Chapter Eighteen
He approached the massive barn door on tracks. The incessant distant buzz of insects droned like white noise. Sunbaked heat.
Cactus wrens chattered like hoarse engines in the distance, punctuating the quiet. Like the badlands at home, when he and his brothers would hike down into Ghost Canyon and sit on the ledges of those ancient rock shelters filled with an archaeological treasure trove, basking in the beautiful nothingness, or rides in his pops’s truck to help their foreman, his momma on late summer nights, singing as she lulled her little boys to sleep… He glanced up at the sky, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses, and felt the immensity of it surrounding him. Vulture floating on the currents like a kite. Was this place just as magical at night, when the starlit heavens twinkled above? He wouldn’t mind finding out.
A breeze rolled over his skin. A rustling sound off in the scrubby weeds rattled as a lizard or mouse scurried over the pebbly earth. The faint odor of carrion drifted over the land from farther out in the backcountry. Earthy air. For a minute, it really did feel as if he could swing right up in a saddle and take off at an easy canter.
It’s in your blood,Toby had once said when trying to lure him home. How cruel could fate be to lace this beautiful land into the fiber of one’s being, then steal the very leg they needed to work it, to ride it?
A horse nickered. Boots shuffled and gates clinked. The soft sound of Skylar talking to the horses lured him through the door. His lips curled into a one-sided smile. Doolittle indeed, talking to the animals. And yet they’d missed the mark just a hair with that nickname. Brandon had struck the nail on the head, likening her to some Disney princess. She talked to those animals like she’d talk to anyone on the street, and yet she’d fight for them like a warrior. He’d seen it the other day with the stray. Would she fight for him, too? For the love that was still there between them that she seemed reluctant to fully embrace? She’d been all smiles and acceptance, but now that he thought about it, she hadn’t really told him anything about herself. In fact, she’d focused on getting him to talk.
Compelled by a need to reconnect, a need to be here, he walked beneath the sign fixed neatly over the door, the same little logo of the paint horse galloping, a heart formed by the negative space between its stylized forelegs. Skylar’s heart. It all made sense now.
“Desert Dancer, you’re too high strung, you know that?” she muttered playfully as a hoof knocked a stall door, jolts to her voice from somewhere farther within as if she jostled something.
Timothy hay blended with leather and manure assaulted his nose. He kept walking down the corridor between box stalls, glancing up at the rafters and hayloft around the upper perimeter where bales were stacked, like rugged corbeled vaulting, like a desert cathedral.
He spied Skylar, palming treat pellets to two horses’ muzzles who leaned their heads over the gates as if to say hello.
“Yeah…they call me Doolittle, don’t they? They don’t know my secret lies in the treat buckets…” She was joking, and he huffed a laugh to himself at how sweet it was, like the old Skylar, without her guard up. “C’mere, Handsome,” she said, turning to a massive roan, slipping his halter over his head, clipping a lead to the ring and rolling open his stall. She walked all seventeen hands of thick, sturdy muscle down the aisle to the crossties. She clipped him in, then leaned around Handsome’s neck and grinned at him. God, that radiant sunshine smile. He wanted a suntan.
“Come meet your ride, Trav.”
His ride? He was really going to do this. He adjusted the Stetson that after so long still felt foreign on his head, a relic he’d run from. She looked so excited, he didn’t have the heart to chicken out like he did with dancing, and yet he quickened his stride, anxious to see her, meet the animals, and ducked under the ropes to pull her into his arms. He’d been stuck on her all night and morning and finally had her in reach again.
“First things first,” he murmured as his hand slipped around her back and he dipped his head, bumping her with his hat, nibbling her lips, reacquainting himself with her taste and touch and walking her backward until her back was pressed gently to the stable wall, her front pinned beneath his chest.
He soothed the nips with kisses as he felt her fingers grip his waist and, finally, tighten on him and sifted his hands into her tangled hair. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so I can tangle myself the fuck up in it and be a satisfied man.
He pulled up for air, then rested his forehead to hers, knocking the Stetson clean off, breathing in the faint peach smell, this time cut with the saltiness of her sweat and dust. Sweet perfume.
“You wore your old hat,” she murmured, trailing her finger in lazy circles upon his pectorals, a quirky, contemplative habit of hers he was starting to enjoy.
His arm still cinched around her waist, he palmed the heat pouring through her damp shirt. No wonder she was so toned. She’d been willowy when he’d last known her but not muscly. What he’d give to go back in time to last night, to dance with her and fall in love with her all over again because in spite of her willing kiss, her baby blues were shuttered.
He peered into them. “I missed this most,” he murmured.
“Making out with me?” she smirked. So much for the sweet Disney princess.
He huffed a laugh. “No complaints that my tongue gets to two-step with your tongue again. But I meant this. Just…feeling you against me. Knowing you’re here with me. I feel like we can grab those old dreams when we’re together.”
She bit that lip. He couldn’t see it but could feel the gesture, and at the mention of old dreams, she seemed to withdraw. Dammit, why did she keep doing this? He’d always gotten what he wanted with her, but that only worked when—if—she was willing. “It’s all so new, still…but I missed it, too. I missed us.” She lay a palm on his heart. “I missed this.” His heartbeat. Shivers released across his skin. More mixed messages. Withdrawing and yet saying things like that.
“You still smell like peaches.” He took to nuzzling her.
She rolled her eyes with a delighted smile and pushed teasingly on his chest, though he didn’t back up. “Seriously, Brandon could be anywhere, Trav. He can’t walk in and see us making out and you gripping my ass,” she murmured.
“Brandon’s in the house, pretending he don’t like baseball; we’re good.”
Skylar lifted her eyes heavenward. “OMG, that kid… He loves it. The schools have screwed him, not letting him play. It’s the one thing he’s been able to take with him from school to school, and I swear they can’t give him a fair shot. He’s a good kid. I don’t know how no one else can see it. You should see him ride. He’s a natural.”
Travis ignored her admonishment and leaned back down, his thighs straddling hers, his pelvis pushing into her as his chest blanketed her, his mouth resuming a slow, sensual trail of kisses along her jaw and cheek, begging her to return the heat. His dick was growing heavy. He’d been struggling with a semi for a few days now, imagining Skylar, fantasizing about their future, in and out of bed. His libido had always run hot, even if he’d used his fist over the years far more often than he cared to admit, and he didn’t know how to hold Skylar without wanting to touch every inch of her, too.
“If Anita finds him a new placement, all this progress will be lost,” she breathed defiantly.
He pulled back at that, his brow furrowing, all thoughts of lust dragging to a stop. She really did have a lot on her plate with Brandon. Did she even have time for him, sniffing around like a dog in heat? “What’s going on with this Anita? Brandon had some choice things to say about her a minute ago.”
Skylar shook her head, her arms tightening around his torso, nestling into him and resting her cheek against his chest. So much for pushing him away. And yet it felt more like she needed reassurances rather than kisses.