Page 30 of Where She Belongs

Okay, fine. She did want to go riding with Tate. She just didn’t want to admit how much the idea thrilled her. Tate was attractive, funny, and attentive. He’d helped when he hadn’t needed to. And he gave her the space she’d desperately needed. The more time she spent with him, the easier it was to remember why she’d adored him so thoroughly when they were kids.

“I’m going to marry you one day.”

She’d told him that when they were children and at the time she’d meant every word. She might not have ever been his best friend, but she could easily say he was her best friend even now. The people back home could hardly be considered friends. They were acquaintances at best and leeches at worst.

Rylee had never felt like she belonged in that world and she didn’t care what Roxy said. Just because those people had wealth didn’t mean they didn’t want to use her for her money or connections. There was a reason why people said the rich wanted to get richer. And knowing there was nothing closer to the truth regarding those in her social circle made her sick.

She got as far as the phone twice. Both times she set it face down on the counter and went to find something to scrub.

Finally she pulled on her boots, walked out her back door, and took the trail.

She hadn’t walked it in daylight since she was ten. It was narrower than she remembered. The treehouse was still up there, listing a little to the left, and when the Dennison paddock came into view her heart was working harder than the walk accounted for.

Tate was out by the fence with a coil of rope over his shoulder and his hat pushed back, and he saw her before she’d settled on what she meant to say.

Dang, he looked good.

His black cowboy hat matched his black button-up. His boots were dusty and worn, as were his pants. He’d already been working outside today. He didn’t say a word. He set the rope down on the top rail and waited, which was the single most unhelpful thing he could have done.

“I changed my mind,” Rylee said.

“About?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You know about what.”

“I do.” One corner of his mouth moved. “I’d like to hear you say it, though, seeing as I’m not allowed to say it for you anymore.”

This was so not the time for her legs to go weak. If she followed through with what she’d walked all this way to ask for, she’d need extra mobility in those limbs.

“I’d like to go riding,” she said. “Please.”

“Well.” Tate lifted the rope off the rail and hung it on the post like a man who’d just been handed his whole afternoon. “Give me ten minutes.”

He hadn’t pushed. She kept circling that while he worked. Alexander pushed with a hand at the small of her back, steering. Roxy pushed with love and terms attached to it. Tate had asked her once, taken her no, and then gone home and left her alone with it. That was what had walked her up this road.

Patience or strategy, she couldn’t say. Climbing onto a horse had never only been about a horse. It was about the person she might have become if she’d never left.

She might have been dressed in leggings and a t-shirt, but she’d pulled on boots with the intention of checking out the barn. Just because she hadn’t scrounged up the courage to step foot in the dilapidated building alone didn’t mean she wouldn’t eventually.

He was not fast about it, either. Rylee stood at the rail while he brushed down two horses that hadn’t been expecting company, checked four hooves, and hauled out tack, and not once did he glance over to see whether she’d lost her nerve.

She could have walked home at any point. That, she suspected, was entirely deliberate.

Rylee drifted toward the horses. They lured her in better than anything ever could. These weren’t horses she recognized from her childhood. But then it had been fifteen years. Tate’s family might have retired their horses. She half remembered Tate saying the horses belonged to his parents before he was born.

One was a warm chestnut with flecks of white on her rump. Her mane had white in it as well, but for the most part she was brown. The other was a dark gray, with one patch of contrast on its nose.

She lifted out her hand toward the nearest horse, letting it hover for a few moments before pressing her fingertips into the animal’s coat. It leaned into her, dropping its head and nudging her at the same time. Rylee gasped and glanced over her shoulder to find Tate smiling at her. But there was something else in his eyes. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to dissect. She’d seen that look before. It had been the same one her uncle had given her aunt when all he wanted to do was watch her.

Dipping her head, she murmured, “You were right.”

He chuckled, cupping a hand behind his ear. “What was that?”

She huffed. “You were right, Tate. I definitely don’t want to just watch.”

“Yeah, I know.” He moved toward her, took her hand, and led her to the horse’s side. “This is Freckles. She’s Lydia’s horse and the sweetest thing you’ll ever meet. She was trained to work with children in a therapeutic center. But then that center closed down and we were lucky enough to purchase her.”

She gestured toward the gray horse. “And this one?”