“There you go,” he praises when my fingers brush down her jaw. “This is Sweet Pea.”
I coo at the animal like she’s a baby, and he chuckles.
“Wanna take her for a ride?”
I step away immediately. “That’s not—”
“You can ride with me,” he offers, and I step back as he opens the fence and begins to put the saddle on her.
My heart is pounding in my chest as I watch him hoist himself on the creature’s back. My mouth runs dry when he reaches a hand out for me. I never pictured myself climbing on a horse, but with Deacon’s help it doesn’t end up as awkward as I thought it would be.
“Hold on to the saddle horn,” he instructs, and my hands clasp it without thinking because all I can feel is the heat of his body against my back. “We’ll go slow.”
Instead of holding only to the reins with both hands like I’ve seen in movies, he positions the leather in one hand and uses his other arm to wrap around my waist. I’m grateful for the extra safety, but then the manly scent of his skin infiltrates my nose and I’m lost. My body barely registers the jostling as he directs Sweet Pea out of the barn and toward an open field.
“It’s a beautiful day to ride.”
His words are a whisper in my ear, his chin nearly resting on my shoulder, and I almost let myself take in the green grass and rolling hills, but then his fingers flex on my waist making it impossible to see or feel anything other than where he’s touching me.
I don’t know how long we ride or the distance we travel because my eyes flutter closed. Wind whips my hair and birds chirp in the distance; the serenity of the moment only interrupted by the occasional snort from Sweet Pea.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“Mmm hmm,” I answer without bothering to open my eyes.
“Let’s take a break.”
I open my mouth to tell him I don’t want a break, that I want to be lost in this moment forever, but I understand he needs to take a break when he shifts me to help lower me from the saddle. He doesn’t mention the erection I felt against me right before I climb off. He doesn’t make some crude comment about him getting hard, and it’s in that moment that I realize Deacon Black isn’t the boy I knew years and years ago. He’s a man, one not controlled by his body’s reaction to minor friction.
He does keep his back to me when he jumps off, and I turn to face the trickling stream we’ve stopped at to give him the privacy he needs to get himself back under control.
If things were different, if my best friend wasn’t missing and we didn’t have such animosity from our past, I would have reached for him. I would’ve reminded him with my mouth pressed to him just how good our last kiss was. But we are tangled together with a history filled with so many knots, the possibility of having something with each other, the ability to give ourselves to each other is an impossibility.
“All of this is your land?” I ask, tossing small stones from the bank into the water.
He coughs behind me, but I still keep my back turned. “Yeah. I inherited it when Gramps died four years ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say instinctively. “Were you close?”
I feel his presence beside me, but the heat in my cheeks from picturing how different this day could be keeps me from looking over at him.
“We weren’t when I was younger, but he sort of became my best friend after I got out of the Army.” He tosses a larger stone into the water, creating a rippling effect that gives me something to concentrate on until the movement of the stream evens it back out again. “I wasted a lot of time being a hard ass. Had I known he wasn’t going to be around longer, I would’ve done things differently.”
Another stone in the water, another reason not to look at him.
“Yeah.” I toss my handful of pebbles and rub my hands together to wipe away the fine dirt left behind. “Regret sucks.”
I’m no stranger to the emotion. I lived mostly for myself as a kid, but Zeni’s death in high school opened my eyes in a way nothing short of losing someone you love could. She was two years younger than me, but that shouldn’t have made a difference. Had I not been so selfish, maybe I would’ve seen the signs, maybe I would’ve been able to help. I didn’t because I was too busy worrying about boys and dances and whether I was going to get to go shopping every weekend.
“You okay?”
I jerk when Deacon touches my shoulder, and he pulls his hand back immediately when all I want to do is wrap my arms around his waist, bury my nose in his shirt, and tell him that I don’t care about our past. I want to explain that I don’t understand exactly why I feel this pull to him when I spent years actively hating him. I want to beg him, ask him if he feels it too, or to at least tell me I’m crazy and we aren’t like two magnets being drawn to each other.