Every Wild Heart Read online

  We clinked our glasses together.

  “Thanks for having me,” I said again.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said again.

  I’d like to say we smiled at each other, but in truth, we grinned.

  The pasta was so good that we were forced to eat in silence for a full minute before either of us could say another word.

  “How was the thing with the horse yesterday?” I asked. “Is that trainer going to take her off your hands?”

  Denny looked momentarily troubled. “No. He was willing, but I could see it wasn’t going to be any better of a match than she and I are, and I didn’t want him getting hurt.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You were worried about the trainer?”

  “She’s a difficult horse. She needs something particular that I can’t give her and this other guy couldn’t either. I just hope I can help her. She can’t stay here much longer. It’s not safe.”

  I nodded. We spoke a little more about this horse named Georgia Peach, and then Denny told a funny story about a family he’d taken on a trail ride down to the beach that morning and how the father had spent the whole time swearing in French about how much his ass hurt—apparently Denny knew a bit of French—and then we talked briefly about Nic and how badly she wanted to ride again. And then after an ever-so-short conversational lull, I decided that all of the unknown parts of Denny’s life needed to be unveiled immediately.

  “Have you ever lived anywhere but here?” I asked him.

  “I went to college in Colorado. And after college, I had a little place in San Francisco that I lived in until my parents retired. Then I moved back here.”

  “You’ve worked here since college?”

  He nodded.

  “Never anywhere else?”

  “It’s the family business. And I’ve always loved the land. This has always been what I wanted.”

  No wonder he always seemed so sure of himself. He’d figured out early in life exactly what he loved most, and he’d never let it go, never compromised it. “Smart man,” I said.

  He looked at me as he took a sip of wine. “I bet you feel that way about music.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting back in my chair, feeling happily full. “I do.”

  Denny stood and moved our plates to the counter and then rummaged around in a cabinet. He returned to the table with two small squares of chocolate so dark they looked black.

  “I refuse to call it a meal unless chocolate is involved,” he said, handing me one of the squares.

  “Really?” I asked, fascinated. “Even breakfast?”

  “Breakfast more than any other meal requires chocolate. I drop it in my coffee.” He sat down again and popped the chocolate in his mouth.

  “Were you ever married?”

  He looked at me steadily. “No.”

  “But you’ve dated?”

  Now he smiled. “Yes. I’ve dated. I just haven’t . . .” He hesitated, thinking. “I guess I never found someone that I couldn’t live without.”

  “Oh, Denny.” My temper inexplicably flared. Wasn’t he old enough to know better? “That’s because there isn’t anyone that you can’t live without. She doesn’t exist. People go on living and breathing even after their hearts are broken by those they love. Even when you think you can’t possibly live without one particular person, you can. You do. There is no one that you can’t live without, even the love of your life.” I regretted the words even as I said them, sure that he guessed exactly whom I was really talking about. Why had I said all of that? Why was I thinking of Tyler?

  Denny was quiet, studying me. “Okay,” he said, finally.

  I held his gaze for a beat of time and then dropped my head into my hands and laughed, mortified. “Sorry.” Nice work, I told myself. Who wanted to date someone who believed she had already met and lost the love of her life?

  “It’s okay,” he said again, but I could tell that wherever we’d been heading moments earlier, whatever we were about to hold in our hands and share, had now slipped out of reach.

  Denny cleared his throat, but I spoke before he could.

  “It’s getting late,” I said. “Nic should be home soon, and I bet you have a million things to do around here.” He didn’t argue. I put my napkin on the table and stood. “This was really nice. Thank you.”

  He looked up at me for a moment, then stood. “It was.” He unhooked his hat from his chair and slid it on his head, pulling it low to his eyes. Which, I finally noticed, were a deep cornflower blue.

  Chapter 16

  Nic didn’t enjoy pitting her parents against each other, but for her plan to work, she couldn’t have a babysitter watching her every move. She had not foreseen that her mother would install a security guard in place of the sitter, telling Nic that a threat she’d received during a show had made her want to be overly cautious. But Nic didn’t really mind the guard—she could work around him.

  If Nic had had her way, Lucas would have come to get her on Monday night, but he wasn’t able to slip out from under the watch of his mother, who was apparently in a particularly frazzled state of mind that week, until Thursday, when she had a meeting with her book club. Every afternoon, Nic sneaked into Peach’s stall and told her of her plans. She felt the horse listening, her beautiful body growing still as Nic brushed her. Every night, Nic posted positive messages about her schoolmates on the KirkeKudos Instagram account she had created. She was happy to see that not only were her posts receiving supportive comments, but that the comments on TheKirkeLurk7’s feed seemed to have swung in the other direction. Not cool, someone had commented on the Lurk’s latest post, an image of a sophomore football player unattractively stuffing a dripping, overstuffed hamburger into his mouth. Let it go, KirkeJerk! someone else commented.

  Finally, on Thursday night at nine o’clock, just as they’d planned, Nic received Lucas’s text message.

