Reaching up, my thumb wiped the drop away.
“Rain!” Avery yelled out along with a high pitched giggle.
Taking my hat off, I leaned forward, lightly pressing my forehead to hers. “You’re okay,” I murmured.
She closed her eyes, giving a small nod. The rain started coming down faster, droplets sticking to her hair.
After a moment, I straightened, setting my hat on her head. “Come on, Aves,” I called out.
“Coming!” Avery replied. She hurried back over to us, the bundle of flowers gripped tight in her tiny hand.
“Need some help?” I asked, turning to Avery as she came around the side of her pony.
“No, thank you.” She hiked her foot up and tried a few times, but eventually got the momentum she needed to hoist herself up.
Once we were all back on our horses, we headed for the barn. We hadn’t made it too far out in the field, but we still got drenched in the sudden downpour.
Instead of dismounting outside the barn, we stayed on until we were in the aisle and out of the rain, then got off. I grabbed Butterscotch’s reins from Avery and nodded toward my parents’ house.
“Why don’t you go see Charlotte and give her your flowers?” I asked her.
“Do you think she’ll like them?” Avery questioned.
I nodded. “She loves flowers. Especially purple and yellow.”
Avery grinned. “She’s gonna love mine, then.”
She skipped off through the rain and I watched her until she made it to the house and slipped inside the front door. Turning, I found Sage staring at the reins in her hand where she was picking at the leather.
“Here, let me take care of Red for you.” I gently took the reins from her, leading all three horses over to the cross ties. One by one, I hooked them in, then turned to Sage again. She was still standing in the aisle, staring down at her hands.
“Sage.”
She slowly brought her gaze to mine, my hat shifting on her head, its size too big.
Instead of asking her to come to me, I crossed the distance to her and pulled her into my arms. She leaned against me, my hat teetering on the edge of sliding off her head.
“You can talk to me,” I reminded her. I thought back to the bar when she’d had a panic attack over that guy. He couldn’t have been her ex, but for her to react like that meant the asshole did some lasting damage on her, and that fucking wrecked me. In an instant, I wanted to find him and kill him. Murder had never been as appealing as it seemed right now.
She sniffled, shifting in my arms, then looked up at me. “I had surgery to put pins in my wrist because the bones were so badly broken,” she said quietly.
I could feel my heart threatening to beat out of my chest.
“That’s where the scar is from?”
She nodded. “He mutilated it. It still hurts if I use it wrong, but I try to ignore it. I was already barely eating at the time because I was so depressed, so I was weak. I was so weak.” Her voice broke slightly on that last word, and my hands instantly moved to cup her cheeks.
“Hey, look at me. You are not weak.”
She sniffled again, and I could tell she was trying to hold back tears. “But I was.”
I shook my head. “But you’re not anymore. You’re strong, Sage. Raising Avery on your own, working at the cafe, balancing all of that on top of everything life has thrown at you. Not many people can do that, and look at you. I bet even fucking angels are jealous of you.”
She let out a sad laugh, and while her laugh was one of my new favorite sounds, hearing it like this destroyed me.
I wiped an escaped tear off her cheek, moving my hands to her neck. “You can cry, baby, but cry because you’re free. Never because of him.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“Is there a possibility he may come around?”
One of her hands came up to play with her necklace. “He was in prison.”
“Was?”
“He was sentenced for four years, but I think he got out early.”
Everything in me froze. “Why do you think he got out early?”
She inhaled a shaky breath, her hand tightening into a fist on my shirt. “I’ve been getting these texts and some phone calls, but I block the numbers. He just keeps getting new ones.”
“Why was he in prison, Sage?” I asked, enunciating each word carefully.
“Domestic abuse,” she stated, her voice barely audible.
A muscle in my jaw pulsed. “Were the charges from you or another woman?”
“Me,” she admitted quietly.
