The Cowboy's Texas Sky (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 2)

Chapter Nineteen

He found himself clicking to Handsome, walking him toward the mounting block in the corral. “Whoa, big fella. Go easy on me, okay?” he murmured.

“I’ll adjust your stirrups once you’re mounted,” Skylar called as she walked Patches out behind him, unaware of the sweat that had nothing to do with the heat breaking out on his brow. “I was thinking, since you thought that pic was pretty, we could go down the trail to Cañon del Diablo. It’s not long, about twenty minutes at a hearty trot,” she added, huffing as she exerted herself, adjusting Patches’s girth strap and dropping down her stirrups. “The sunset’s pretty there.”

He took a deep breath, lowered his Stetson, but there was no mistaking the increase in his pulse. His heart was thumping harder. Faster. As he stepped up onto the block, it damn near hammered as the sun beat down on his T-shirted back. He hadn’t felt so out of his element since he’d walked into his first AA meeting. Why was he required to take a day off after a call shift? He’d honestly be better off with a scalpel in his hands right now, where no one knew the past, where he didn’t have to face this bullshit insecurity, where all they saw was a rookie rock star in the OR.

He rolled out his shoulders, considering bailing right now, finding a lame excuse about work, until he spied Skylar watching him, so happy. Put your boot in the stirrup and ass in the saddle, man.

He put his left prosthetic gingerly in the stirrup, swinging over his right leg. The leather creaked beneath his weight as he settled in. Handsome, even standing still, swayed in those indescribable ways one only noticed when they weren’t on solid ground, like a ship rocking in a glassy harbor. And hell if he felt like a buzzed sailor, unable to get his sea legs because he was fucking missing one. He adjusted the reins and took his boots out of the stirrups to hang against Handsome’s belly so Skylar could adjust the length for him. He listed slightly to the right without equal leg balance on either side, when dread hit him so hard.

A swirl of sickness niggled deep in the pit of his gut as he readjusted his weight: She’d have to touch his fake leg. She’d feel the hard carbon-fiber and thermoplastics for herself and know the realness of that stupid handicap mirror hanger stuffed in his glove box. He suddenly couldn’t bear the idea of ever lying in bed with her, removing his pants or boots in front of her, or God forbid, his prosthetic, when he’d have to use a crutch, for her to see such frailness.

He hated this part about himself. Hated how inadequate it made him feel. Hated how he worked out like a dog just to feel like he was still a capable, fit man. Hated that he’d never barrel race again. Hated that he’d balked last night when she’d thrown herself at him to dance, quashing her happiness. Hated that he’d fucked his chances with Skylar so long ago and hated that she was so forgiving now, wading through this water with him, even if he felt like he was tugging on her to speed up when she was dragging on him to slow down.

The saddle jerked as she fiddled with the right stirrup fender, unbuckling it and lengthening it, counting the notches, no doubt so she could repeat the process on the left. He felt that sweat trickling down his neck from his temples, dampening the collar of his T-shirt, and he stretched it to ease the noose that it suddenly felt like. This was a typical thing to do when being fit for a new saddle, and yet as she took his ankle and jammed it back into the stirrup, he couldn’t help but feel like a beginner being reminded how unskilled they were.

He was stupid for thinking it but couldn’t help it. Those stubborn Dixon genes coursing through his veins were high-strung, and he’d never been able to shame them into silence.

He frowned as she came around to the left side, and he bent his knee, pulling his leg far out of the way so she wouldn’t even bump it, let alone touch it. She was so focused on taking care of business, she didn’t seem to notice the unnatural angle in which he held it.

As she readjusted the buckle, she slapped down the fender and grabbed his ankle to shove into the stirrup.

“There, test that out and see if it…”

He’d stiffened. She must have sensed it because her words trailed off and she glanced up from beneath the brim of her cowboy hat.

“Travis?”

Her hands were still on his fake leg, and he reached down stiffly as if brushing off an insect, brushing her hand away, his eyes affixed on the reins in his right hand. No one except his prosthetist had touched his stump in fourteen years. Aside from his distant blur of sexual exploits, and his raging nightmares, the rare hugs he’d given his parents when they’d visited him in San Antonio, and the embraces he’d shared with his bros at his parents’ funerals, he hadn’t actually been touched by anyone except a buddy-type slap on the shoulder from Meyers or Lopez or fellow med school friends until Sky had collapsed in the ED. Falling into these embraces with Skylar had lit his blood on fire, but this was far more personal, a side of him she’d never seen before.

His jaw was so tight, he could crack shells with his teeth. He pumped it to try and unclench his face, but it only tensed farther.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she murmured softly.

“I’m fine,” he lied because even if he was a stubborn idiot about getting on the horse in the first place, he sure has hell wasn’t going to be pitied right back off it, either.

The stirrups weren’t quite even. The notches on either fender weren’t going to line up perfectly because his prosthetic measured just a hair differently, but she wouldn’t know that because he hadn’t been patient enough to let her do her job.

“Let’s take an easy walk around the corral. Get your bearings again since it’s been awhile.”

There was no mistaking her cautious tone. Just like with dancing, his tension was screwing this up, too. She wasn’t talking to him like he was Travis anymore, she was talking to him in careful, nonthreatening tones, like she would have talked to Rhett, and goddammit, he hated it. He’d worked so hard these past years. Worked hard to bridge his relationship with his folks, even though he’d never felt like things were the same. He’d accomplished so much, but in this moment, he saw the naked truth for what it was. He’d used his accomplishments as armor. He hid behind them because those accomplishments looked a helluva lot more impressive than the hollow-cheeked kid in a wheelchair with a Purple Heart. They created a nice, pretty picture of himself. He was at risk of Skylar seeing the facade for what it was: deceivingly thick paint on a flimsy paper mask.

Nope. Couldn’t happen. He was doing this for her. And he was ruining it. He smiled down at her, no matter how forced, and nodded once. “Good idea.”

He tapped his heels into Handsome’s belly. Gently tapped again when he realized his left heel wasn’t tapping with the same amount of pressure, and fuck, but the emotions once again simmered on the surface, clouding his thoughts. This was a mistake. He should have gotten off the horse the moment Skylar realized he was uncomfortable. Handsome began to walk. He spied Brandon in his periphery, a shape in the window as the curtain shimmied. The binder wasn’t on the bench anymore, as he’d suspected might happen.

He shifted off balance again because he’d been so damn stubborn about the stirrups.

“Try to readjust your weight—”

“You think I’m not tryin’?”

She fell silent at his snappish reply. Shit, he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t subject her to this brash side that always got the better of him, like when Lopez sicced Meyers on him. “I’m done,” he muttered, reining Handsome away from the rail to bring him back to the mounting block.

Panicking could spook a horse. He couldn’t panic unless he was willing to risk eating a little dirt, which he wasn’t. At one time, he could have jumped off Cimarron and stuck the landing, but now? One wrong fall could shatter his knee. He needed to get off the horse and back on solid ground and take Yoda home, before he said something to hurt Skylar and push her away again.

Frustrated, he pulled himself back on balance, but the discomfort didn’t cease. His mind was spinning down that spiral, and Yoda wasn’t here to help him. He hadn’t felt this spiral in so damn long and couldn’t bear that it was resurfacing now. Couldn’t bear that Skylar was witnessing it.