  I’m here.

  She pulled back the curtain in her bedroom window and peered down at the street. The security guard sat on their front steps, smoking. There was no sign of Lucas, but that, too, was part of the plan: he’d parked around the corner.

  Nic set the house alarm—a habit ingrained in her by her mother—and left the house through the back door that led from the kitchen to the yard. The fence that separated their yard from their neighbor’s was eight feet high. She’d never tried to climb over it before, but she was pretty sure she could do it. She could envision it in her mind—her arms reaching up and gripping the top of the fence, her leg swinging up and over. Her mom believed that if you could truly picture yourself doing something, you could probably do it. Her mom didn’t know that Nic had read her book, Number One Single.

  Nic had never spent time in the yard at night. She was surprised to find it was a little spooky, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by turning on the outdoor lights. In the back corner of the yard, she jumped up and grabbed the top of the fence. Pulling herself up and over was harder than she’d thought it would be and she landed with a thud in the neighbor’s yard, setting off a motion sensor that flooded the yard with light. She sprinted to the next fence and wrenched her body over it. By the time she made it through the next yard, the next fence, and then dropped down onto the sidewalk, she didn’t know which was pounding louder: her head or her heart.

  Lucas’s car was double-parked halfway down the block. Nic slid into the front seat.

  “Hey,” he said. He looked surprised, which was when she realized that he had not really believed she’d do it. “You okay?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Her body felt a little strange, a little . . . delicate. It had been more than two weeks since she’d done anything so active. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for doing this.”

  “It’s okay. I owed you one.”

  His smile didn’t help the situation with her pounding heart.

  Lucas began to drive. “So why do you have a guard outside your house? Is your mom a diplomat or somet
hing?”

  “No, she has a radio show. Her name is Gail Gideon.”

  Lucas glanced at her. “Really? Your mom is G.G.?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoa.”

  He didn’t seem overly impressed by Nic’s famous mother, and she was glad.

  The city soon fell away, leaving only the dark freeway, the starless sky, and the lights of other cars. In the quiet, Lucas told her about his friends in Brooklyn, his favorite coffee shop there, the art store where he bought his supplies. He talked about how instead of looking for the nursing job that she claimed to want, his mom now sat around the house all day reading self-help books and talking with a friend she’d left behind in Brooklyn who still saw his dad and knew all about the women he was now dating.

  Nic told Lucas about Peach, how badly the horse needed her help, that she’d been abused, that if not her life itself than certainly her quality of life depended on someone breaking through to her and finding a way to make her trust people again.

  Eventually she pointed out the exit and they veered off the freeway. Nic had thought that she had memorized every bend of the route, but the dark threw her. She was beginning to worry that she’d missed the turn when the car lights swung over the white-and-green Corcoran Stables sign. Instinctively, she reached out and put her hand on Lucas’s arm.

  “There it is!”

  Lucas slowed and turned into the driveway, stopping in front of a large metal gate that blocked their entry. Nic had never seen the gate closed. In fact, she’d forgotten there was a gate; during the day, it was always open, half-hidden by the shrubby bushes that lined the driveway.

  Lucas turned off the car’s engine. He peered out at the gate. “Any idea if there’s a camera on that thing?”

  Nic got out of the car to take a look, all the while wondering if Denny was watching her on a video screen in his house. But she didn’t see anything attached to the gate that might have been a camera. Lucas walked up beside her.

  “I think we’re fine,” she said. The gate was easy to walk around; it was meant to deter someone from pulling up to the barn with a trailer to steal horses. Other than their shoes crunching against the dirt driveway, and the distant rhythmic hush of the surf pounding the shore, all was quiet. They walked until the driveway split; in one direction, the road veered toward Denny’s house; in the other, toward the barn and indoor arena. A narrow strip of woods separated the structures. They hurried toward the barn.

  The horses shifted in their stalls when Nic slid open the door. A string of whinnies moved down the aisle. The light in the area of the barn where Peach and Tru lived seemed especially bright, and she hoped that Denny wouldn’t notice it glowing through the trees if he happened to look through his window in the direction of the barn.

  Tru hung his head over his stall door and snorted a greeting. “This is my horse, Tru,” she told Lucas. He stroked the side of Tru’s head in the awkward way of someone who wasn’t entirely comfortable with horses. Kind, forgiving Tru leaned into his touch and Lucas took a step back, surprised.

  “Don’t worry,” Nic told him. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. That one, on the other hand . . .” She nodded in the direction of Peach’s stall. Peach was weaving back and forth behind her bars, ears flattened. More than any other horse in the barn, she seemed agitated by their arrival. Nic walked over to her. “It’s alright,” she murmured. “We’re here for a ride.” The horse stilled. Her ears flicked forward, listening.

  Nic felt Lucas at her side. He was looking at the sign on Peach’s stall, the one that read DO NOT OPEN DOOR! “Are you sure—” he began. Peach’s hoof smacked hard against the wall and they both jumped back, startled.

