Page 57 of The Americana Playbook

I know I won’t ride him, but I can’t help myself.

“Hi, gorgeous.” I stop a few feet away, seeing if he’ll back off.

Gray paints his dark, lower muzzle and the strands of his forelock falling between his ears, telling his age. His large nostrils flare when he snorts out a breath. But it’s not agitated. It’s relaxed, like a sweet sigh. I extend my arm and hold out my palm before I move to let him know I’m coming and give him a chance to back away. He doesn’t.

Now closer, I hold my breath. On both sides of me, hay shifts and crunches beneath other hooves that stomp on the floor. But none of that manages to steal any of my focus.

My palm isn’t quite in the stallion’s face, just close enough that he can reach out if he wants to. I gasp quietly when he pushes his muzzle into my hand.

“Oh,” I whisper, overcome by the touch, by the magnificent but gentle feel of him. “Oh, you don’t seem all that grumpy.” I giggle when he munches against my hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t bring anything. I’ll come better prepared next time.”

But the horse doesn’t mind that I’m not feeding him an apple or carrot. He keeps nuzzling into me, even more when I bring up my free hand, running it up and down.

“Well, someone has a friend. This old guy is usually sulking in the corner.”

I frown because I swear, I can feel it—the way this horse craves touch. I know that feeling all too well. “What’s his name?”

“Midnight.”

Midnight seems to sense my shock before I even freeze. He backs away from the opening of his stall.

“We’ll hitchhike back to my parents’ stable and get on Midnight,” Sarah sings. “He’ll take us all the way down to Georgia. That’s what I named him after. That song. Well, that and he’s black like the dead of night.”

I tilt my head looking at the horse’s tail before staring at Abby, as if expecting to find Sarah hidden beneath her features. But I imagine the two of us—with our dark hair—resemble each other more than either of us do Sarah, and Sarah said her family’s horse farm was on the border of Hampshire County, far from here.

Coincidence, I tell myself.

“You about ready? I was thinking this guy over here might be good for you. He’s a big boy but a total gentle giant.” Abby walks back two stalls and clicks her tongue.

I smile when a chestnut-colored horse sticks his head out of the opening.

But as I help Abby saddle him up, my head keeps drifting back toward Midnight’s stall.

* * *

I smell Fitz—clean and freshly showered—as soon as I enter the apartment, bending to yank off my boots so I don’t track remnants of barn life all over the carpet.

“Hey.”

I grow a little woozy by the time I’ve righted myself. I’m not sure if it’s because I straightened too fast or if it’s the sight before me—Fitz in just a pair of gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

He tilts his head to the side, eyeing me curiously, his hair nearly black when wet. “You alright?”

Gawking. You’re gawking,Parker.

The fingers that hang at my side curl. I’ve felt the strength Fitz has built beneath his clothes, but seeing Fitz’s strength quite literally in the flesh hits different.Sodifferent I need to look away because I realize my mouth is still kind of open.

Stop. Gawking.

“Everything okay?” he repeats. “Parker?”

I rub my lips together. “You look fine.”

“What?”

I shake my head. “You said you were getting your ass handed to you. I figured that meant you were at the facility.”

“I was. Came home for a bit, but I’ve got to go out in an hour.”

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