“He’s kinda cool, I guess,” Brandon shrugged.
Stop the presses. Brandon might have admitted that like he was lying about liking asparagus, but that was a helluva compliment and quite the commentary on the impression Travis had made on the kid. Travis still hadn’t texted this morning. She slipped her phone back out of her pocket, checking the time—7:08. It being Monday, he likely was already in surgery saving souls, and he had boards to study for afterward, coming up this week.
“Yup. He has to pick up Yoda this evening. So keep your sling exactly right so he thinks you’re a good patient, and pretend you like it.” She grinned.
The top of Brandon’s crown, where it peeked out over Handsome’s back, shook.
“He was a star pitcher in high school,” she added carefully, testing the waters. “I bet he’d talk baseball with you until your ears fall off, if you let him.”
“Great…so I can feel even more inadequate.”
“There’s no reason why we can’t sign you up for the high school team tryouts, Bran. I don’t know why you’re resisting—”
“Yeah there is.”
“Only if you don’t want to play,” she snapped back.
“No, only that I can’t play,” he retorted with equal emphasis.
“What do you mean? You’re good—”
“I didn’t say I sucked at it. I said I can’t. Because I’m a foster kid, I’m not allowed to participate, I just moved here, etcetera, et-fucking-cetera, and you don’t seem to get it.”
“What?” she breathed, taken aback, ignoring the cursing.
Her dad would have smacked the word right off her mouth if she’d ever dared to utter something like that in his presence, but it was just a word, it wasn’t a hill worth dying on when there were so many other challenges to face when it came to this thorny kid.
She turned back around to face him—or, at least, the horse. “That’s not true—”
“Then why did my last school tell me that? And the last?”
Why did they tell him that? It sounded like a legal issue, if that was the case. Brandon was guaranteed to be eligible for all school activities no matter where he moved because he was a foster kid. But this wasn’t the first time she’d heard of these minor injustices. At her parent counseling sessions, she’d heard all sorts of stories, about coaches being frustrated about their constantly shifting rosters and finding all sorts of excuses to keep foster children with checkered pasts or behavior problems from participating, when having a sport or activity were often the only stable things they had to feel a little bit normal.
“Did you tell Anita?”
He scoffed. “Why bother? She’s too busy lecturing me on why I’m giving her a headache.”
Yeah, as she watched him plod Handsome out of the barn, he seemed like a real threat, she thought with equal Brandon snark. Bran was far gentler than Anita thought. His hand gripping the slackened lead, came up to mindlessly brush his knuckles down the horse’s cheek as they walked comfortably together. This wasn’t the pissed-off kid who’d first arrived here with a trash bag filled with his worldly possessions in one hand, his school pack thrown over his shoulder, and his little drawstring bag with the rusty grommets in the other; boasting about his bruised face and puffy split lip not being nearly as bad as the damage he’d inflicted on those other assholes at the group home, as if it would intimidate her; Anita gripping her arm, whispering, “Good luck…”
He had made progress. She had to keep reminding herself of that, or she’d become just as bad as every other foster parent who hadn’t given him a chance. She had to keep looking for that good in him and not let her burgeoning relationship with Travis interfere with this obligation she’d already accepted. Brandon didn’t talk like he wanted to be here, but he sure acted like he did.
She made a mental note to discuss the coaching issue on the next phone call with his foster care worker.
She jogged across the gravel and up the porch steps, slipping out of her muck boots just inside the door, and hurried through her routine. Travis would be here again after he finished work. Her lips still burned. Kissing Trav, riding in that truck, nestling together under the stars as she let desire—instead of her questions—be her compass, old times mixed with new, had been a reawakening. And yet it had seemed like second nature. A reflex that needed no reminders how to execute, only practice to strengthen again. He still did that nibble-bite thing that made her toes curl, still knew how to touch her and tease her nerves into a fluster. Still knew how to take charge as if pulling the reins while miraculously empowering her at the same time. His smell, his taste, the desperation and possessiveness in his groping hands when they’d nearly torn each other’s clothes off again…
How could she trust him with her heart when it still seemed like so many shadows were unspoken in the crevices? How did one fall in love with another who withheld an important piece of themselves from her? Like you’re doing from him? Her conscience niggled.
Why had he thought he wouldn’t be good for her anymore? More importantly, why had he failed to see how much she’d needed him? The world had always been a playground for the old Travis, but the brooding Travis faced with hardship seemed to balk or bail when the going got tough. What would Brandon do if he formed an attachment to Travis and Travis bailed? With Brandon needing an advocate and Anita breathing down her neck, she had to stay focused.
Years of grieving Trav’s loss weren’t so easily vanquished by a sunset date, it seemed.
She hurried back outside to start prepping the stall for the arriving show horse with a heel bulb abscess, and by the time she’d mounted up, rain clouds were rolling in from the west, a heavy gray haze along the horizon, in contrast with the blue sky above. There was enough time to get Patches down to the canyon and back before it reached them. Trotting Patches onto the trail, she breathed in the smells of the desert, weaving into the canyon, and arriving around the cliff wall, layered in various sandstone stratigraphy, to the gentle trinkling sound of the spring spilling into the tinaja. Yes, she’d tell Trav they needed to slow it down—
Her phone buzzed. The man on her mind lit up her screen. Finally, a text!
She whoa-ed Patches and scrambled to open the text.
Trav:Hey, babe.