Page 54 of Trusting Blake
As I approach the stables, I spot Sheri’s curly blond hair inside, but I also spot a flash of strawberry blond belonging to a girl with her own unique taste in earrings.
“Savannah?” I say, stepping into the stables. “What are you doing here?”
Savannah and Sheri both pause. Savannah is wading around in rubber boots with a shovel, looking way too delighted to be cleaning up manure, and Sheri is sifting through paperwork at the small desk against the far wall where all the equipment is kept.
“Hey!” Savannah says. “I’m helping out your aunt!”
I glance at Sheri, intrigued, and she gets up from the old stool and shakes off the dust from her pants. “Having your help around here has made me realize that I can’t take care of these stables all on my own when you leave, Mila, and Savannah is great with the horses, so I thought she’d be perfect.”
“And I’m totally free labor!” Savannah chirps in. “This is my dream volunteer role. I can use this on my college applications next year.Savannah Bennett, senior stable-hand at the Harding Estate,” she intones dreamily.
“Ididoffer to pay her,” Sheri tells me, but Savannah declining payment is the most Savannah Bennett thing ever, and I have to laugh.
Sheri is right, though, Savannah is the right person to assist her, even though seeing her here makes me feel. . . well, jealous. I’ve been the one helping out over the summer, and I’ve enjoyed working alongside Sheri, but I have to leave, and now Savannah will be the one exercising the horses around the fields alongside Sheri instead. Life in Fairview will continue, but I won’t be part of it. I don’t like the way my throat turns dry at the thought of it.
“I was just telling Sheri that she should totally open a riding school,” says Savannah, leaping past me to gesture outside the stables to the rolling green fields. “Look at all this free space! All these empty fields that you guys don’t use!”
“AndIwas just telling Savannah that I’m not qualified to be an instructor,” Sheri says dismissively as she stacks folders away into a battered filing cabinet and slams the jerky metal drawers shut.
“But you could be!” Savannah protests. “You’d be a natural at it.”
I move to Fredo’s pen and he pokes his head over the door and nuzzles my neck, his hot breath tickling my skin. As I stroke his soft nose, I look at Sheri. “Savannah’s right. Whydon’tyou do something more with this place?”
“Oh, not you too, Mila!” Sheri exclaims. “This hasn’t been a working ranch for years, and the only reason we even still have the horses is because my mother loved them dearly. I do too, but I honestly owe it to her to keep them around.”
I scratch Fredo behind his ears. “These were Mawmaw’s horses?”
“Of course, Mila. Don’t you remember her out riding them every morning when you were young?” she asks, walking over. She leans back against the door to Fredo’s pen and looks at me over his long, expressive face. “Dad never wanted stables. It was only ever cattle and sheep we had here when your dad and I were kids, but Mom persuaded him for their wedding anniversary to build her these stables and line it with stallions.”
“Relationship goals,” Savannah says with a sigh, gazing off into the distance as though planning how one day she too will eventually twist her future spouse’s arm into building her her own personal stables.
“Dream on, sunshine,” Sheri snorts and pats Savannah on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in a second. I’m just going to check on Popeye.”
“I saw him rifling through his toolbox earlier,” I warn her, and she releases a groan of exasperation and takes off toward the house, though I doubt she stands any chance of getting him to put the screwdrivers down and his feet up instead.
“Will you take good care of Fredo for me when I’m gone?” I ask Savannah, pouting sadly. “He’s my favorite. We’ve really bonded this summer.” And perfectly on cue, Fredo whinniesinto my ear, lovingly nudging deeper into my neck. “Yes, Fredo, I’ll miss you too.”
“I promise,” Savannah says, and she holds out her pinky, which I interlock around mine. We exchange a smile and then she gets back to work in an empty pen, the shovel scraping the concrete floor.
“Blake called this morning,” I tell her, lingering at the door to the pen she’s working in. “He has a gig next week. Monday at Honky Tonk Central, so we all need to be there to hype him up.”
“Finally!” she says, flashing me the biggest grin. “That’s so cool. Some of us were hoping he’d perform at the tailgate last weekend. It was so boring without him taking charge of entertainment.”
“Yeah, how was that?” I ask, as casually as I can. Thanks to Lacey, I’m fully aware that the July tailgate party took place on Friday night, but of course, Blake and I were hours away in Memphis. The night may not have gone as planned, but I’m still glad I was there with Blake, rather than stuck playing games at the tailgate.
Savannah drops the shovel and nearly throws herself against the door, reaching over it to grab onto me in a flurry of excitement. “Nathan Hunt talked to me! Like,talkedto me. Not just ‘Hey, can you pass me a soda?’, but a real conversation. Then he liked my Instagram post the next morning! I was going to message him, but Tori said that would be lame and desperate, but if she’s such a feminist, why would she think it’s lame for the girl to make the first move? You know?”
“Caaaaalm,” I say slowly, placing my hands on her shoulder. I take some deep breaths, nodding for Savannah to copy, and her cheeks flare with color. How will I ever survive back home without a babbling Savannah in my life?
“Sorry,” she apologizes. We let go of one another and she heads back to continue her shoveling, telling me over her shoulder, “But yeah. Barney took Blake’s role as host, and Lacey was clearly annoyed that Blake wasn’t there because apparently he told her he would be? I don’t know. She didn’t smile the whole night. Meanwhile, Myles and Cindy suspiciously disappeared onto the baseball field for twenty minutes, but I don’t even want toimaginewhat they were doing.” She shudders.
“I’m really starting to dislike Lacey,” I gripe, grinding my teeth in frustration.
I’m so sick of this girl and her sweet, angelic smiles. Blake ismyboyfriend, and although she may have dated him before me, he dumped her at the end of the day. It feels seriously twisted how she’s still pursuing a guy who’s with someone else, and I don’t like knowing that soon I won’t be around. My being gone might give Lacey the nerve to parade herself around Blake even more. And considering she doesn’t hesitate to make moves on him in front of my face, I dread to think what exactly she will do when I’m not here. I trust Blake, I do, but he just doesn’t seem to notice that Lacey has an agenda when it comes to him.
I’m hoping and praying I can stay in town for a little while longer. I really want her to get the message that, in spite of LeAnne’s cozy dinner invites, she’s no longer part of Blake’s life.
Savannah has turned back to cleaning the stall and while she’s hard at work, I stealthily creep toward the back of the stables. Saddles, helmets, and reins all hang from the wall. Grooming and cleaning tools overflow from dusty trays, and on the old rickety desk, I zero in on a folder that Sheri has left out. I flip it open – it’s insurance paperwork for the horses, all neatly organized in plastic sheet protectors – and scan my way through each page until I find Fredo’s paperwork. With a quick glance over my shoulder to ensure Savannah isn’t paying attention, I grab the IDs from my back pocket and slip them inside the sheet protector, then slam the folder shut and file it away in the cabinet.
