Don't push. Do not push.
"Rain's letting up," he says.
It isn't. We both know it isn't.
He walks me out anyway. Down the porch steps, through the wet to where Serenity stands with her ears flat, expressing her feelings about the weather. He gets to my saddle before I do. Checks the girth. Adjusts the stirrup that slips on the left side, the one I haven't gotten around to fixing.
"You noticed that," I say.
"Hard not to. You compensate with your knee every time you mount up."
Nobody notices that. Kidd doesn't notice that. Gabe doesn't notice that. A man who claims he doesn't watch me noticed a stirrup that slips.
"Harrison."
"Take the high side out of the second bend." He's not looking at me. Fussing with the leather like it needs more attention than it does. "Don't ride the left rut. Creek'll be up."
"I know this mountain."
"I know you do."
He steps back from Serenity. Faces me.
Rain's slowed to a mist. The firs are dripping. His Henley's soaked through at the shoulders, clinging, and I am doing my absolute best not to catalog every single thing about the way this man looks in wet cotton, and I am failing.
His hand comes up.
Knuckles. Along my temple. Pushing the loose hair back that's come free of my braid. Slow. Careful. The same hands that took rust out of my arm one flake at a time.
Everything in my body goes still.
"Aiden."
His thumb settles at the edge of my jaw. My pulse hammers against it. I know he feels it. His eyes track down my face to my mouth and stay there, and his breathing changes, and I lean in because every cell in my body is leaning and I can't stop a single one.
He goes rigid.
All at once. Everything locks. The shutter comes down behind his eyes, and his hand drops, and he steps back so fast the wet gravel crunches.
"Drive safe," he says. Except his voice is in pieces. Completely wrecked. "Text the ranch line when you're in."
I stand there with rain misting my face, staring at him, my heart slamming so hard I'm sure Serenity can feel it through the ground.
"Okay," I manage.
He turns. The screen door closes behind him.
Serenity bumps my shoulder. Impatient. Ready to go.
It takes me a full minute before I can get my boot in the stirrup. The left one. The one that slips. He fixed it. It holds.
Mama, don't say it.
Chiggers, baby girl.
I ride down the mountain in the dark with my pulse still going and the place where his thumb sat on my jaw burning, and halfway to the meadow my phone catches signal and buzzes four times.
Gwen
