Twenty-Six

CASPER

“Come on, Soldier. Get your ass in the trailer.” I yank on his harness.

He shakes his big head and plants his front hooves more firmly on the ramp. His brown eyes study me under thick gray lashes. I swear he’s got something to say about leaving this town. Or maybe leaving her. Mandy.

“Come on.” I growl in frustration. “We have to go. We’ve reached the end of the road here.”

He sucks in his wide barrel chest and blows a hot snort of breath from both nostrils. Then he tosses his mane again. His hooves echo in the dark as he steps back not once, but twice.

“Fuck you too,” I mutter at him. “Now get in the trailer before I sell you for dog food.”

It’s an empty threat and he knows it. He barely pricks his ears up at the turn our conversation is taking. Juliette would have laughed at me, and then she would have marched right up to him, pressed her face to his and crooned to the big baby. He was the real love of her life. The two of them were inseparable, they were conquering their world, and I got taken along for the ride. She was never going to give that up to come home with me. Just like Mandy would never give up on chasing her idea of Mister Right because I happened to have fallen for her.

I take his big head between my hands and press my forehead to his. His coat is soft and warm against my skin and smells like sunshine and comfort. “You are all I have left, Soldier. It’s just you and me on this ride now. Our Juliette’s gone. Mandy doesn’t feel about me like I feel about her. Moira wants to take you away from me. There’s nothing else to do but to move on. Now can you please, please, please get in the trailer?”

He blinks those long horsey eyelashes, and doesn’t move a muscle. Not a fucking one.

“Damn it, why can’t you do what I’m asking?” I stare him down. “We have to go. Now. We need to get loaded up and on the road before Moira finds out you’re here. And you can’t wait for Mandy to say goodbye. She’s not coming. She doesn’t care about us like that. She’s got her own plans. We’re not part of them.”

Soldier takes another step back. The ramp shifts under our feet. The chains that hold it in place rattle.

I can’t handle any more. Can’t stand being so close to where Mandy is. Not when I can’t stop imagining her with Sam. The two of them together.

“Why are you being such a fucking asshole?” I yell at him. “What do you want me to do? She’s going to be happy with him. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?” He doesn’t make a noise. Simply stares at me while I rant. I can practically hear him telling me I’m being an idiot. The tension falls away and I’m choked with hopelessness. “This is how it is. I told her how I felt. She wasn’t interested. What else do you want me to do?”

I turn my back on him and stalk up the ramp. I need a moment. A minute. I need to catch a breath. “Christ, why can’t you behave like a normal run of the mill pony? You’ve got five minutes and when I come back you better get on the trailer or I am going to—”

“Why are you threatening the poor boy?” Mandy asks, hopping up on the ramp and comforting Soldier. He snorts softly and his sides move with his breath as he mouths the hand she uses to pet his nose. Still dressed in silver, her hair hanging loose down her back, she addresses him. “Don’t mind Cas. He’s extra grumpy tonight. Things didn’t go the way he would have liked them to. You see, I don’t know French. Unless you count ‘croissant.’ I suppose that would have to actually be a French word, right? Ooh, and Brie? Maybe Camembert.”

“What are you doing here?” I drink her in, from the tip of her silvery halo to the dust on her bare feet. In one hand she carries her strappy shoes and matching purse from earlier. “Where’s your boyfriend? Where’s perfect Sam? How’d you find us?”

“He couldn’t stick around.” She shrugs, not taking her gaze off Soldier as he lifts his nose to the sky.

“What do you mean Sam couldn’t stick around? Did he leave you? If you tell me he took you back to his place and then left I’ll kick his ass.” I start forward, bunching my fists at my side even as my heart takes notice of the fact that she’s here, and she’s alone.

“No.” She smiles. “We’re friends, he and I. We’re supposed to be friends. We got some help from Razer, and Dylan and Gabe. Then we split up the closest stables until we found you. Sam called to tell them we’d tracked you down when he dropped me at the top of the drive. Do you think Soldier can smell rain? There’s supposed to be a storm to break the heat later tonight.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I glance up at the sky. It’s dark. Surprisingly starless, and there’s a heaviness to the air, an oppressive humidity that suggests she’s right. “That’s beside the point. What happened with Sam?”

“It wasn’t him,” she says. “Getting what I wanted wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. It turns out I don’t much care for it the way I thought I would.”

 “What do you mean?”

“It was odd,” she says looking at me for the first time as she walks up the ramp. “I was there with Sam. In his restaurant. And we were kissing, and all I could think was, Cas would be hungrier, he’d be more demanding in the way he kissed me and touched me. He’d mean it more, feel it more. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about how you kissed someone else, and it hurt so much to watch. I couldn’t stand there and see you do it, which doesn’t make any sense, you know, because we’re nothing to each other, right?”

