I can’t help it. I grin.
This is freedom.
We ride out past the stables, past the east paddocks, through a gate that opens onto a dirt track I haven’t seen before. The ranch stretches out around us in every direction; it almost seems endless. “You okay to pick up the pace a little?” Hunter asks.
“Define a little.”
“A trot. Nothing crazy.”
“Will I bounce?”
“Yeah. A lot. Rise with her rhythm. Up, down, up, down. You’ll feel it.”
I burst into laughter. “Yeah. Kinda sounds like something I’m good at.”
“Damn right you are, pretty girl.”
He clicks his tongue, and Tornado moves into a trot. Penny follows automatically.
And I bounce. A lot.
The first thirty seconds are a disaster. I’m being jolted around like a rag doll, my teeth rattling, my hands grabbing for anything solid. But then I find it. The rhythm. Up when she goes up. Down when she comes down. My body starts to sync with hers, and the chaos smooths out into something that almost feels natural.
“Hunter!” I shout. “I’m doing it!”
“Yeah, you are!” he calls back, and the pride on his face makes my chest expand until I think my ribs might crack.
We ride for another twenty minutes. The track narrows, winding through clusters of mesquite and juniper, then opens up again as we crest a low ridge.
And then I see it.
A lake, tucked into a basin between two gentle slopes, the water is so still it mirrors the sky perfectly. Beyond it, the mountains. Not distant anymore. Close enough that I can seethe texture of the rock, the dark lines of canyons, the way the shadows pool in the valleys.
I pull Penny to a stop. I don’t even think about how I do it. My hands and my body just know. “Hunter,” I breathe. “This is…”
I don’t have the word. Beautiful doesn’t cover it. Stunning is too small. There is no word in any language I know for the feeling of standing at the edge of something so vast and untouched that it makes every problem you’ve ever had feel like a speck of dust.
“This is my favorite place on the ranch,” he says, pulling Tornado up beside me.
“I come here when I need to think. When everything gets too loud.” He looks out at the water. “My dad used to bring me here when I was Wyatt’s age. We’d sit right there on that bank and fish until the sun went down.”
My throat tightens.
“And at night,” he says, turning to look at me, “this whole basin fills with fireflies.”
My eyes sting.
“Fireflies?”
He nods. A smile that’s softer than anything I’ve ever seen on him.
“That’s why I call you that, Lola. You walked into my life like a light in a place I thought was dark. My firefly.”
I press my hand over my mouth, and the tears come before I can stop them. They’re not sad tears, not scared tears. They are the kind that happen when something slots into place so perfectly that your body doesn’t know how to contain it.
“Will you bring me back here at night?” I ask. “I want to see them.”
“Anytime you want.”