Sit. Stay. Love.

by Karis Walsh

  Tegan shook her head. For the first decade of her life she had only wanted her family to be put back together. There hadn’t been room inside her for any other desires. “Not really. I liked animals and would play with my grandparents’ cats and dogs, but that’s not why I started riding. I used to wander alone for miles around their ranch and wherever else the trails led. I think they bought Charm for me just to get me off the ground and out of reach of rattlesnakes and coyotes.”

  Alana squeezed her hand lightly. “Where were you trying to go?”

  “Nowhere in particular,” Tegan said. She took a sip of her wine as she tried to find the words to explain why she had needed to walk. “I guess I wanted to find something, not go someplace. Subconsciously, I knew I wasn’t going to find it at home, so I went out searching. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

  Alana raised their joined hands and brushed her lips across Tegan’s knuckles before letting her go to make room for their plates of food. “It makes perfect sense,” she said as soon as the server had walked away. “I felt the same way, but between school and the hotel I didn’t have time to go looking. I kept waiting for something to come to me. Until I graduated.”

  “And you’re still searching,” Tegan said quietly, before crunching through a bite of her peppercorn-crusted steak. She wondered what Alana was really looking for.

  “Not here,” Alana said, looking almost as surprised by the words as Tegan felt when hearing them. “I suppose it’s because Yakima is a side trip in my career, I guess, so I feel more present here than I have before. And because of you. There’s no need to search for anything except for more time with you.”

  “I feel the same about you.” Tegan used her fork to toy with the pile of multicolored baby carrots on her plate. As usual, she was disarmed by Alana’s honesty and directness. Alana was talking about right now—not tomorrow or next month or any time in the future—but she never seemed to hold back on what she was feeling. Tegan was struggling to stay present with her, not to search for hidden meanings where there were none and not to spoil this moment simply because she was greedy for more.

  Alana playfully kicked her shin. “I’m glad. Now, stop looking morose and trade me some of your carrots for my spinach.”

  Tegan curled her arm around her plate, as if protecting her food from Alana’s invasion. “Greens are good for you.”

  “Yes, but they don’t taste as good as carrots.”

  Tegan grinned, heeding Alana’s advice and pushing her maudlin thoughts away. “Throw in some of your potatoes, and we have a deal.”

  * * *

  They stopped by the clinic on the way back to Alana’s and checked on Charm and Rio. Tegan measured out their evening feed while Alana visited with Charm in her stall.

  “Was she your first horse?” Alana asked when Tegan came over and poured a scoop of grain into Charm’s bucket.

  “Yes. And Rio’s her son,” Tegan said, moving across the aisle and smiling at the gelding’s impatient nickers. “She has great bloodlines, but we only bred her once. She retired from competitions as soon as Rio was old enough for me to ride. He’s more energetic and seems to thrive on competition, while she’s, well…”

  “More of a stop and smell the roses type?”

  “Maybe more of a stand still and hope some roses wander by for you to sniff type,” Tegan said with a fond smile. “She’s talented and won almost every class I ever entered with her, but she’d rather chill than work hard.”

  Alana followed Tegan back into the feed room and sat on one of the unopened hay bales, watching her close the feed cans and tidy the already neat space. “She must have been perfect for you when you were in your wandering phase.”

  “You’re right. She was a steady and quiet companion, never expecting anything from me. I eventually stopped feeling like I was searching and just enjoyed being with her. I started meeting other neighborhood kids with horses, and the feeling of something missing from my life slowly went away. I suppose that’s what my grandparents had planned all along when they got her for me.”

  Alana thought of Gladys and Charlie, and of Jennifer and her new job. Of herself, too, with Tegan quietly and thoroughly filling a need that Alana had never known how to satisfy. “People always seem to be looking for something epic, don’t they?” she asked. “Something huge that will change their lives and make everything better. But maybe even the smallest shift in perspective can make all the difference.”

