Skylar:Brandon doesn’t like to cuddle me, either.
Trav:Girl, you knew exactly what I meant. You playing hard to get?
She laughed out loud. How could she play hard to get when he had to already know she was still so crazy about him? She left the question unanswered.
Trav:So what’s my girl doing this morning? Besides running a ranch.
His girl. It ought to be patronizing, her being a woman. But he’d always called her his girl, and she couldn’t deny it made her heart skip a beat. In spite of last night’s heavier moments, he seemed determined to prove he was back in her life, and he was trying. Skylar looked around. The rain was still in the distance. Just enough wind rolled across the desert to sooth the sting of the intensifying sun. She opened her photo app, struck a pose, and snapped a selfie with the tinaja and part of Patches’s rump right behind her, the fox staring like a photobomber off to one side, and sent the picture.
Skylar:Exercising Patches, my mare. And hanging out with my resident fox.
Wistfulness surged as she gazed at the photo. She and Travis had once done this together, with a different paint horse, on a different ranch, in a different canyon: Ghost Canyon, which cut through the Legacy and was dotted with prehistoric Native American art. And he hadn’t been home in years. Why? He’d artfully evaded her questions. She’d often thought about Cimarron, the horse upon whom Travis had taught her, a shy wallflower, to ride. She would have done anything he’d suggested back then if it meant his continued attention, but she’d never accounted for the fact that when he’d suggested horse riding she’d love it so much. Did this mean that Travis hadn’t seen his horse in as long a time, either? Trav and Cimarron had been a bonded pair.
A speech bubble began to form. Then stopped. Then started again.
*
Travis:Gorgeous.
Breathtaking. The woman and the land. Her old plaid shirt thrown over what looked to be a faded black tank top hugging those twin handfuls he’d nearly nipped and suckled last night, wisps of golden hair catching on the wind beneath her beat-up Stetson, strands glinting in the stark morning light, made honest-to-God lust spiral through him. She may as well have sent a nude pic because this dirt-covered Sky had the same effect. He loved how she’d never worried about her appearance. It was, to him, the sexiest way a woman could be—when a woman was herself. And that fox? What was she, a desert Snow White, charming the animals? Dogs, turtles, now this?
My Sky:Me or the desert?
His lips curled up. She was flirting. Thank God. Her flirting doused blessed relief onto everything he’d been worried about ruining last night and sprinkled gasoline on the coals. Because the way she’d yanked back from him again had blared like a Code Blue through his nerves all night.
Travis:Not sure which one’s making the other one hotter.
My Sky:Please. Insert eye roll.
A laughing emoji followed.
He laughed and plucked his earbuds out, dropping them on his chest.
Travis:Where’s that tinaja at?
The hint of a horse’s rump behind her; the watering hole, like a mirage of an oasis; the little fox, it hearkened.
My Sky:When you get here, I’ll show you. It’s my favorite hideout on this ranch. It’s really grown since I rented it six years ago. Tyson’s a big charitable doner. He’s helped me turn this place into an oasis.
He groaned at the intrusion of reality. She’d put down roots, with strong ties to this community. He’d heard those horses in the barn, seen the homestead and the idyllic garden plot. He’d hoped to tell Skylar about his and Lopez’s offer today. The therapeutic stable might’ve been a mechanism through which they could achieve those dreams they’d once had together. But he wasn’t so sure how she’d react, especially after those flinches that told him there was a lot more he needed to know about her. And now that he knew a little more about Brandon? It wasn’t like she could uproot him or travel regularly out to Dallas, either. If she couldn’t leave him home alone for a few minutes without this Anita woman breathing down her neck, there would be no way Sky could be gone for a few days to a week traveling on a routine basis.
He gazed at Skylar, all grown up and tough. And reluctant. He’d really burned her, showing up alive. And here he sat, blue scrubs with V-Tech stamped across the stiff fabric, alone, in the “doctor’s mess,” an old hospital room in an attached wing with defunct wall nozzles and O2 attachments, no longer in use, where he was studying between surgeries since the tile outside his office was being cleaned and the machinery was loud and distracting. A rerun of Little House on the Prairie silently flickered on the TV, the volume turned down. Who’d used this room last? Meyers? He’d have to give him shit later for his choice of programming.
My Sky:Bring your boots when you come to grab Yoda. We’ll saddle up and ride down the canyon. My horse, Handsome, is a Belgian draft. He’s sturdy enough for you to ride him. What are you, 230? 240?
Ride? His heart jumped. His smile fell. Yes. No. Shit, first dancing last night and now riding? The tug-of-war within him resumed. She was extending an olive branch, though. He ought to take it if he was ever going to convince her to hit the ground running with him.
He wanted to feel that breeze on his skin, feel the horse beneath his ass, wanted to stand in those stirrups and gallop and—Fuck, he shook his head, felt his prosthetic sealed against his stump, and pushed that stupid frail feeling away, clenching his teeth that it had all been stripped away from him in one, flesh-searing flash. She deserved answers to her questions last night. Of course these mechanical problems with his body would be unavoidable to explain at some point. He just hadn’t wanted to think about it as his heart had skipped away with happy beats while his tongue had made love to hers and his hands had slid beneath her skirt.
Could he suck it up? Could he get into the saddle for her? He would be a hypocrite to coach others on riding and using horses as therapy when he refused to do it himself.
He scrolled back up to that first photo of Brandon and Yoda, feeling tightness coil through his muscles. Damn. Wasn’t that something, Brandon and his dog, like two peas in a pod. Yodabear, the traitor, seemed perfectly comfortable nestled in Brandon’s grip like he belonged there. What was this trouble that Brandon’s foster care worker was dishing out?
Where did the foster kid fit into all of this? That tingling sensation of premonition washed over him again, the source of that tightness. The way Brandon’s eyes were shaped, the roundness to his jaw… Why did he feel something so familiar slice through him when he looked at the kid?
My Sky:Did I lose you?
The text buzzed his hand, lighting up the screen that had gone dark as he stewed, just as his pager beeped. He unclipped it and looked at the message. T minus 20 min.