thing I could think of to offer even a semblance of comfort for the man still stuck on the worst dayof his life. My hand came down on his shoulder, and I gave it a hard squeeze.
Tucker tensed, and it was only then it occurred to me that I was still wearing that damn cologne. But as I went to pull away, he placed one ice-cold hand over mine.
“Thank you,” he whispered, but to me it was a low rumble of thunder. Unmistakable and chilling. An indication of change on the horizon.
I couldn’t have described the shift I felt in that moment, but it was just as unavoidable as a sudden rain. There was a clear divide between who I’d been before this moment and who I was now. Something lived inside me that hadn’t been there before, and the sanctity of it was breathtaking. There were no words I would have been able to say that would have properly conveyed how impacted I was, so instead of bumbling my way through it like an idiot again, I just gave his shoulder another squeeze.
When we finally parted to head back into the barn to resume my training, I realized how warm Tucker’s hand had gotten while holding mine. But there was still a lingering chill on my skin from where his ring had been.
Tucker took me through the rest of the setup for feeding and the pasture rotations, but the only thing I could think was how I still smelled like his late husband. I felt tainted somehow. It wasn’t like I had much attachment to this particular cologne—I was pretty sure it'd been given as a random Christmas or birthday gift—but now every time I caught a whiff of myself, my stomach roiled with the knowledge of who this smell belonged to.
It was stupid. Smells didn’tbelongto someone, but this one did. It was permanently seared into my brain, maybe not so differently to how it was imprinted on Tucker’s. The whole thing made me oddly self-conscious of how close I was to him. Six feet of space at all times like we were fighting some world plague again. The truck rides between locations were the worst, and if it wasn’t for how fucking cold it was outside, even with the afternoon sun out, I would have asked to walk, just to save us both the heartache.
When things were finally done, there were still a few hours left before the dinner bell that Tucker told me I could use to get myself settled in more. I couldn’t remember ever being so thankful for the opportunity to shower when I wasn’t covered head-to-toe in muck.
