“You can’t shoot the horse, Bad.” Violet shook her head.
“I bet Cash would do it if I asked him to.”
A lump lodged in my throat and tears burned in the back of my eyes. Black Betty and I were the only survivors of the accident. She’d come out of it almost as bad off as me, maybe even worse. Though she wasn’t burned all over like me, she’d tore a tendon pretty bad in her right back leg and cut herself up pretty good. Not the worst injuries the vet had ever seen, but if she didn’t let someone heal her up and help her, there’d be no point in keeping her alive. She’d always been skittish, from the moment that Dad pulled her out of the stock trailer from the auction. But a year under his hand…well, let’s just say, Eli Holstrom left his mark on all of us.
After the accident, she wouldn’t let no one touch her. Anytime someone came near her stall she went crazy, messing up any progress to her leg again.
Hot tears slipped down my cheeks and I fled from the doorway before my muffled cries could give me away. True was alreadyasleep, Cash was up playing with his Legos in the room we were sharing, but I didn’t want to go up there. He’d just start talking. I didn’t mind it most days, but right now, I needed to be alone.
With a blurry field of vision and my heart feeling like it would thump out of my chest, I raced for the barn. It was quiet there. The ranch hands were likely all in the bunkhouse now, drinking, playing poker, or heading off to bed. No one would come bother me in the barn.
They’d put Betty in the final stall on the left, away from the other horses. Partly to keep her calm, partly because she tried to kill any she came into contact with.
She snorted, those sleek black ears of hers pinning back as she noticed me slowly placing my hand on the latch of her stall. She pawed and struck out, a whinny peeling from her lungs as I undid the latch.
“Shhhh,” the sound was foreign, scratchy in my throat, but it was all I could do. It bothered my vocal cords, reminding me of all the smoke that seemed coated to the back of my throat for weeks. Every now and then I still felt it. Tasted it.
This is stupid. What are you trying to prove?Reason warred with the storm of emotion in my chest. But I had to do this. I couldn’t give up on her. No one had given up on me yet. Not Aunt Violet, Not Cash and True, certainly not Uncle Bad.
And maybe I needed to prove she was worthy of saving because self-consciously, I wondered if I even was.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, I kept my head lowered, my gaze not directly on her, and one hand out as I took my time opening her stall.
Her wild, terrified gaze flittered about as she snorted and pawed. I didn’t shush her. I didn’t have it in me to say anything anymore. Even that had been too much. But I stood in her stall with my hand out. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
My heart, in tandem with the stomp of her hooves as she struck the barn floor, began to slow. I forced calm, measured breaths from my lungs and met the mare’s gaze. Fear and anger and just about every other emotion blazed in those brown eyes, reflecting my own feelings. I saw so much of me in her. In a new place. With new people. With all this hurt and terror eating away at my sanity.
I was her and she was me.
And maybe she understood that. Maybe she recognized all of the brokenness in myself within her…maybe that’s why when I reached out my hand, steady despite how I felt on the inside, she didn’t bite it off, but pressed her nose to my palm.
Emotion swelled in my chest, silent tears spilling down my cheeks. She moved closer, nuzzling my stomach.
I’d never felt so seen. So accepted than I had in that moment. She knew what I felt. She felt it too. We didn’t need words to talk. To understand.
I don’t know how much time passed. Could have been minutes or hours. We just stood there, her head resting against my stomachas I absent-mindedly stroked her neck. The motion was soothing…for the both of us.
I finally pulled away, meeting her dark, steady stare for a moment before glancing at her back leg. She favored it, keeping it up unless she absolutely needed to. I’d need to start hand-walking her. Slowly. For little amounts of time and gradually build that tendon back up again.
Tomorrow we’d start.
I ran my hand down the bridge of her nose a final time before backing out of her stall. As I latched the door, she snorted, pinning her ears back.
My shoulders sagged. What had I done? But she wasn’t looking at me, I realized.
“Well, I’ll be damned…” Uncle Bad’s gruff voice sent me jumping back a step. “You got magic in them hands of yours, boy?”
I shook my head.
Bad spit some dip out the side of his mouth, his lips pulling up into a satisfied smirk. “You got somethin’. That’s for damn sure.” He turned for the front of the barn, waving me on to follow.
I did so in silence, falling into step beside him as we walked outside, the moon shining down on us from a star-flecked sky.
“You heard us in the kitchen?” he asked, his boots scraping against the dirt.
For a split second, I almost shook my head. But I knew the consequences for lying. Dad beat that into me. Literally. Unable to meet Uncle Bad’s gaze, I nodded.
Bad cleared his throat, pulling off his cowboy hat to run his hands through his light brown hair—the same color as Cash’s. I could see so much of my cousin in him. They were like carbon copies of one another.
