The first time Sophia saw him, the air smelled like wild mint and riverwater.
She had taken Clover—her grandmother’s aging but spirited mare—out past the pasture, along the trail where cattails swayed and the earth dipped gently toward the riverbank. The sound of the current was quiet and steady, and for the first time since leaving the city, Sophia felt her heartbeat match something in the world around her.
That was when she saw him.
He was kneeling by a worn wooden easel, his hands steady, his brush swaying in slow, purposeful arcs. He hadn’t noticed her at first—his attention was locked on the play of sunlight over the water. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, forearms dusted in flecks of blue and green. A small jar of water glinted beside him, next to a half-open lunchbox with a half-eaten sandwich still inside.
Clover snorted gently, and he finally looked up.
Their eyes met.
Sophia’s instinct was to offer a quick, polite nod and keep riding. She wasn’t here to make friends. She wasn’t here for anything except closing her grandmother’s estate and trying not to fall apart in the process.
But the man gave a small, warm smile—more in his eyes than on his lips—and raised his brush in a sort of half-wave.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, his voice low and even. “She’s beautiful.”
Sophia blinked. “Clover?”
He nodded. “And the rider.”
Her brow lifted. Was he flirting? She couldn’t tell. He said it like he was simply stating a fact, like the sky was blue or the breeze smelled like mint.
“You always talk like that to strangers?” she asked, keeping her tone light.
“Only the ones who interrupt my painting with wild horses and prettier views than I planned for.”
She smiled despite herself. Just a little.
---
His name was Lucas. He lived in the next town over and worked as a veterinarian—mostly large animals, farm visits, the occasional emergency foaling. Painting was just a thing he did “to slow time down,” he told her.
“I like noticing things,” he said. “Most days are full of people rushing past beauty.”
Sophia didn’t know how to respond to that. He spoke in that same calm, thoughtful voice every time, like nothing ever really startled him. Not the world, not people, not even her silence.
She started to ride that path more often.
Not on purpose, she told herself. It was just… peaceful. Familiar.
And Lucas always seemed to be there. Sometimes painting. Sometimes sitting in the grass with a sketchbook and thermos. Once, when she passed by in the rain, he was reading a book with his hood pulled low, water droplets clinging to his lashes.
“You're going to ruin that,” she said, nodding toward the book.
He smiled. “It’s a library copy. Let them charge me.”
---
The more they talked, the more Lucas unfolded—not in grand declarations, but in small, careful offerings.
He brought her apples for Clover, always cut into quarters.
He remembered the exact way she liked her coffee—too much cream, no sugar—and started keeping a thermos warm in case she stopped by.
When she mentioned, almost absentmindedly, that her grandmother used to sing to the fireflies at dusk, he said nothing. But the next week, she found a small jar left on her porch, lit from inside with little battery fairy lights, and a folded note that read: For your own little spark of dusk.
He never signed his notes. But she always knew they were from him.
---
Sophia tried not to fall for him.
She told herself it was just the setting. The soft light, the quiet days, the loneliness of being away from the city.
But Lucas was something else entirely. He didn’t fill the silence with empty talk. He didn’t press when she gave vague answers. He listened—truly listened—like every word she shared was worth something.
When she told him about the city—her marketing job, her ex, the feeling of being constantly exhausted—he didn’t try to fix it.
Instead, he looked at her like she was made of constellations and said, “That sounds heavy. No wonder your shoulders sit so tight.”
Then he gently reached out and ran his thumb across the place just under her collarbone, barely touching, as if he could ease the ache with presence alone.
---
One afternoon, she found him not by the river, but leaning against her porch post, holding a crate of peaches.
“I helped Mrs. Delaney down the road with her cow,” he said. “She paid me in fruit. Figured you might like some.”
He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. But the peaches were peeled and sliced, tucked into jars. Two of them had tiny twine bows around the lids. One had a sticker shaped like a heart, poorly drawn with a red marker.
Sophia opened the door wider without saying a word.
He followed her inside, removed his boots at the threshold, and helped her cook dinner. They ate in quiet companionship, and later, while washing dishes, he hummed some old tune she didn’t recognize.
When she turned to look at him, soap suds dripping from her hands, he was already watching her with that small, anchored smile.
“What?” she said, trying not to sound breathless.
“You look more at home now,” he replied.
---
They kissed for the first time under the sycamore tree by the river.
He hadn’t planned it, she was sure of that. Lucas didn’t do things for show. He simply looked at her one afternoon, after she laughed at something he’d said—real laughter, the kind she hadn’t felt in years—and he touched her cheek with paint-stained fingers, leaned in, and kissed her like he was learning how to breathe again.
It wasn’t fireworks. It was something quieter. Something steadier.
Like belonging.
---
Sophia’s heart, once armored and folded in corners, began to unfold.
She found herself tracing the lines of his sketches when he wasn't looking. She cooked him breakfast once, just toast and eggs, and watched the way his eyes lit up like she’d handed him the stars.
Lucas never said "I love you" in words.
But he showed up every morning with fresh bread from the local baker.
He carved her a wooden bookmark because he noticed she folded page corners.
He fixed the loose hinge on her grandmother’s music box without saying a word about it.
And when the time came for her to decide whether to return to the city or stay, he didn’t ask her to choose him.
He just took her hand, brushed a curl from her face, and said, “Whatever you decide, I’ll be here. But I’ll miss you. Deeply.”
And that was the moment she knew.
She wasn’t leaving.
