Chapter Sixteen
Monday
Brandon “Boss” Fuentes. Unusual that the tattoo that Brandon was so curious about was of a man also named Brandon.
A shiver of premonition washed over her skin, a sensation she couldn’t place, as Skylar hefted a bale to the edge of the hay door, sank the teeth of the claw into it, then swung it outside, feeding the cable through the pulley until it hit the ground, wiping the sweat from her brow on the back of her arm. The sun was barely up, yet the summer air was pregnant with warmth and a bout of humidity that promised a rare midmorning rain.
She jogged down the wooden stairs from the hayloft and retrieved the bale, making quick work of divvying up portions for rabbits she’d inherited from a surrender, then darting in and out of the empty horse stalls while the animals grazed in the pasture, stuffing their feed bags one by one, dumping cat food into the pan in the tack room as she went, for her barn cats.
“You finished brushing out Handsome?” she called.
Brandon peered around Handsome’s withers beneath the crosstie, the soft scraping sound of the brush upon the horse sending up dust motes around him. “Still here, ain’t I?”
So the answer was no, not yet. Why couldn’t he just say that? Sometimes trying to help this boy who found any reason to snap at her, even when there was no reason that she could fathom warranting it, confounded her. She smiled anyway, compelled to try and reach him. She’d wished, in hindsight, that she hadn’t been too afraid to report her dad or let Travis and his family report him. But she’d been more afraid of the system as a girl. Rhett had been the devil she’d known. But DFPS had been a mystery devil.
“Now I’m done,” Brandon said, as if he’d needed a reason to be sarcastic a moment ago and had brushed the horse thirty seconds longer, just to prove some point.
“You know, I was thinking,” she hedged. “Can I ask you something, Brandon?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
She inhaled slowly. Another day of teenage prickles.
“That man tattooed on Travis’s arm… What about it interested you?”
Brandon said nothing. She eyed his feet shuffling back and forth beneath Handsome as he busied himself on the opposite side of the horse.
“Bran?” she nudged.
“I just shrugged,” he replied defensively.
Right, like she could see it from here, and as if a shrug answered her question. She tugged her work gloves off and jammed them in her waist. “I just wondered if you, maybe…knew him.”
“No,” came the flat reply. “Why?”
Huh. “No reason.” She was probably reading into this. How could the kid know someone from a different state who’d died before he’d ever been born? The name similarity had to be a coincidence. It wasn’t as if the name Brandon was uncommon.
“Okay. Take Handsome out to the pasture with the other horses. I need to prep a new stall for the boarding stallion that’s arriving from Fort Stockton, then need to exercise Patches and get to the clinic. You’re coming with me today. My last patient of the day is at one o’clock so we can get back for the stallion’s arrival. You did a good job this morning with the reining. I thought for sure you’d sleep in after getting home so late.”
He shrugged. “I like riding.”
She grinned. In spite of the sarcasm, he was less acerbic this morning and talking more than usual. He’d been surprised to see Travis here last night, Trav having barely gotten her home in the nick of time. “You’re good at it. Don’t forget to latch the gate.”
She turned to get back to work.
“Is that doctor guy coming over again?” he hedged at her back.
Interesting.She stopped and glanced over her shoulder as he came around Handsome and lifted his hooves, one at a time to inspect them, his drawstring bag crammed in the back pocket of his jeans.
“Do you want to see that doctor guy again?”
And just like that, her lips were burning with memories of the doctor guy. Burning with memories of everything that had transpired last night. Should they ease back into this relationship that they’d once jumped into, both feet, sink or swim? They’d tried to jump in last night, and at first, they’d meshed right back together, until they’d hit those road bumps. How easily she’d climbed onto his lap like a stripper on a pole and rode his cock through her panties, let him slip his hands up her dress, let him pivot from talk of his parents and Afghanistan—he’d clearly shielded himself from her evasive questions with their tried-and-true pheromones.
But that look on his face when he’d struggled to dance, and that awkward pinch to her chest when his stash of contraception and Ashley’s crumpled number had fallen in her lap, or that heavy realization that he hadn’t just avoided her these past years but had avoided his family, too, all the people he supposedly cared about… So much left unspoken lurked in the shadows. Travis’s charisma had always been larger than life, and she’d been wildly presumptuous, trying to dance with him, assuming he’d sweep her into his arms like he always had. His leg hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d put him on the spot. And she didn’t know what to do with this hesitant Travis who was holding back.
Yeah, she needed to slow down. Travis was far more complicated than she’d first realized. She couldn’t get carried away trying to reclaim the relationship they’d once had, just couldn’t! She knew what happened when they inserted tab A into slot B. Knew the consequences. Never wanted to relive them.
She glanced at her phone—7:06. It was only the hundredth time she’d checked it, hoping for a text message. Yeah, you’re not desperate or anything. So much for slowing it down.