Page 25 of His Wilde Little
He shook his head, once more keeping several paces away. He walked to Mary’s stall and extended his hand to her, as if showing me he could do it, but his face winced the moment she stuck her tongue out and touched his skin, as if thinking he’d brought her something to snack on.
“Gold star,” I said. I’d seen them on him, occasionally half-sticking to his clothes.
“I wish you would,” he said, wiping his hand off on his shirt. “It would make coming out here and doing all of this worth it.”
I winked. “You think about what I’d reward you for, and I’ll think about getting some gold stars.”
“?” His eyes lit up, staring right into my soul. “Because I think that would actually motivate me to do more of—” he gestured with a hand to Mary’s face, “this.”
“If it helps you, then I don’t see why not.” I shrugged. “But I can’t be giving you gold stars all the time, you’ll get too reliant on them.”
He nodded. “I’ll think about what I can do to earn them then,” he said. “And you’ve already given me one, so I’m not going to forget that. What about stuff like, letting them eat right off my hand, and maybe even getting to the point of brushing them. Or you know, just standing close to them.”
“Sure, think about all that stuff while I take Bramble for a walk.” I also needed the walks to clear my mind about things. The conflict of feeling something for Jace and not wanting to get involved with someone who owned the place was pulling at me in all different directions. Relationships like that caused roots to grow, and I didn’t know if I wanted to grow my roots here. I was a Texan with immigrant folks, but a Texan, nonetheless.
Jace had talked about his stars and talked about how he’d used them ever since he was in high school for tracking his homework. I’d been too busy to even question what he used them for now, but now that I was curious, and with the excitement in his eyes, I knew there had to be something more to it.
After a thirty-minute walk around the ranch where Bramble would take long pauses to embrace the cool breeze rolling in from the surroundings mountains, we got back to thestable where Jace presented an idea to me in the notepad I’d been using for monitoring the horses.
Ok, so you give me a star every time I do one of these each day, and then if I get—uh I don’t know, like twenty stars, I get a reward,” he said.
Taking the bridle off Bramble and giving her a light brush down, I looked at the notes Jace was presenting me from the side, definitely further than I should’ve been straining to see. “The reward is the experience you get from doing all the things.”
He rolled his eyes. “But I also think a rewardrewardwould be a good thing as well.”
“And what type of reward?” I asked.
Batting his lashes and shrugging, there was something mischievous to his smile. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
I didn’t want that responsibility, but if it meant he was overcoming his horse fright and helping cut my work in half, I was willing to do anything—ok, almost anything.
11. JACE
Maybe something had clicked in the last month since he’d been teaching me how to get more comfortable around the horses, or maybe it was something he’d known this entire time about me, but I felt it.
He was offering me stickers to get better at it. I needed stickers like I need oxygen, it was a necessity to life itself, and especially my life. I left him that night in the barn with a head full of idea.
Each evening, on the walk back to the house, my mind would go wild with thoughts about what had happened in the day. While we hadn’t been any closer inthatway, we were so much closer physically. I leaned into his touches, and I lingered a little catching the occasional wave of his cologne, or natural fragrance that radiated from him. It was a vanilla musk, the type that I assumed would come from smoking a cigar but filled with vanilla bean instead of tobacco.
Or maybe it was because he was sleeping outside with the horses, and that’s where I drew the line. He hadn’t slept in the guest house since the horses arrived, only sometimes during the afternoon when I would occupy the stables after the petting zoo crowd died down, and more people wanting to just take pictures of the trees changing color as fall was upon us, I didn’t have to deal with too many people, just my animal friends.
My mom had left me a plate out with food, it was potatoes, beef, peas, some of the anemic looking carrots I assumed were pulled from the garden in the small allotment behind the house, and a side pot of gravy ready to be reheated.
“How are the horses doing?” my father asked, walking into the kitchen and stretching his back. He groaned out. “You know I’d be out there.”
“You should see someone about your back,” I told him, taking the ceramic pot of gravy to the microwave. “We could use a third hand.”
“Surely you’re getting better at handling the horses now,” he said, swotting his newspaper down on the island counter. “I mean, if my grandpa was here, he’d have probably forced you on Mary when she was still spry.”
“And that’s how trauma is formed,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
I sighed. “Nothing. I was just thinking about how you made all these decisions without consulting anyone, and then the rest of us picked up the slack.”
He returned my sigh, smacking a hand down on the newspaper. “I did this for you, all of you. Horses, like the ones we’ve rescued, they’re bringing income, and we need it. You know we’re not very liquid, everything is tied up in this place.”
Pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, pushing at my teeth, I didn’t want to say anything else. I knew Olivia had been going at him nearly daily for the last month, and we rarely saw each other since the horses quite literally cannibalized all my free time, except for the eight hours in bed, which I set aside a little bit for coloring, and hope I get to play a little too.