She stops in front of me, and I clear my throat. Maybe she’s not here without Sam because she wants me, but I have to try and tell her that I wish she’d choose me. But she puts her hand over my mouth as I go to speak. “And then Sam told me I would be easy to love. That anyone could fall for me. And all I could think was, Not Cas. He could never feel like that about me, and I started crying, and I couldn’t stop because I could feel that way about you. Knowing I might never see you again. I couldn’t bear it. Logically I had everything I’d wanted and planned on my whole life in the palm of my hand, and I was already miserable because Sam isn’t you.”

“You couldn’t stand the idea of me kissing someone else?” I raise my eyebrows, really take in her expression. The sadness that mutes the green of her eyes and makes them closer to gray. The indent of her teeth on her bottom lip as though she’s been worrying it half the evening. I want to soothe her, but at the same time part of me likes that I’m not the only one struggling with my emotions. That she understands how I felt every time she kissed Sam.

“I know it’s not fair to tell you that after how I’ve behaved with Sam. When we were only pretending. When the whole thing was a sham. I have no right to feel the way I do about it. It just made me so jealous. It stung that you could do that.”

I peel her hand away from my mouth, unable to hide this buoyant feeling growing inside me. “I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shakes her head, talking quickly as though she can’t bear to relive it. “I don’t care that you did. I don’t want to rehash the stupid idiotic moments of this fake relationship. Especially when they were mostly mine. And I don’t expect you to forgive me for my behavior tonight. You probably don’t even want—”

“Can you please shut up a moment?” I growl as I step forward. She jumps, her gaze widening. “I swear, you are going to have to learn to listen if we are going to make this relationship work. I did not kiss another girl. I pretended to because you wanted me to break up with you and make it convincing, but I couldn’t go through with it because I am head over heels in love with you, you little minx.”

“Relationship? You didn’t? Love with me?” Her smile is radiant. It’s irresistible. I adore the way she lights up for me. “Cas, did I hear you correctly? Because it’s hard to tell when you’re all growly like that. I know you said Je suis amoureux de toi, or whatever that actually—”

“I’m in love with you.” I reach out to hook her around the waist and draw her against me. “That’s what it means. I’m in love with you, Mandy Pearce. I want to date you for real. I want to be your boyfriend and talk about houses and weddings and children and whatever else you need behind your white picket fence. I want to be your family and you to be mine.”

“You want all that?” she asks, breathlessly. “With me? You’d stay here for me? You’re serious?”

“I’m certain.” Even if it meant giving up Soldier, I’d stay for her. I glance over her head at him. He’s watching us with those big brown eyes that seem to see far more than a human can. Is Juliette with him the way she’s been with me? Carried around inside us, all memories and soft laughter and quiet words? Have the two of them guided me here to this woman who holds my heart, and lets me have hers in return?

He lifts his nose to the back of her head and nudges her. She can’t go anywhere, already enclosed in my arms, but she loses her balance and falls against my chest. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to take Soldier and go to wherever the two of you are heading?” She glances back at the big oaf. “You didn’t seem all that interested in staying here when Claire offered you the kitchen.”

“Because of Soldier,” I tell her. “Because we’re used to moving around.”

“Oh.” She screws up her brow. It probably doesn’t make sense, because she doesn’t know he doesn’t belong to me. “Is that all?”

“No, that’s not all.” I whisper my mouth across the supple flesh of her cheek. “I didn’t want to stick around and watch you make smoochy faces with Sam fucking Sweets. I couldn’t hack the idea of watching you be happy with him.” Fuck, I’m glad I don’t have to watch that, or imagine it, or think about it anymore.

“But if I’m making smoochy faces with you, you can handle it?” She stares at me like she can’t wrap her head around the idea that I could be jealous, and that I could feel so strongly about her.

“Handle it? Hell, I want it. I want you.” I glide my lips over hers. “I thought it was going to be just me and Soldier until you waltzed into my kitchen and drove me fucking crazy with your flirty, happy attitude. I thought I was going to be a miserable asshole for the rest of my life.”

“You’re saying you won’t be?” She bites her lip, smiling.

“I’m saying you make me happy.” I pick her up and she locks her ankles together behind my back while I take her mouth with mine. Her shoes thud on the ramp along with her purse. Soldier nickers softly, as my tongue wars with Mandy’s. She makes me hard as hell with her kisses and her hands roaming my flesh and the heat of her so close to my crotch.

“I make you horny too.” She squeezes her legs around my hips, tugs at my shirt, drawing it up over my torso.

“Fuck, girl. You’re the only one who I trust to handle me. You gave me life again.” I break the kiss long enough to pull the garment over my head, and she kisses my pec and runs her tongue across one of my nipples until I moan.

“You’re the only man who knows me intimately, Cas.” She whimpers as she grinds down on my bulge. “I have to feel you inside me. Right now.”

“Fuck.” I stumble up the ramp. “We’re parked in the driveway of the stables with nowhere to go except the horse trailer.”

“I don’t care,” she says.

It smells like hay and must and horse inside the trailer as we crash against the wall, but all I notice is her arousal, and the aroma of her skin. I lower her to her feet so she can undo my pants, and I can tug up her dress. “No panties?”