  Tegan walked over and sat next to her, moving slowly as if she thought a sudden move might startle Alana out of the barn and possibly all the way out of Yakima. “I don’t know,” she said softly, cupping Alana’s cheek. “You seem pretty epic to me.”

  Alana leaned into the contact, sighing as Tegan brushed her fingers through the hair at her temple. Tegan’s touch was light, skimming over her cheekbones and tracing a path down the side of her neck, but the feeling resonated inside Alana until her body was humming in tune to the movement of Tegan’s hand.

  She was trying to hold herself together, to accept how much her feelings for Tegan had grown and to find a way to reconcile those emotions with the plans she’d had in place for as long as she could remember. She had already given up the chance to slip back into her old life—into a better version of it, with the promotion—and she didn’t regret the decision to stay. Especially once Tegan scooted closer, until their thighs were flush against each other and Tegan was kissing her neck. But would she find it harder to leave as week after week went by? Would she eventually find herself stuck in this place simply because she had settled for the easier path of staying?

  Tegan kissed Alana on the mouth, with her hand on Alana’s hip drawing her closer. None of this felt like settling to Alana. No part of Tegan’s body, no conversation with her, no quiet moments spent in her company spoke of boredom or regret. Tegan’s kisses felt like possibility, not limits.

  Alana stopped bothering to analyze her feelings and just kissed her back with the full extent of her desire, turning their gentle movements into something deeper and less patient. She had enough to worry about with the ranch’s impending opening and her role in it. Her relationship with Tegan might have a foggy future, and she might be torn between wanting to find out how far they could go together and her original plan to forge ahead on her own, but for the moment, Tegan was the best part of her life. The one part where she felt as if she was on solid ground. She was going to enjoy every second, for as long as it lasted.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alana spent Saturday’s drive from home to the ranch focused on her to-do list for the day. She had rental equipment to confirm, interviews to conduct for a last-minute housekeeping replacement, and horses to ride. Always horses to ride.

  She got out of her truck and Chip bounded down the stairs and came over to help her get the puppies into the lodge.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said, once the dogs were settled in the office. “I thought you might enjoy a break from all the prep work you’ve been doing, so I made arrangements for you and Tegan to go on a rafting trip today. You’ll be joining a group from a hotel in Selah, and it will give you a chance to experience what it will be like when you accompany our guests. What do you think?”

  What did she think? She had too much to do at the ranch to spend an entire day floating down a river. And the thought of getting sprayed with water and baked by the sun was unappealing. And she had been so consumed with learning how to ride that she had hoped the other aspects of her job would just go away. She sighed as she looked at Chip, with his enthusiastic expression and obvious delight in her good fortune. She knew he’d much rather be the one going rafting rather than being cooped up inside the ranch. She’d rather he was going, too.

  “That’s great,” she said, trying to muster a smile since her tone of voice sounded flat and unconvincing. She had no choice but to graciously accept the change in plans since she had no reasonable excuse for getting out of doing her actual work instead of co-opting Ch
ip’s. At least rafting would be easier than riding since all she had to do was sit in the boat. The other people wouldn’t be the ranch’s guests, so they wouldn’t care if she didn’t look like she was having fun.

  “You’ll love it. Hey, there’s Tegan. I told her to come over, but she has no idea why.”

  Alana watched him relay his news to Tegan. She was hoping for them to share a commiserating eye roll or for Tegan to miraculously come up with a plan for getting both of them out of the excursion, but Tegan looked almost as excited as Chip.

  She came over and kissed Alana on the cheek, resting her hand on her lower back. “That’s not a very convincing smile,” Tegan said in a low voice. “Don’t worry. It’ll be a good day.”

