Page 7 of Saddle Studs
“Not rock either. Country?”
I switched to a Zack Bryan song and the crow immediately calmed down.
“Right, shoulda guessed.” I chuckled to myself and slowed to a stop at another intersection. I grabbed my phone and decided to send Carlos one more message. Maybe a picture of the bulge he gave me every time he crossed my mind.
I opened the app and went to click on his message, except—no.
There was no fucking way… holy fuck.
Our chat chain wasn’t there. The profile photo of his tanned and muscular chest had disappeared. Vanished.
Poof.
He blocked me.
That mother fucking tractor-faced bitchblockedme.
What a joke. What a goddamned joke this all was. I closed out of the app and went a step further, holding down on the screen until the apps did their little tap-dance of death. I deleted Grindr from my phone and tossed it onto the back seat.
Fuck men. Fuck games. Fuck it all.
It was me and my new crow sidekick from here on—“ah!”
I hadn’t realized the crow was on the move. It hopped over the center console and onto my lap. It pecked weakly at my thigh, which made me tense so fucking hard I thought I was about to snap the steering wheel in half. I didn’t want it thinking there was a worm around for it to eat.
God, birds are so fucking creepy.
3
SAM
Rainbow Ranch was justhow I remembered it and completely different at the same time. The tree I’d always used as a base for freeze tag was still there, but everything else around it seemed to have been cleared by a tornado. The main home was still the same, too, just with a fresh coat of white paint, a new black door with a fancy glass window, and a relaxing porch that still smelled like the fresh wood they had used to build it. Planters full of pastel-colored lilies hung off the pristine white rail.
Damn, did I have some memories around here. Most of them great memories, some of them the complete opposite.
“Sam!”
Beau was the first to greet me. He came bounding out of the front door like a lab running toward a soldier returning home from war. I wrapped him in a tight hug. Aside from Benny, Beau was the closest Adams sibling to me. He always felt like the big brother I never had. We liked the same music, enjoyed the same sports—basketball and football—and shared a similar sense of humor. There was a bit of an age gap and a general distaste of texting from both of us that made keeping in touch difficult, but seeing him today felt like no time at all had passed.
“How’s it going, bro?”
“Great,” Beau answered with a beaming smile. “Wasn’t expecting any of this to happen, though.”
“Neither was I.”
“Sorry about Frankie,” Beau said, reaching out and giving my elbow a squeeze. “I remember you two were close.”
“We were. He kept the whole mini-horse and parcel of land a secret, though.” I chuckled and shot a quick glance up toward the pearly blue sky. “I’m not here to take any of it, just so you know.”
“I know,” Beau said, “Although if I’m being honest, maybe you can take Dennis. He’s a mean little bugger.”
Another peel of laughter rolled from my chest. “Is he? Well, I doubt I could take him back with me to Jersey, but maybe I can rehabilitate him while I’m here.”
“You know much about horses?”
“Not a damn thing,” I said.
Beau smiled wide at that. He reached around me and grabbed my suitcase before I could brush him off. I didn’t want this to feel like a hotel stay. I came back here to work, to connect with my roots, and to let go of all the bullshit (and failure) that haunted me back in the city. “I got it,” I said, grabbing a sliver of the handle.
