YARA Dean stays on another week, some ongoing matter with Beau about land and money that never seems to actually conclude, and by the fourth day Nola’s decided the polite thing to do with a houseguest who rides is to put him on a horse.
“Rhett will take you out,” she announces at breakfast, like this was always the plan and not something she’s inventing over her coffee.
“Yara too.
She’s the only one of us who can actually keep up with him.” Rhett grins at that, easy and unbothered the way he is about most things.
My brother has never once resented me for being better on a horse than he is, which is more than I can say for most of what I’m better at in this family.
“It’s true,” he offers, warm and unguarded.
“She’ll leave you in the dust, Callahan.
Fair warning.” “I’ll take my chances,” Dean drawls, low and amused, and something in the way he says it makes my stomach do something complicated.
Yasmin comes too, though nobody asks her to, appearing at the stables in a riding habit that looks like it was tailored for a magazine spread rather than an actual ride, golden hair already perfect under her hat.
She takes the gentlest mare in the stable, the one meant for children and nervous first-timers, and I don’t think anything of it until we’re an hour into the ride and I understand exactly why she chose it.
We set out along the river trail, the four of us, Rhett and Yasmin falling in easy conversation behind, and Dean falls in beside me without either of us deciding it out loud.
His horse, a rangy chestnut gelding from Beau’s stable, moves like it already trusts him.
Callahan strikes me as a man animals either love instantly or fear instantly, nothing in between.
“You actually know how to ride,” he observes, watching the way I sit the horse rather than fight it.
“Most of the women I’ve met in this town look like they’re posing for a painting up there.” “I’ve been riding since I could walk.” I let my horse pick up the pace, just slightly, testing him.
“It’s the one thing in this family nobody’s ever managed to make me do wrong.” “Bet that’s not for lack of trying,” he says, dry.
I glance at him.
He’s not looking at me, eyes on the trail ahead, but there’s something too precise about the comment, like he already understands more about my house than a stranger should after four days at the dinner table.
“What makes you say that?” I ask, sharper than I mean to.
“You’ve got the look of somebody who’s spent her whole life being told she’s doing something wrong.” He shrugs, careless on the surface, though his jaw tightens when he says it.
“I recognize it.” “That’s a strange thing to say to somebody you’ve known for four days,” I counter.
“Maybe.” He finally looks at me, steady.
“Doesn’t make it untrue.” We ride ahead without deciding to, the distance between us and Rhett and Yasmin stretching out slow and easy until their voices fade into the general hush of the woods, hooves on packed dirt, birds arguing somewhere overhead.
It should feel wrong, riding alone with a man I barely know.
It doesn’t.
It feels like the first honest conversation I’ve had in this house in longer than I can remember.
Dean goes quiet for a stretch of trail, long enough that I glance over to see what’s changed.
He’s watching me, not the path ahead, something working behind his eyes like he’s deciding whether to say what he’s thinking.
“Tell me something true,” he says finally, the kind of demand that would sound arrogant from anyone else and somehow doesn’t from him.
“Something true like what?” I ask.
“Anything.
Something you’ve never said out loud to anybody in that house.” I almost laugh it off.
I don’t, because something about the way he asks makes it feel less like flirtation and more like an actual question, one he genuinely wants answered.
“I don’t think Nola’s ever really looked at me,” I admit, surprised at how easily it comes, like it’s been sitting behind my teeth for years waiting for someone to finally ask.
“Not really looked.
Like I’m always slightly out of focus to her, and Yasmin’s the only one who’s ever fully in the picture.” He’s quiet a moment, considering that.
“That true for your whole life?” he asks, even.
“As far back as I can remember.” “Must be exhausting,” he says, plain, no pity in it, just a statement of fact, “being the one who’s always slightly out of focus.” “You have no idea,” I mutter.
“Try me,” he counters.
I look at him, and something about his face, steady, patient, waiting without pushing, makes me want to keep talking in a way I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone in years.
“It’s like living in a house full of mirrors,” I say, “and they all reflect the same person.
You start to wonder if you’re actually standing there at all.” “You’re standing there,” he states, immediate, certain, like there’s no version of reality where that’s up for debate.
“Trust me.
I noticed you the second I came up that drive.” Heat climbs up my neck before I can stop it.
“That supposed to be a compliment?” I ask.
“It’s supposed to be true,” he says, plain, no charm laid over it, no polish, and that’s exactly what makes it land so hard.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.
Waste of breath.” Behind us, out of earshot, though I don’t know it yet, Yasmin slows her mare, letting the distance open up between us until Dean and I have rounded the bend ahead and dropped out of sight entirely.
Only then does she nudge her horse close beside Rhett’s, her voice dropping into the low, confiding register she uses when she wants something to feel like a secret instead of a suggestion.
“Doesn’t it seem fast?” she murmurs.
“They’re just talking, Yas,” Rhett says, unbothered.
“I’m sure that’s all it is,” she offers, soft, worried, exactly the voice of a sister who only wants what’s best.
“It’s only, you know how she gets.
So desperate for attention she’ll latch onto anyone who shows her the slightest kindness.
I’d just hate to see her heart broken again.
Or yours.” Rhett doesn’t answer right away, but I’d know, if I could see his face, exactly what’s crossing it.
Something planted, small and quiet, the kind of seed that doesn’t need tending, only time.
I don’t hear any of that.
I’m too far ahead, too caught up in the low, steady sound of Dean’s voice beside me, when his horse suddenly plants its feet and shies hard sideways, ears pinned flat, a rattlesnake coiled tight in the leaves just off the trail.
I pull my own horse up short, heart hammering, but Dean’s already moving, low in the saddle, one hand steady on the gelding’s neck.
He makes a sound.
Low.
Guttural.
Not a word, not a whistle, not anything a human throat should be able to produce, a sound that rolls out of his chest like something ancient waking up.
A vibration that reaches across the space between our horses and settles somewhere behind my own ribs, strange and resonant, like a tuning fork struck against bone.
The gelding stills instantly.
Ears forward.
Calm, like nothing happened at all.
I sit frozen in my saddle, staring at Dean, my pulse loud in my own ears.
No human makes that sound.