  Alana felt her smile morph into one that felt more natural. She’d get to spend the day with Tegan, which was worth sodden sneakers and the postponement of her planned day’s work. She left her list of tasks with Chip and reminded him that he would have to take over the interviews in her absence, and then got in Tegan’s Jeep. The drive to the hotel was far too short. If she had to be on this outdoor adventure then she would have preferred to have Tegan all to herself, but before she knew it, she was crammed in a bare-bones white van with two other couples and a family with two teenaged boys and was on her way to the Tieton River.

  Alana settled back in her seat and held Tegan close against her side. “So, have you been on this river a lot of times?”

  “Only twice, and it’s a blast. Nearly continuous rapids, and some are Class III.” Tegan sighed with apparent anticipation. “I’ve mostly gone rafting and tubing on the Upper Yakima, where there’s only one Class II.”

  Alana wasn’t quite sure what the classifications meant, but she was fairly sure that the lower number sounded less death defying. “I’ve never done this, so shouldn’t I stick to Class I or less?”

  Tegan patted her knee. “You’ll be fine. The guides will explain everything and tell you what to do if the raft flips over or you fall out.”

  “This sounds like our riding lessons all over again, with all your scary hypotheticals.” Alana groaned. “Will they cover what I should do if I’m attacked by a giant river squid?”

  “Whack it with your paddle,” Tegan suggested.

  Alana pushed at her playfully, but her thoughts were moving too far ahead—surging along the rapids—to let her relax very much.

  She didn’t feel much better even after she had listened to the guide’s instructions about paddling and aiming her feet downriver if she got dumped out of the boat. She strapped on her plastic helmet and gingerly sat on the edge of the raft next to Tegan.

  “Since they seem so concerned about keeping us from falling into the river, you’d think they’d have us sit in the boat rather than perching precariously on the rim,” she said, bouncing lightly on the inflated edge of the raft and nearly toppling backward.

  Tegan tapped the bottom of the raft with her foot. “It needs to be flexible enough to skim over big rocks, so there’s nothing to protect you down here. You’d have a painful ride.”

  “I think I’d rather have a sore rear end than a bashed-in head,” Alana said. “At least I’ll have you at home tonight to massage me back to health.”

  Tegan nodded. “You’re right. You really should sit in the bottom of the boat.”

  The guide pushed them toward the middle of the river, and the swiftly moving water caught hold of the raft. After a few minutes of drops and eddies, Alana decided she had been overly intimidated by this Class III business. She eventually relaxed her death grip on the side of the raft and let herself look around at the scenery, paddling when the guide told them to.

  Tegan poked her in the back. “Look,” she said, speaking loudly enough for the others on the raft to hear and pointing to the cliff face bordering one side of the river. “An eagle.”

  The bird’s pristine white head and tail stood out starkly against the coppery red backdrop. “Wow,” Alana said, carefully shifting her position to watch the raptor as long as possible. “I’ve never seen one in the wild before.”

  Tegan pointed out some magpies and other birds, and Alana filed them away for use on future trail rides and rafting trips. She was facing backward and looking at a red-tailed hawk when she realized that the river sounded louder than it had before.

  “Turn around, Alana,” Tegan said, pressing her hand on Alana’s shoulder. “There are some bigger rapids just around this turn.”

  “Bigger?” Alana asked. She thought the previous ones had been plenty big. She was even more convinced of that fact after they rounded the bend and ricocheted off a huge boulder, spinning a few disorienting times before flying down the river.

  They approached another rounded boulder, much larger than the raft itself, and the guide yelled for Alana’s side of the raft to paddle as hard as they could. Tegan did her part, of course. Alana and their two other seatmates froze for a brief moment before joining in, but they rammed into the rock, anyway. Alana struggled to keep herself on the raft. Was the guide really surprised that their attempts to steer had been ineffective? They seemed to be assuming a ridiculously high level of competence from a group of amateurs.

  The raft careened around another bend and the man next to Alana leaned back too far and fell into the river. She felt his hand pull at her sleeve as he went, but luckily, he didn’t get a firm grasp of it since he would have been more likely to pull her in with him rather than saving himself. If he had managed to drag her off the raft, she would have put him in the category of giant river squid and used her paddle accordingly. She felt the comforting presence of Tegan’s arm around her, anchoring her in place.

