Page 127 of Crystal Iris
“I… wanted to be useful, while staying here.”
“Useful? Aren’t you my brother’s girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” Hoyt asks, hearing us. He’s wearing a leather hat. I’ve never seen him in anything but baseball caps. It suits him.
“I didn’t…” I look at him.
“Isn’t she?” Johanna asks Hoyt.
He walks toward me and asks, “Are you?”
I keep working. I don’t know what we are. “It’s complicated,” I tell his sister.
“You got her a love sigil?” Johanna looks at Hoyt.
He nods.
“A what?” I ask, but he’s already moving away to check on Mona.
“In our family, the tradition is… when you find the one, your supposed soulmate, you buy them a horse. My family calls them a love sigil,” Johanna explains. “It’s ridiculous, but the Locklears have been doing it… well, forever. My dad used to tell us stories about it.”
I take in her words.
“I didn’t know what it… meant,” I tell her.
“I think we’ve established that you’re his girlfriend,” she says, following her brother outside.
Hoyt is in the ring, trying to rein in Mona without much luck.
“That horse won’t be ridden—mark my words. She’s too wild. She’s seen too much. Even if she ever trusts someone, it’s going to take years,” Johanna says from my left.
I look at Mona, my own horse, shining beautifully in the sun, so wild and brave. Then my gaze shifts to Hoyt.A love sigil?That’s way more than I expected when I decided to come here for the summer.
I meet Akira inside when I finish with the hooves. She’s hunched over her computer in the kitchen.
“Hi,” I say, sitting across from her.
“Hey.” She closes her laptop.
“I’m sorry, I’ve barely spoken to you since you got here.”
“That’s okay. Your hands are full.”
“Are you okay? I couldn’t help but sense the tension last night between you and Broc.”
“Yeah, it’s… I don’t know. He doesn’t get it. We’re from different worlds, this would never work. He just… doesn’t get it.”
“It’s not impossible.”
“It is, Iris, and you know it. I work at Harvard. I’m an astrophysicist. He’s a cowboy.”
“Horse trainer.”
“We are not you and Hoyt. We don’t have to… we don’t have a reason to do this.”
“What do you mean?”
She points at the prism.
