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“It just… don’t you guys name your horses like… phrases and not real names?”
“I don’t, but I know what you’re talking about. A few of mine that I bought off other people already named have those kinds, like Tawny and Lover Boy. It’s for a good reason, ‘o course. If you’re racing them, can’t be two that have the same name. If, for instance, two horses named Steve won the Kentucky Derby.”
“Oh, sure, I get it. I’d bet there’s more than one with the name Spirit, though.”
“Not on my ranch, and I don’t plan to sell him. I have bred horses, and I’ve sold foals, but once a horse is here and used to it, it stays. I don’t get rid of things I care about.”
I felt the double meaning again, too, knowing he was including me in that. As I forked through my baked potato, I asked, “What if a horse started kicking down the fences and, I don’t know, biting you and things? Would you get rid of him, then?”
“Nope. I’d find out why the fuck he was acting like that and get the damn thing some help. Like I said, there’s never a horse that’s too far gone to be reminded of who they are, Eli. People, they’re different, except for a few. You too far gone?”
“Hope not,” I answered honestly.
“Let me see about that for myself, thanks.”
I smiled as I took a small bite of potato. Noah wanted me around, and to stay. He wasn’t kicking me out or ditching me from his life. That gave me courage to feel the things I’d begun to feel for him.
It didn’t, however, give me the courage to act on those feelings yet. I waited another week, and that week was full. Each day, after the cattle and horses were fed, their stalls mucked, their legs stretched, he’d let me go to the small corral with Spirit, and we got to know each other.
Noah is always there, always watching, caring for the two of us. Then, on another one of his horses, he taught me how to ride.
Now, I loved my Harley. I had a steel mount under me every second I could manage it since I was a kid, but a living, breathing thing, that was a whole different kind of ride. The freedom I felt on the motorcycle, that translated well to the horse, but I knew how to control a bike. I knew, unless a car swerved into my lane or hit me, I was completely in control.
What I hadn’t known was how to control a horse. It was much different. To gain control of a horse, first I needed to make it trust me, and I had to trust it. Like I was doing with Spirit, I had to do for a full day with an already broken mare named Jessie Jane. Jessie and I took our time that day, and I brushed her, spoke to her, kept in her line of sight.
Then, the following day, I set the saddle on her, fastening it under her, and the third day, I did all the same, though that day I mounted her, and like the horse I’d ridden to help Noah with the cattle that day, I took it slowly. Each step was a lesson in calming my own nerves so the horse would be at ease.
By the end of that week, I was riding. The reins, like the handlebars, steered me on the horse, and then my body, turning, moving, moved with the horse, like it had to on the bike. The similarities were numerous, the differences obvious, but when I had the confidence and the trust, I could ride.
I’d likely never be as good as Noah, being he’d been on a horse since practically birth, but I was getting the hang of it. We sat on the porch that evening, and we laughed, and he congratulated me on the week's accomplishments more than once. I saw a new gleam in his eye, and he felt, as I did, that I had come a long way from that wayward nomad, sitting on the other side of a guardrail.
So, with my courage and my need, I decided. That night, I sat on the edge of the bed in the spare bedroom, the snow falling delicately outside my window. It was chilly in the house the way Noah liked it. Better for sleep, he said. Still, I was in my underwear, no blanket around my shoulders, and I took in the cold, feeling it sinking into me, and that need for warmth, for human touch, it reached the pinnacle.
I stood, the creak of the bed loud in such a quiet place. The floor was cold once I stepped off the rag rug by the bed, and I shivered. For once, it was the cold making me shake and not some demon inside me, fighting to control my senses.
I padded softly to the door, and opened it, the hall colder than my room, but lighter, with the soft glow of the sconces. His door was the second down on the right from mine, in reach, and yet, I hesitated.
What I was thinking of doing was more than a gesture of one man in need of another. I knew Noah by then, well enough that I knew if I went there, I’d never be able to turn back.
As I stood outside his door and thought of that, I smiled. I didn’t want to turn back. I didn’t want to not be there, at the ranch, in the home of the man that meant the world to me.
I set my hand on the knob, and my palms were sweating despite the cool of the house. I was nervous, sure, but it was the best kind of nervous. As I turned the knob, I listened for snoring or sounds of sleep, and heard nothing.
The room was dark, but the little bit of light from the hall penetrated the darkness enough to show me where I was heading.
Noah’s bed was big, and in the middle of the wall across from the door. The head and foot were thin logs, twisted into a beautiful piece of furniture, but it couldn’t compare to the man in it.
Stepping into the room, I was taking the chance that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. I felt my heart pounding hard in my chest and my breath was caught in my throat.
I padded to the bed, and I saw him sleeping… so peacefully, I didn’t have the heart to wake him. But, before I could turn to head back to the hall, I caught sight of movement, his eyes opening.
Noah’s husky voice was even deeper than usual in the quiet room, and he asked, as if he’d been waiting for this night, “Are you ready?”
At first, I didn’t know how to answer that, but then it came naturally, my body relaxing even as it heated. “I’m ready.”
He reached from where his hand had lain on the quilt over him and took my hand tenderly, kissing over the knuckles. “Well, get your ass in here.”
The deep tone, gritty, rough, aroused me more than I had been. I felt the air leave my lungs finally as my hand was released and I watched as Noah moved over to the center of the enormous bed.
