We stepped out into the morning, the cold tugging at the edges of our coats, the light stretched thin but golden—smeared across the sky like honey left too long in the jar. The porch creaked behind us as the wind brushed through the cedars. My boots pressed down on frost-silvered grass that crackled underfoot, but his steps were quieter, steadier.
I waited for him to speak, but he didn't. So I did.
"So where are we going?"
"There's a spot I found a while back," he said, eyes scanning the horizon like it held the memory in its shape. "Figured you might like it."
I didn't ask where. Just nodded, adjusting the edge of my coat as we moved past the porch steps and into the slow breath of morning. Colt carried the basket over one shoulder, careful not to jostle it too much, and I walked beside him, matching his pace though I wasn't sure where we were headed. Maybe that was the point.
The land stretched out before us like something still half-asleep. Grass gone pale and brittle with the season, scattered patches of snow tucked in the folds of the earth. The Absarokas stood off in the distance, sharp-edged and dusted in early white, their ridgelines biting into the pale sky like a promise you couldn't outrun. And closer—the rolling foothills, rising and falling like the back of some great sleeping animal, ribs heaving slow beneath dried sage and bare-limbed aspen.
The ground beneath us was frozen shallow, thawed just enough at the surface to be slick in spots, soft in others. My boots found the steady parts by instinct, stepping where his did. The scent of cedar followed us from the grove behind the barn, and somewhere far off, a hawk cried once, its wings slicing through the blue like it didn't notice the cold at all.
We didn't talk much.
Sometimes with Colt, that's how I knew something mattered—when the silence felt deliberate, not empty.
I glanced at him once, watching the way he moved—shoulders squared beneath that worn jacket, hair still damp at the collar, jaw set not in tension, but in thought. The basket strap cut diagonally across his chest, leather worn smooth by time and use.
We passed a tangle of old cattle fence, half-collapsed under the weight of seasons. Beyond it, dry willow branches clicked together in the breeze, brittle and ghost-colored. A mule deer bounded through the trees just up ahead—startled by our approach, but not frightened enough to bolt completely. She paused at the crest of a hill, her breath visible in short, warm bursts, before vanishing into the brush with the kind of grace I'd only ever seen in wild things that had never once asked permission to exist.
It had been about twenty-five minutes since we'd left the house, though time didn't hold shape out here. It moved different in the hills—longer, looser, like it had to stretch to fit the silence between each step.
The incline caught me off guard—nothing steep, just constant. Enough to draw heat into my legs and breath into my chest, sharper than before. I didn't mention it. Just pulled my coat tighter and pressed into the rhythm of Colt's stride, letting the sound of our boots against frozen soil anchor me. His steps were steady. Mine followed.
Above us, the sky opened wider. The pines thinned into scrub, and the breeze picked up, pulling ribbons of cold air down from the high ridgelines. Somewhere behind us, the cedar grove disappeared from view. Ahead—nothing but sagebrush, junipers, and the faint shimmer of the Absaroka range, jagged and snow-laced like a scar against the horizon.
Still, the silence stretched long.
I broke it carefully.
"You sure you know where we're going?"
YOU ARE READING
Firefly Nights
Não Ficção▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance There's a kind of wild you can't outrun. Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
