Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 128313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Jasper glanced at me from the side of his eye. “I made you stay late.”
Okaayyy. He didn’t want to talk. Great. Maybe I’d mistaken the heat in his gaze at the fountain. Maybe I’d been wrong about it all and he really was just pissed at me for invading his family’s barn and seeing him upset.
I stared out the window, trying to take in the views, but the rain was lashing at the glass, and it was too black outside to see a thing anyway. All I saw was my reflection and my cheeks deflating when exhaling a long breath. But it felt like there was a crackle in the air between us, even more so, when in that same reflection, I saw Jasper look over to me and his tongue lick along his lips as he did.
I almost groaned again. I was so confused and overthinking every little thing.
“Can I put some music on?” I asked suddenly and turned to face him. It was that or ask him to pull over and put his tongue to other uses.
Jasper flicked the icon on his dash for music, and I began scrolling through the thousands of stations it offered. I smiled when I landed on a favorite.
As Lainey Wilson’s beautiful voice began pouring from the speakers, I couldn’t help my knee bouncing to the beat and singing along in a very low tone. Every time I heard this song, a pang of homesickness hit me. Not for Silvercrest, but for the ranch I only got to visit once a year if I was lucky. Three Hill Ranch. My true home.
I felt Jasper’s eyes on me. This time, when I turned to him, he didn’t look away. “Where in the south are you from?” His voice was tight and strained, like he’d had to force himself to speak to me. It made me smile a little, knowing that he clearly couldn’t take the tension of our weird standoff we’d found ourselves in either.
“Originally, Texas,” I said, and my mind instantly conjured up the magical glow of an orange sunset, the sound of crickets in the long grass and the dust from the cattle fields that would stick to your skin after a hard day’s ranching. Lainey sang of wildflowers and wild horses, and I understood the lyrics in a visceral sense. I knew what it was to be raised on those hardworking ranches and working dawn until dusk.
“Originally?” Jasper asked, taking me from my pangs of homesickness. His hands were still tight on the steering wheel, but he was talking, which was more than I thought I’d get on this journey.
“I moved to Florida when I was twelve.” I left it at that.
Jasper exhaled slowly, like he was allowing himself to lessen the pressure he had on keeping himself locked up tight, and said, “I’ve spent some time in Florida.” I was taken back to another memory as he said that. “Where in Florida are you from?”
“Ocala.”
“That’s where I once stayed,” he said, a hint of a question in his words. I watched him search my face, I assumed double-checking whether he knew me.
“I know,” I said, and Jasper’s suspicious expression demanded answers. I wiped my palms down the thighs of my leggings. “My aunt owns Silvercrest.”
Jasper frowned. “Jeanie?”
I nodded. “I went to live with her when I was twelve.” Silence met me. When I looked to Jasper, this time, his expression was softer, sympathetic. He got it. A kid didn’t leave their home in Texas to live with a relative in a completely different state unless there was tragedy involved.
“I like Jeanie. She knew my father well. I spoke to her on the circuit from time to time when she was there to check on the horses Silvercrest had trained,” he said. His uptight frame screamed that he kept a tight lid on everything. Every word he said seemed weighed and measured. It made me want to crack him open and see what was inside. To break the towering wall he kept himself hidden behind.
And to understand why.
But nevertheless, I smiled as he brought up my aunt. “She’s the best,” I said. “I miss her like crazy.”
Chris Stapleton came on the radio next, and I tapped my finger on my knee to the beat. I loved this song. “So from age twelve, you grew up at Silvercrest?” Jasper asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“It’s an incredible facility,” Jasper said, and that made me happy. My aunt had worked so hard to make it what it was.
“It is. The best in the US,” I said, proudly.
There was hesitation in Jasper’s frame, until he asked quietly, “What do you think of Golden Oaks?” There seemed to be an echo of vulnerability in his tone. It warmed my heart for some reason. Maybe it was because he always seemed so cold and closed off. Apart from seeing him with Henry the night he was drunk, and how affectionate he was to his stallion, he never gave off any warmth.