Page 12 of Brim Over Boot
My gas forge is within the only barn on our property. I throw the doors wide for ventilation before turning on the burners. It’ll take twenty or so minutes to heat, so I strip off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and organize my workspace while I wait.
It’s not often that I shape shoes from scratch. Some clients request it, and some horses need it, but most of the time, the folks I work for prefer for me to start with ready-made horseshoes. They require minimal shaping to fit a horse’s hoof, making it more time and cost-effective for me, which in turn makes it a cheaper option for the client.
Doesn’t mean I don’t love taking a bar of steel and forcing it to be something else through a lot of heat and sheer determination. That’s not what I’m doing today, though.
Once the forge is to temperature, I pull on my gloves and grab my scrap metal. The piece I’m working on is based loosely on a memory of my mother from when I was young. Seven or eight, maybe. We had gardens around our house in Lincoln, Wyoming, so big and sprawling you could get lost in them at the peak of summer. There wasn’t anything unusual about that day. It was probably hot. The sun was surely shining. What I do remember is my mom, wearing a yellow gingham dress, sitting cross-legged in the grass and weaving flower crowns. She made three. One for me, one for herself, and one for my dad.
Maybe I shouldn’t still miss them at almost forty, over twenty years after they passed. But I’m not sure grief has an expiration.
The metal crown isn’t close to finished, not yet. I have to work slow with such thin pieces of steel. Bend them into twining patterns. Flatten out the leaves and carefully shape the petals.
But I’m in no rush.
It’s the process I enjoy the most. The way it’s almost meditative. How my mind can get lost in the work and there’s no room for thinking about annoying Darling natives with their sharp blue eyes and unfriendly tongues.
Damn it.
I set aside the half-formed crown and turn off the forge. It glows orange as I put away my tools and store my gloves. The sun is still shining outside the barn, but a quick check of the time on my phone tells me I’ve been out here for several hours. Time to get dinner started.
As I’m closing the barn doors behind me, I realize the conversation I had with Colton at the spring festival—if you can even call it aconversation—was the longest we’ve ever spoken in a single stretch apart from the very first time we met.
Colton Darling and I will never be friends. That much is clear.
In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever be anything but enemies.
Chapter 5
Colton
“Morning,Louise.”
My mother’s closest friend and owner of the sandwich shop in town raises an eyebrow and pointedly eyes the clock. “It’s afternoon, hon.”
“Afternoon, then,” I quickly amend. “Can I get a roast beef panini, please?”
She hums, ringing me up before turning around to prepare my sandwich. I tap my card against the reader.
“Hey, Louise?”
“Yes?”
“You know, uh…” I look around and lower my voice, even though there are only a couple other customers inside the shop, eating their sandwiches. “Noah King?”
Louise pauses to look at me, and I silently curse. The woman is a gossip hound, and I think I just tossed her a morsel.
“I sure do,” she says, layering cheese over the roast beef on my sandwich. “What about him?”
I lower my voice further and lean across the countertop. “He doesn’t have, like, kids or something, does he?”
That eyebrow goes up again. “He does not. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I say hastily. “Just curious.”
Louise hums, putting my sandwich in the panini press. “Saw some of your demo at the Blossom Bash last weekend.”
“Oh yeah?”
“So did Noah King.”