  But Nic didn’t have time to reassure him that Peach didn’t behave like that when it was just the two of them—at any moment, Denny could find them and ruin her plans. She hurried down the aisle, leaving Lucas standing halfway between Peach’s stall and Tru’s stall. In the tack room, she zipped on her chaps. They felt loose; she’d lost some muscle during her time out of the saddle. Her helmet was missing from its usual hook—she realized she hadn’t seen it since the accident. Maybe it had cracked when she fell and someone had thrown it away. She took another helmet from a hook—it was a bit small and made her head throb for a moment, an unwelcome reminder of what had happened the last time she’d ridden. She balanced her saddle on her hip and slung Peach’s bridle onto her shoulder. With her free hand, she pulled her grooming box from her tack trunk.

  Nic told Lucas to stay near Tru’s stall while she brought out Peach. The horse stood very still as Nic entered her stall, slipped a halter over her head, and attached the lead rope. Nic could not help but believe that Peach somehow knew that tonight was important. Once out on the cross ties, though, Peach began to anxiously dance around and blow air from her nostrils. Her hooves were loud against the stone aisle and Nic had to keep reminding herself that Denny could not hear them from his house. She brushed Peach and picked her hooves clean. When she lowered the saddle pad and saddle onto Peach’s back, Peach tossed her head and gnashed her teeth.

  “Easy, girl,” Nic said, stroking the horse’s muscular neck. Peach tossed her head a few more times, but stopped gnashing her teeth long enough to allow Nic to slip off the halter and guide the bridle’s bit into her mouth. “There we go.”

  As she walked the horse down the aisle, Nic worked to assert herself into the leadership position. With Tru, she felt she had a partnership, but with this mare, someone needed to be in charge. Nic wrapped her fingers around the reins and held her right fist close enough to Peach’s chin that she could feel the hairs around her muzzle twitching. Peach tried to set the pace, high-stepping, weaving and dancing. Her hooves kept knocking against Nic’s paddock boots. After they walked into the ring, Nic asked Lucas to shut the gate behind them. He stood there, seeming a bit lost, looking in over the gate from the barn aisle. Nic forced herself to ignore the feeling of his eyes following her. She had to think only of Peach now.

  Peach skittered and danced and wouldn’t stand still at the mounting block.

  “Easy, girl.” Nic managed to lower herself onto the saddle before Peach shot forward, nearly leaving her behind. She sank into her heels and let her tailbone melt heavily into the saddle and adjusted her fingers on the leather reins. As she drew Peach to a reluctant halt, she felt the horse’s muscles shifting beneath her legs. She couldn’t let Peach move forward on her own; it had to be a command from Nic. She waited a few more moments until it was clear to Peach that they were stopped because Nic wanted to stop, and that now they were moving forward because Nic wanted to move forward.

  Being back in the saddle soothed something within Nic. Peach was a very different horse than Tru—bigger in every way—but Nic felt an uncanny sense of familiarity in Peach’s movements. Maybe she had dreamed of riding her.

  She could feel the horse’s energy building as they walked. When Nic asked Peach to trot, the horse bolted forward and bucked, but Nic had sensed that she might do this and was prepared. She’d always had a good seat and it served her well now . . . she stuck like glue to that horse’s back as it rippled and shook and twisted. Peach dropped her head low, ripping the reins through Nic’s hands and in the same moment shooting her back legs powerfully out and up. Nic hardly moved. She gathered the reins and with them, the horse, below her, turning her sharply again and again. Peach was forced to slow. Nic rewarded her by pressing her forward off her leg into a more energetic trot. She moved the horse unpredictably, zigzagging across the ring, sparking Peach’s curiosity. Peach was interested now, her mind as engaged as her body; she listened.

  Nic saw that the overhead lights threw quivering shadows against the footing in the ring and she moved her body, anticipating and adjusting Peach’s reaction to the sight, communicating reassurance and confidence. They moved in large circles, small circles, serpentines, and diagonal lines. Sometimes Nic sat, slowing the trot; sometimes she stretched the trot longer and posted up and down in the saddle.<
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  The horse’s coiled power was new to Nic. Tru’s energy was accommodating; Peach was a singular force.

  Nic sat in the saddle and asked for the canter. The horse moved beautifully; her canter was strong and smooth. They moved around and around the ring, switching directions, flying through lead changes, never slowing. Peach’s energy uncoiled as she tired. Nic moved her up and down through her gaits, cutting through the ring in tight, round arcs.

  Nic thought of what she wanted to do and Peach did it.

  They were together now, dancing.

  Nic felt full of joy and strength. She’d never loved riding as much as she did in that ring, on that night, with that horse. There was, suddenly, magic in the air.

  No one else had been able to do this. Not Denny. Not Javi. Only Nic.

  She slowed Peach and finally trusted the mare enough to give her a long rein. Peach stretched her neck low as she walked, cooling down after the hard ride. Nic emerged step by step from the world they had created together.