Page 18 of Dirty Ginger

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Beckett sat in the middle of the paddock and didn’t move for two hours. Autumn watched him closely the whole time, but she also hadn’t turned away and continued eating. Had she done so, the training session would have gone differently. But he held her focus, her curiosity building about him. For the last two years that Beckett had seriously been training horses alongside Nash, he’d come to learn that patience was the only way to a horse’s heart. Kindness mattered, of course. Trust also. But patience mattered the most, and through his journey with horses, his patience had grown stronger.

He stayed frozen when Autumn finally took a step toward him. When she stood a foot away, she lowered her head, getting a good look him. Another step. And one more after that. Until he let out a slow breath as she sniffed his hands resting on his knee. Sensing her stillness, he lifted his hand and ran it up her face. When she accepted that, he slowly rose. She took a step back. “Easy, sweetie.” He offered his hand again, and when she leaned a little forward, he stroked her face again. Then he turned and walked away, letting that be how she remembered the first day. Her coming to him, not the other way around. The vet appointment was necessary to move ahead with her training, but the path forward with this particular mare was starting over and changing her relationship with humans.

When he left through the gate and relatched it, Autumn still watched him steadily. It was good he had her curiosity. He hoped that made their next steps easy ones. By the time he got behind the wheel of his truck, she returned to eating her hay. A good start.

The dust trailed his truck as he drove down the driveway. As much as he wanted to go home and have a quick shower and grab some grub, the very thought of Amelia saying to him, “Come back after work, okay?” had him skipping all that entirely. But first, he needed to make a couple stops.

He reached the first stop fifteen minutes later, finding his father on the porch, where he sat most evenings. A sad picture, really. Once his father’s life had been filled with love and laughter, but those were things of the past now.

“Hey,” Beckett said the moment he got out of his truck, slamming the door behind him.

“Hi, son,” Jim replied, rocking in his chair.

Beckett took the seat next to him, staring out at the quiet road. “You look like you’re in pretty good shape,” he said, noting the rosy color of his cheeks.

Jim snorted. “You should have seen me a few hours ago.”

Beckett was glad he hadn’t. He kept his feet planted on the ground, not allowing the chair his mother used to sit in to rock. “Do you remember what happened?” he asked, glancing sidelong at his dad.

“Pieces of it…” Jim said before he trailed off. When he spoke again, emotion tightened his voice. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” Beckett said, slowly shaking his head. “You don’t need to apologize to me.”

His father looked out toward the sunset. “Feels like I should.”

At one point in Beckett’s life, he would have wanted that apology and thought it meant something, but truth was, there was no fixing his father. He’d long ago accepted that. When Jim lost his wife, he died with her. There was no life in this house anymore. No life in his father anymore. Jim worked his construction job, then sat in front of his television. The only other thing he did was watch the sunset every night. Beckett knew why. His mother loved sunsets, and Jim did this to remember her.

“I can’t stay,” Beckett told his father, moving away from apologies and guilt, as his therapist once instructed him to do. He loved his father and saw him regularly, but Jim was existing, not living, yet Beckett wouldn’t give up on him, hoping one day his father would break free from his grief. “I’m heading over to see Amelia tonight,” he said, hoping that would brighten his father’s mood. He’d always liked Amelia.

His father glanced sidelong. “She all right after all that happened to her?”

Beckett had caught his father up on the wedding that didn’t happen, but he hadn’t told his dad about the charges, not wanting to worry him. He nodded. “Yeah, she’s all right.”

“Good,” Jim said, with a firm nod.

With nothing further to add, Beckett rose and cupped his father’s shoulder, glad to see his father was in one piece. “Call if you need anything.”

“You know I will.”

His father wouldn’t call. He never did, but Beckett understood why. Years of guilt and shame and loss and pain stole his father away. Beckett didn’t hate him for the way he’d changed, but he no longer let his father’s depression affect his life like it once had, because that pain had nearly drowned Beckett too.

Back on the road, he made one last quick stop at his house to make preparations for what he hoped was a good step in the right direction with Amelia, then he made his way to her.

Twenty minutes later, when he pulled up to her house, he found the barn’s double doors still open, but all he discovered was an empty brewery. He headed up to the house and knocked on the door. Only silence greeted him. A glance over his shoulder revealed Amelia’s car. Before he called her, he decided on a quick look in the backyard. There was one place Amelia loved more than her brewery. The mature Rocky Mountain Maple in her backyard. Which was exactly where he found her.

He couldn’t figure out why she was surrounded by glass jars of herbs, spices and flowers. But he was mostly distracted by the fact that she had changed in a yellow sundress. Christ, she looked pretty. “Planning to bake today?”

She glanced up and gave him a half-smile. “Trying to find inspiration.”

“In there?” he asked, gesturing to the jars.

“Everything here is what goes into the beer,” she explained, the evening sunlight hitting her hair just right to make the ginger color shimmer. “Ronnie asked me to come up with six samples for him.”

“Come up with anything yet?” Beckett said, dropping down onto the grass next to her.

“No,” she said, glaring at the glass jars. “Maybe I’m just stuck because I know I have so much work ahead of me, but everything I’m coming up with is just boring or has been done before.”

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