Page 216 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Hands.

Reins.

Foot.

Weight.

Swing.

Except everything had changed. I stood on the block. Blueberry remained still. Beau moved closer, but stopped several feet away.

“You want me here?” he asked, voice quiet.

“Please.”

I put my foot where it needed to go.

For one terrible second, I was twenty-years-old again, sitting in a therapy office insisting I would ride because losing a leg wasn’t going to take anything else from me.

I mounted.

My body settled into the saddle and terror ripped through me. I grabbed the horn on instinct. Blueberry shifted half a step.

“No!” The word came out too fast. I swung down almost immediately. My boots hit the dirt awkwardly and I stumbled.

Beau moved instinctively, then stopped when I caught myself against Blueberry.

My breathing was ragged as my tears blurred the arena. “I can’t.” Beau said nothing. His silence made me angrier. “I fucking can’t do it.”

He came closer. “Okay.”

“Stop saying okay.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” My voice broke. “I thought this would be different.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m different.” The tears finally spilled. “I’ve done all this work. Five years of it. Physical therapy. Learning how to walk. Learning how to run a ranch differently. Learning how to do everything differently, and I still got up there and felt exactly like I did the first time.”

Beau’s eyes stayed on mine. “I believe you.”

Blueberry nudged my shoulder and Beau smiled faintly.

“You want me to put everything away?”

I stared at the mounting block. Then at Blueberry.

For the first time, getting back on wasn’t something I needed to do to prove I hadn’t lost.

It was simply something I wanted.

“Wait.”

Beau stopped.

I wiped beneath my eyes.