“No,” she says as I lift her up, balancing her between me and the wall of the trailer. “The only reason I’m still wearing this dress is because I didn’t want to waste time while trying to find you. The thought of you leaving, of me never getting to tell you how I feel—”

“I don’t care that you didn’t dress for me tonight, or that you lost your panties because Sam saw them earlier.” I press the head of my cock to her entrance, her wetness making it easy to slide in with a roll of my hips. Her eyes glaze with hunger and bliss. These past few months she hasn’t been mine. But now she is. That’s what matters. “Now. Here. Us. This is where we start for real. Whatever stupid decisions we made before now don’t matter. Let me be your Mister Right. Let me be the guy who gives you everything you want.”

“I think you already are.” She whimpers as I thrust into her. We’re bare together. Hot and wet, her arousal dripping down my cock as I fuck her slow and deep while I lace her skin with kisses. She squeezes my heart and my dick at the same time until I’m breathless, until my head spins and my chest swells, and I feel like a giant of a man because she looks at me like I am.

“I love you,” she whispers in between pants while her pussy starts to tighten around me over and over.

“Fucking love you too,” I whisper back as she screams my name and squeezes my climax from me.

“Come out with your hands up,” a voice blares from outside the horse trailer.

Red and blue lights flash in the dark.

Mandy jumps and lets out a yelp.

With a groan, I pull out of her and lower her to her feet.

“What do you think is going on?” she asks while she smooths her dress down over her hips.

I tuck my dick back in my pants. Picking up my shirt, I give it to her to wipe up the mess I’ve made of her thighs. “Soldier isn’t mine. He belongs to Juliette’s parents. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to give him up.” He was all I had for so long. I take her hand, squeeze it. “But maybe I’m supposed to let go now.”

  We walk out of the enclosed space into the balmy night. Above us lightening cracks the sky. Soldier neighs and bobs his head as we make our way down the ramp to where he’s grazing. Moira approaches from one of two squad cars, a police officer in tow.

She raises an eyebrow at Mandy’s hand wrapped in mine. Then she says something that makes the officer halt in his tracks as she comes closer. I reach Soldier first. Letting go of Mandy’s hand, I grip his halter and press my face to his. “Is this what you wanted? You want to go home now? You’re done with me? Done babysitting me?”

“Casper, are you going to hand my horse over without problem, or do I need to press charges against you? You’ll have no one to blame but yourself if you’re arrested tonight.”

“Cas?” Mandy calls out my name, and I glance back at her.

She smiles at me.

“So what do you think?” I address Soldier.

He walks past me, his shoulder knocking me aside as he moves to Mandy and mouths her hair. Then he swings his big head and gives me a baleful look.

“Casper? Are you relinquishing my horse or not?” Moira demands.

Scratching my jaw, I start to grin. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think I am.”

“Officer, I…” Moira gapes, flustered. “Wait. You’re actually going to hand him over to me without any more fight? After all this time? You’re willing to let go of my daughter’s horse?”

“It’s time to go home, huh?” Mandy says to Soldier, stroking his neck. “I’ll miss you. We’ll miss you, but I’ll look after Cas now. We’ll look after each other.  You don’t have to worry. You go and meet a nice female horse and fall in love and make babies.”

“I’m not sure that’s quite how it works,” Moira says.

“Do you need me to put him back in his stall, Moira?” I join Mandy and Soldier. “I assume you’ll need to arrange for transportation.”

“No, I can take him,” she says. “I want to spend some time with my horse.”

“Okay.” I reach out one last time to pat his warm, smooth muzzle. “I guess this is it then. You take care of yourself. Don’t give Moira too much grief. I know how much you love to think you know best.” I move closer to him, right up so I can whisper in his ear. “Maybe you do know more than you’re supposed to. Maybe I should thank you for being so stubborn.”

“What he’s trying to say is thank you,” Mandy says, slipping between Soldier and me. “You can make the grumpy man fall in love, but you can’t teach him to express himself.”

“Can’t you?” I take Mandy’s hand as Moira squeezes my bicep and then takes Soldier’s rope and leads him away. At some point I’ll call her and ask about him and we’ll talk how we used to when I was with Juliette, but tonight there are more important things for both of us. I’m saying hell yes to a future I didn’t hope to ever have, and she’s reconnecting with memories of her daughter.

“No. I don’t think so.” Mandy shakes her head playfully and backs away as plump drops of rain splatter the dust. “Once a grumpy caveman, always a grumpy caveman.”

“I can express myself just fine.” I scoop her up and walk toward the truck. “I love you, and I am taking you home to the ranch. That’s where you belong, by the way, until we find somewhere to live. In my kitchen and in my bed with me. Is that expressive enough for you?

“Yes, I think it is.” She presses her forehead to mine and grins. “It’s just right.”

“Right,” I agree. “That’s me.”

I’m the guy. The right guy.

Her Mister Right.