  The man seemed destined not to be the only person overboard. When the raft got caught in a whirlpool just below the boulder, one of the women on the other side from Alana held out her paddle for him to grab and ended up tipping over the edge.

  “We seem to be losing people at an alarming rate,” Alana called to Tegan over the roaring water.

  “Just be sure that you stay on the raft,” Tegan said. “You’re all that matters.”

  As soon as the rapids decreased somewhat, the guides pulled the raft into the shallows and fished the two out of the river. Aside from a couple of scrapes and bruises, they seemed fine. Alana leaned against Tegan’s shoulder.

  “Well, we got through it,” she said, with relief in her voice.

  “We got through that one,” Tegan said, kissing the top of Alana’s head where it rested on her shoulder. “There are more up ahead.”

  “More,” Alana repeated. “Are they just as bad?”

  “Hmm,” Tegan said noncommittally.

  Alana sat up and rolled her eyes. “You might as well say it, then. They’re going to be worse.”

  “Not worse, necessarily. Just…faster.”

  * * *

  The river widened and the jutting rocks and frothy water gave way to gentle movement and murky depths. The grassy shore was dotted with picnic tables and cookout areas, and a few people were hanging out near the edge of the river. Alana could see around the bend ahead, where the rapids began again, but she assumed they had reached their destination since the rafting company’s van was in the parking lot. She rested her paddle over her knees as she caught her breath, feeling water dripping off it and down her already wet calves.

  She had actually enjoyed the second half of the trip, since no one else had fallen out and she’d figured out how to balance comfortably while the raft tilted and spun. Now that she knew what to expect, she would have been looking forward to coming back for another try if she wasn’t so concerned about the responsibility she was going to have for her guests. Yes, the guides would be the ones in charge, but the burden of caring about her people and hoping to keep them safe rested ultimately with her.

  Her worried thoughts were interrupted by one of the guides shrieking about the raft being about to capsize. Since they were merely floating along, Alana ignored him, until he and the other guide jumped out and flipped the
raft over.

  Alana submerged and sank several feet before rising up again and crossing to the raft with two long strokes. She clutched one of the nylon cords that wrapped around the raft and held herself above the water while she coughed to clear her throat. Judging by the shouts of laughter around her, the other rafters were far more delighted by the unexpected dunking than she was.

  Tegan surfaced next to her with a big grin on her face. She hooked one elbow over the raft and used her other hand to push soaked hair out of her eyes and off her forehead. Tiny droplets of water stuck to her eyelashes, glinting in the sunlight and brightening her face. Alana wrapped her legs around Tegan’s and tucked their hips together. She leaned forward and kissed Tegan, immediately aroused by the slippery, frictionless feel of the skin between them.

  “Well?” Tegan asked. “What did you think?”

  “You were right. I had a great time.”

  And she had. She loved spending time with Tegan in the nature she loved so much. She had liked the speed and stomach-dropping sensation when the raft plummeted down the rapids. She couldn’t shake her concerns about leading these tours, though. She had planned numerous events before, but none of them had posed a real physical risk to the people involved, discounting fluke accidents. She wasn’t afraid of trying new and potentially dangerous activities herself, but leading others through them was an entirely different matter. She wasn’t sure she had the confidence to handle it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The week before the grand opening, Alana sat at her desk surrounded by checked-off lists. Every room was clean and ready for guests, both the ones who had booked and extras in case of last-minute arrivals. The barbecue had been marketed and planned to the last detail. She tossed another list onto the pile and stood up. Everything was ready, except for her. She could squeeze in a few more lessons and plenty more rides this week, but she knew they wouldn’t have a significant impact on her skills. She was either good enough to do her job right now, or she wasn’t.