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“Honey sees it.”

“That’s a lot of trust you’re asking me to put in a horse I met thirty minutes ago.”

“She likes you.”

“How do you know?”

“She hasn’t thrown you off.”

Her head snaps toward me. “What?”

I laugh. “I’m kidding.”

“You are such an asshole.”

I look over at her and find her smiling.

“Relax your shoulders.”

She rolls them back and adjusts herself in the saddle. “Better?”

“Yep.”

The farther we get from the ranch, the more she relaxes.

The trail narrows as it winds between tall pines, sunlight breaking through the branches in patches and warming the ground beneath us. The air smells different out here. Pine, grass, earth and that clean mountain air I’ve never been able to find anywhere else.

Birds call somewhere above us, and the occasional snap of a branch has Nora looking around, but Honey keeps moving beneath her like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

After a while, Nora stops concentrating on every step Honey takes and starts looking around instead. Actually looking. I watch her tip her head back when the wind moves through the trees, her eyes closing for just a second, and I find myself smiling.

Halfway down the trail, I slow Hades until Honey comes up beside us.

“D and me used to take this trail almost every day.”

Nora’s eyes meet mine.

There it is. The pain that’s still there every time his name comes up. But this time, I see something else in her eyes too.

Curiosity.

So I continue.

“D loved our old horse, Blackjack.”

“Blackjack?”

“Big black Quarter Horse. Mean as hell to everyone except D.”

She smiles. “That sounds about right.”

“We used to follow this trail all the way to our secret treehouse.”

“Secret treehouse?”

“Yep. Our dads helped us build it when we were kids.”

She looks ahead with renewed interest as we continue along the trail. A few minutes later, the trees begin to thin, and I point toward the clearing up ahead.