Page 8 of Wilder

Trial and error had earned me a few good swats to the legs but nothing that landed me in the ER with a swift call to my brother to make the almost ten hour drive to come get me. I’d yet to have any near-death experiences so far, and I was planning on keeping it that way.

Ironically, before any of this, I’d never been surrounded by highly intelligent animals. Or any kind of animal, for that matter. With Gage always working and Grey and I in school, none of us had time for pets.

Which made this manifestation all the more strange. And kind of cool.

“You taking a break?” I asked Laken. “Or did you actually finish early for once.”

He barked out a laugh, accidentally startling Pelly into jerking against her lead and causing me to have to tug her back into place. I ran a hand over her chest and up the ropey muscles of her neck a few times to soothe her. She was one of the ones that startled easily but was also, thankfully, quite simple to calm down.

I liked to think of it as a kind of reciprocity for her being willing to work with me.

“What are you trying to say?” he replied, squinting down at his drawing before turning his pencil over to erase something off the page.

His dark hair was pulled back from his face with a light colored bandana, the edges of it long since stained with sweat from the day. Unlike the rest of us, he tended to wear his t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, making him one of the only ones on the ranch not sporting a farmer’s tan.

Laken had a strong build, solid and broad like Dallas and Wilder’s, from years of throwing feed bags over his shoulders and tossing around hay stacks like they were nothing. He always moved with an ease to his steps that directly contradicted the kind of work we did here. Hard manual labor went hand-in-hand with stout gaits and harsh movements in order to keep from fucking up the body beyond repair.

Despite all of that, Laken had a certain grace about him that I hadn’t seen reflected in anyone else. Maybe that was the artist in him coming through.

“Nothing,” I said innocently. “Just wondering.”

“Uh huh.” When he glanced up from his page, he squinted at us both and held out his pencil to measure. “Well, for your information. I happened to get all of my shit done today at a reasonable time. So, I’ve got some hours to kill. Figured I’d come see what trouble you were making up here.”

I grinned. “So, what I’m hearing is that you’re free tonight to take me out to that 18+ bar.”

He rolled his eyes. “You still on about that?”

“You can’t tease me with a good time and not expect me to remember.”

Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly looking to go out to get served under the table all night until I was too shit-faced to sit up straight. While I had no doubts Laken would haul me back to the ranch and deposit me into my bed so I could catch a few hours before being forced to wake up and nurse my hangover for the rest of the morning, I actually was looking to do something completely different.

As in, find someone to take me home and get off for a few hours.

Working all day with my body had gifted me with an entirely different exhaustion than I was used to. It drained me and left me feeling ragged by the time I climbed under my sheet and passed out until my alarm went off right before dawn broke. However, none of that had done anything for my, unfortunately, very healthy libido.

As a sprightly nineteen year old, I still had a lot of energy in me.

Plus, Wilder was kind of driving me nuts.

There was no reason for my boss to be looking that good twenty-four seven.

“Ryder’s going to want to come with us,” he replied.

I shrugged. “Fine with me.”

We got along famously, too. Not as spontaneously as Laken and I, but I still liked the guy well enough to know he’d probably help wingman me if I needed the extra solidarity. Usually, I had no problem finding a guy interested but this was Texas and sometimes things got a little weird.

He snapped his sketchpad shut. “Let’s go see where that loud mouth’s at with his chores.”

Taking Pelly along with us, we walked her back to the stables. I kept her to my right and Laken on my other side, not wanting to sandwich her between us and make her more nervous than she probably already was having another person so close. Without knowing what her story was before coming to the ranch, I had a suspicion she’d been mistreated severely by ranch hands.

Her nervousness when being handled made those fears quite obvious. She’d clearly been trained in some capacity because she took to the halter well enough, but anytime someone tried to approach her with other forms of tack, that was what sent her panicking in the opposite direction.

I felt horrible for her, as I did with the other horses the ranch had in its care that Wilder had picked up from those auctions.

Whatever their stories were, I hoped they found peace here for the rest of their days.

Coming up to the stables, I tightened my hand around Pelly’s lead, using it to tug her along with a soft click of my tongue against the back of my teeth. Her ears perked as she allowed me to guide her in through the doors, her hooves making a gentle clomping sound against the packed ground. Laken stayed over by the doors as I set Pelly back up in her stall and gave her a fresh pail of water and restuffed her rack with hay.