Firefly Nights

CHAPTER 21.99

The air outside was sharp, but honest—sun just beginning to drag itself across the tops of the paddocks, casting long, blue-edged shadows that wouldn't warm by noon. The frost hadn't lifted yet. It clung to the fence rails in crystal webs and lined the hoof prints that trailed from the barn to the round pen like some story left half-told in the dirt.

Spice was already moving. Not fast. Not wild. Just moving the way a horse does when she knows she's being watched and hasn't decided yet if that's a threat or a promise.

Her breath rose in clouds, soft and even as she circled the edge of the round pen, hooves landing quiet in the packed snow. She wasn't running from anything now. Just... moving. Like she'd finally begun to believe the ground would stay beneath her when she stopped. That she didn't have to outrun it to be safe.

I leaned against the top rail, gloved hands wrapped around wood cold enough to bite. Jasmine stood in the center, coiled lunge line in one hand, a whistle resting loose between her teeth. She hadn't used it once—not today, not yesterday. Didn't need to. Her body spoke louder than the tool ever could. The way she carried her weight, the subtle shift of a shoulder, the calm in her stance—it all told Spice what to do without asking.

We'd been out here nearly every morning for three weeks now—boots in frost, breath clouding the same stretch of air—and the mare finally moved like the ground might belong to her.

She used to flinch at everything.

A birdcall. A loose hinge groaning in the wind. The scrape of my boot across gravel. That first week, she moved like a fuse already lit—each step tight with the promise of detonation. Eyes wide, breath jagged, like her lungs didn't know how to hold air that wasn't borrowed from panic. She didn't pace. She haunted—ghosting the perimeter of the pen like she'd been stitched together by fear and held there by habit.

But now... now she was watching.

Still. Listening in that careful, measured way. Not relaxed, not yet—but the edge had dulled. The wild was still in her, but it wasn't spilling everywhere anymore. It had roots now. A pulse, not a tremor.

Jasmine shifted her stance in the center of the round pen, just enough for the lunge line to arc, and Spice adjusted without hesitation—nose tilting inward, ears flicking back like she was tuned to a frequency only the two of them could hear. No whistle. No crop. No sharp correction. Just breath and balance. Just presence.

It was the kind of softness you didn't ask for. You waited, and if the horse decided you'd earned it, you held it like a secret.

Colt would've noticed it.

He always did, those quiet tells. He'd lean one hip into the rail, arms folded, jaw working slow behind the brim of his hat like he was chewing on some thought bigger than the moment. And then he'd say something plain but true, in that way he had, like, she's not spooked, Lem. She's waiting to see if you'll stay.

It used to frustrate me, how he'd boil things down that took me days to feel. But damn if he wasn't right more often than not. He saw through the noise. Found the question underneath the defiance. Always knew the difference between a runaway and a horse just trying to survive.

And I—I guess I always believed he'd still be standing here at the end of it.

That he'd be next to me now, watching her ease into herself. Watching her remember she had a body meant for more than fear. That we'd finish what we started, because that's what we did. Even when things cracked between us. Even when we didn't say the right things, or say anything at all. We stayed.

But he wasn't here.

And I didn't know why.

Not really.

Oh, I could list the reasons. I'd even tried, once or twice—lined them up like fence posts in my mind. The circuit. Nationals. The stretch of road between what we were and what we couldn't seem to be. The way we cracked, slow and silent, in places that didn't bleed but never quite healed either. All those reasons... they sounded real enough when I said them in my head.

But none of them explained why I was here.

Boots planted in the frost. Fingers burning through leather gloves. Watching Jasmine lay down the kind of quiet groundwork I used to think only he and I could shape together.

None of those reasons filled the space where he should've been. They didn't make sense of the hollow that pressed in between every breath, like the pen itself hadn't figured out he was gone. Like it kept holding shape around him, waiting for his weight to return to the rail, waiting for the soft click of his tongue, the shift of his bootheel in the dirt.

It felt like he'd just stepped out.

Just walked out of the barn for something and never came back.

Jasmine moved her hand, a small, fluid arc. Spice responded instantly, rounding into another clean circle without a hitch. There was no brace in her step anymore. No hard resistance in the hinge of her jaw or the set of her shoulders. The lunge line dipped between them like a thread made of trust instead of leather, slack and steady and earned/

I let my breath out slow. It caught in the folds of my scarf, turned white in the air like it had something to say before it vanished.

Strange, how someone could leave without slamming the door, and you'd still wake every morning to the sound of it echoing through the walls.

Jasmine didn't speak.

She stepped in instead, her silhouette drawn against the pale of morning like she belonged to the stillness more than the motion. The lunge line hung soft between her fingers, no tension, no ask. Just gravity and trust. Her boots crunched once in the frost, and that was all it took.

Spice came down to a walk without needing a cue. No whistle. No call. Just that shift in weight, that near-invisible pivot of intention, and the mare heard her. Heard and answered. Slowed. Settled. Stopped.

Her head lowered, not in submission, but in something gentler, something earned. Her breath came steady now, not sharp. Not braced. And when her shoulder brushed Jasmine's sleeve, it wasn't seeking comfort. It was confirmation. A touch that said: I'm still here. And this time, I stayed.

There was no tremble in her muscles. No shadow in her eyes. Only that rare stillness.

The line between them draped loose and low. Jasmine held it like it meant something. Like she knew what it cost to earn slack from a horse that once paced every edge of her fear. She didn't squeeze the rope. Didn't hold it tighter than she had to. Just enough to let Spice know she was there, and not going anywhere.

Her hand moved slow over the mare's withers. No pat. No praise. Just presence. Just weight. Just witness.

She didn't scan for flaw. Just checked the length of her, neck, shoulder, spine, like she was reading a map she'd already walked, and this was the final mile. She stepped back once, then turned toward me.

And when her eyes met mine, I saw it. Not pride. Not pressure. Just clarity. Just the quiet conviction of someone who's done the work and knows what it's worth.

The cold settled between us like breath between heartbeats. It didn't demand anything. Just waited.

Jasmine tilted her head. "Well?"

I didn't need a second look.

Didn't need a second thought.

I nodded, slow. Steady. Felt the ache in my throat before I spoke.

"She's ready."

So I turned toward the barn and went to make the call.