HER | ✓

⍣Twelve⍣

Special thanks to stratospheree for the cover art! <3
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They went up and down the hill more times than they could count. Charlotte was filled with fear at first, but after her first ride, she begged for more. Even when Clayton gave up she continued. He didn't mind though. He enjoyed watching her have fun and wanted to soak it all up because he didn't know when this opportunity would come again.

After running around a bunch she was exhausted, and dropped to the ground next to him. The cold numbed their bums through their clothing and thick fog hung around their every breathe.

"You would be one cool uncle to have," she stated out of the clear blue.

He opened his mouth to speak but the words got stuck his in throat. What would say anyhow? Thanks? 

"Charlotte!" A distant female voice came to his rescue. "Come inside sweetie, it's getting colder out."

"Okay mom!" She yelled back.

He walked her back to the house but he couldn't the shake the irony in the situation. Farah was the reason for all of this and she was the one rescuing him from a small part of it.

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He busied himself with the horses in the stall. He didn't want to go inside and socialize. It hurt too much to think Farah loved his brother. One day they might be married and his daughter would also be his niece. The thought didn't work out well in his brain.

As he tended to the horses, brushing them with long strokes, he imagined having an argument with Farah about the wedding and how his daughter needed to know who her father really was.

"This can't happen!" He'd slam his fist on the table between them.

"It has to because no one can know! No one can know we were ever together, especially not George. Do you know how hurt he would be if he found out?" She'd reply.

"My daughter deserves to know I'm her father!"

"My daughter," she'd correct.

But once he finished the imaginary argument he didn't think she would be so selfish as to claim all parental rights. She would recognize Charlotte as his too and how wrong she was for keeping it hidden from the little girl in the first place. She wouldn't be the woman who'd willingly drive a wedge between herself and her daughter. He only wished that conversation never had to come.

Maybe some freak accident would happen and take out George. He winced at the thought. Where were these thoughts coming from?

He set the brush aside and patted old Sweeney's side.

"Be lucky you never had a woman come and ruin your life," he told the horse. Sweeney turned his head sideways blinking with large eyes as if to say 'you wouldn't catch me dead with one'.

"They're evil masterminds."

The horse whinnied.

He patted his side again. "I'm glad we could agree on something bud." He held out a carrot to old Sweeney and he gladly took it.

He moved onto the next horse, Elizabeth. Her mane was as slick as a rushing waterfall and had a wild attitude that always reminded him of Farah. A horse, reminded him of Farah. A horse... He remembered how his father struggled to tame her but Harry did it. He didn't know how, and he never would, but he admired it.

He admired that someone could take something wild and train it to fit into a world where it would otherwise be an outcast. He thought he would've been the one to tame Farah. To help her not feel like an outcast but he wasn't, and as he brushed Elizabeth he wondered who actually did tame her.

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"Where were you earlier?" Martha asked when she found him laying in bed.

"In the stables."

"Oh... Are you ready to tell me what's wrong?"

He sighed. "I'm sorry ma, I don't think I can."

It was Martha's turn to sigh. She hated seeing him upset. He knew and wished he wasn't up, but he didn't have any control.

"I need to leave for a bit," he told her after a while of staring at the stars on the ceiling.

"Well where are you going?"

"I don't know."

When he walked out the door, he didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do. He just knew he needed to leave. He needed to escape everything.