Firefly Nights

CHAPTER 22.33

The mornings had been ours.

The Westons were supposed to show earlier in the week, but weather, business, or some excuse wrapped in polite distance kept them from coming. We didn't press. Didn't need to. Their absence felt like a door left open, quiet permission to keep going the way we were. So we did.

The work wasn't fast or flashy. It was the kind that asked for patience, not performance. Desensitizing, flag work, saddle blankets laid out like old prayers. Our hands moved steady, careful, like maybe the wind had ears and we didn't want to spook it.

Spice didn't need fixing. Not really. What she needed was to remember.
And remembering's never just about the horse. It's about you, too.

Some mornings, Jasmine would lean against the top rail, arms folded, voice soft and even like a song with no chorus. Just steady notes meant to say: I'm here. No rush.

Other times I'd bring out that old coat of mine, the one that still held the scent of cedar shavings and dust from the tack shed. I'd toss it over the saddle horn, same as I always did, and watch Spice clock it with those deep, amber eyes. She didn't spook anymore. Not really. Just blinked, slow and thoughtful, like she was giving it a fair shake.

The fear had started to lose its grip. Curiosity was moving in, inch by inch. You could see it in the way she stood just... listening. Willing.

It was a morning like that, sunlight brittle and blue on the snow, the kind of cold that clung to your lashes and made the air feel thin. I'd just finished brushing down Spice, steam still rising off her back in slow curls, and the brush was resting easy in my hand when then I heard it. The crunch of tires. The shift of gravel. That low, growling engine that didn't belong to this place.

Black truck. Chrome loud against the light.

I didn't need to see the plates. Didn't need to squint through the glare. You don't have to see a storm to know it's coming, you feel it first. Tight in your ribs. Pressed behind your eyes. Like something in you already knows to brace.

Rhett Weston.

And hitched behind him, gleaming too clean for January roads, was the trailer.

I didn't move. Just kept my hand on Spice's neck, the brush forgotten mid-stroke. Her skin twitched once under my glove. She didn't spook. Didn't snort. But I felt it in her, something shifting. Quiet alertness, like she'd felt this storm, too.

The passenger door flung wide like it had someplace to be, and out came a blur, braid flying, boots skidding across the gravel before she found her footing and made a beeline for the fence.

I didn't need an introduction.

Americus Weston.

I'd never shared a word with her, but I'd heard plenty. You couldn't live this close to the wire and not pick up the stories that clung to certain names like burrs. Hers was always in motion, passed from mouth to mouth with the kind of half-smirked people save for bar brawls, wild cards, and the daughters of families that never bother playing by the rules.

They said she once got banned from a state fair for "inappropriate livestock conduct," though nobody ever clarified if it was verbal or physical. They said she smoked clove cigarettes she didn't light and that Rhett once caught her threatening a bull with a hairbrush. They said her daddy worried she'd never marry and her mama worried she'd never stop running.

But I'd learned not to trust the shape of a girl built from other people's retellings.

Especially not when I knew how it felt to be one.