I’d been holding onto all night and look up at him. The dish that I was holding started shaking in my hand. But then, thankfully, my brother came back inside.
“Those horses sure to like it when the cooler weather starts to come around,” Scott said.
He paused and looked up at us for a minute, and I was afraid that he might have suspected something.
“I can’t remember, DeShawn, did we ever take you horseback riding?” Scott asked.
Whew. Got out of that one again.
“No, I don’t think so,” DeShawn answered before turning back to me. “I’d like to go some time. Maybe tomorrow? All three of us can go.”
“I can’t,” I said abruptly. “I have work to do. I’m sure that we all have work to do.”
I set down the dishes, realizing that DeShawn wasn’t going to let up on this course tonight. He seemed bound and determined to get me to talk with him and make plans to spend time together, and I just couldn’t. I walked right past the both of them toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Scott asked.
“To check the stables.”
“But I just did,” he said.
“You always forget something,” I snickered.
“She’s not wrong about that,” Scott laughed as he went to sit back down with DeShawn and spend some more time with his friend before the night was over.
I had to get out of the house. I needed to go lose myself in some work for a while. I walked out without turning around and heard the screen door slam closed behind me.
It was cool outside, and the night air was ripe with the scent of approaching autumn. There was always work to be done on the farm, so there was never a shortage of available distractions. My brother was right; the horses did love the cooler air. They were all full of spitfire when I came into the stables, and the sound of their whinnying was a welcome one that pushed other thoughts out of my head. I reached into a nearby hanging bucket and pulled out a half piece of cut apple to hold out to one of my favorite stallions. His name was Ebony, and he was the darkest, inky color of black that I had ever seen. He was one of the largest horses and also one of the most stubborn. I tossed a pile of blankets down onto the ground in the corner of the stable and sat and looked into Ebony’s stall. I wondered what kinds of things horses thought about in the wee hours of the night if they weren’t asleep. I knew what kinds of things I thought about, and they made my words to DeShawn a complete lie when I had told him that I hadn’t been thinking about us at all. It was practically the only thing that I’d thought about since the day we had made love. Well, that and the stress of making sure Scott and I didn’t lose the farm.
I felt bad that I had turned my back on DeShawn for a second time, but I just couldn’t deal with any of this right now. I was feeling unusually stressed and emotional, and I felt even more overwhelmed than I had been.
Ebony looked at me impatiently, wanting another apple slice, so I got up and gave him one. Then, I went to go grab the horse blankets since it was going to be a cool night. Focusing on farm work always helped. I lifted the weighted blankets down from the wall and went to put one on Ebony first, but he pulled away and stomped his foot against the ground.
“What?” I said to him as I set the blanket back down and rubbed the top of his nose with my hand. “Don’t you want a blanket? You’re going to be cold.”
Ebony’s dark eyes looked at me, and for a minute, I felt homesick for being in the place underneath DeShawn and looking into his deep, dark eyes.
“You’re every bit as stubborn as I am, aren’t you?” I said to the horse.
I gave him a last pat and then tossed the blankets down alongside the other ones. I wondered how long it would be before DeShawn left for the night. I didn’t want to walk back into the house and be tortured and tempted anymore tonight. Instead, I looked around and found something else to do. There was a patch of wood in the side of the barn that had rotted and needed fixing. It wasn’t