Page 45 of The Fire Line

Jay did.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

Harris released his ankle and stepped back. “Your hands are too tight.”

“I’m not pulling.”

“You’re braced before she’s even moved.”

Harris reached up and closed his fingers around Jay’s fist. His thumb loosened Jay’s grip before he repositioned the reins across his palm.

The contact was brief, practical, and entirely devastating to Jay’s dignity.

“Enough to feel her,” Harris said. “Not enough to hold her in place.”

Jay looked down at their hands.

Harris released him almost immediately.

“You realize every instruction you give sounds vaguely philosophical?”

“Only when you repeat it.” Harris stepped away. “Walk her toward the far fence.”

Rain moved with the patience of an animal accustomed to compensating for human incompetence.

“Less rein.”

Jay eased his hands, and her stride lengthened.

“You’re trying to manage every step.”

“I’m sitting on an animal with independent opinions. I’d still like some input.”

“She knows where her feet are. Give her a direction and let her handle the ground.”

At the far fence, Jay pulled back too sharply. Rain stopped hard enough to pitch his weight forward, though he recovered before the mistake became cinematic.

“You hauled on her mouth.”

Rain’s ears angled backward in pointed agreement.

“My apologies,” Jay told her.

“Sit deeper before you ask. Close your fingers slow, then release when she stops.”

Jay tried again on the next circle. He shifted his weight, closed his fingers gradually, and Rain stopped beneath him without throwing him forward.

“Better?” he asked.

“Better.”

The approval produced a ridiculous pulse of satisfaction. Jay had spent the past week interviewing ranch hands, filming cattle, and learning more about irrigation systems than any documentary director strictly needed to know, and none of it had prepared him for how compelling Harris became when all that exacting attention settled on him.

The quiet no longer felt entirely like refusal. Here it was concentration. Patience. Something perilously close to care, though that was a dangerous word and almost certainly an editorial overreach.

Jay rode another circle without being asked, relaxing his knees and letting Rain choose her footing. When he returned, Harris stepped close and pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist, correcting the angle of his hand.