Page 22 of Not Our First Rodeo
My lips roll together to hold back my smile. “I’ll let the state of Montana know.”
She stares at me for a long moment, brow wrinkled as she tries to puzzle out my statement. “You’re being sarcastic.”
This does make my smile tug free. “Yes, Maya, I’m being sarcastic.”
“I don’t havetimefor sarcasm.” She says this as she begins to dig through her bag, rooting around until she finds her pointe shoes.
“You’re fourteen, Maya. You have nothing but time.”
Unlike me, who feels like time is racing. Time I thought I could use to figure things out is now slipping through my fingers. Just the thought of it makes my throat tight and makes the ever-present nausea roil in my stomach.
Maya stares up at me as she begins to bandage her feet, starting with her big toes, which have been causing her issues since I started. “I’m almostfifteen, and if I work hard enough, I could go pro as early as sixteen. That’s one year to get my act together.”
Maybe it’s some buried-deep maternal instinct, or maybe I just want to save her from ending up like me, but something drives me to sit next to her. She pauses in her wrapping and meets my eye.
“Maya,” I start, searching for the right words. “Dance is…well, it feels like everything. It has a way of making you feel like it’s the only thing worth living for. It means testing your body’s limits and beating yourself and proving to yourself that you can do things you thought were impossible. It’s exhilarating in a way that almost nothing else is.”
“Yeah,” she breathes, eyes far away.
I feel like I’ve gotten carried away. So, fixing my gaze on hers, I say, “But it’snoteverything. It can’t be. Because no matter how good you are, how hard you work, it can’t be forever. So don’t make dance your everything, or you’ll wake up one day and realize you don’t have anything else, okay?” I pause. “I just want you to have everything life has to offer.”
She stares at me for a long moment, a ringlet curl falling over her thick, dark brows. It’s unfair that a fourteen-year-old is already this pretty when the rest of us had to suffer through awkward years. “Okay, Elsie. I’ll try.”
A relieved smile hitches up the corners of my mouth. “Good, I’ve done my good deed for the day. Now wrap those feet and let’s get to work.”
The grin she gives me is so wide it makes me feel, just for a minute, like everything might be okay. I might not know who I am or what I’m doing, but at least I made a little bit of a difference in one person’s life.
It gives me hope that maybe I can get this all figured out. That maybe I’m not too far gone, too broken, to put myself back together. To be the person that Beau and this baby need me to be.
Thehorseisscared.And hesitant. I don’t blame her. We rescued her from an abusive home two days ago, so I know I have to be gentle with her. Yesterday, I didn’t even attempt to touch her, simply stood near her stall and let her come to me. It was slow going. She flinched and kept her ears pinned back, but I stayed where I was, letting her know I wasn’t going anywhere and that I was safe. It took twenty minutes for her to finally come close enough to sniff me, and I considered that a win.
Today, I let myself into the stables and approach her stall slowly, just like I did yesterday. “Hey, Sugar.” The American Quarter horse was presumably named for her gray-white coat, but I think it fits her personality too. She’s scared now, but I have a feeling she’s going to be a sweetheart.
She looks at me, her ears pinning back. “Hey, good girl,” I say softly, keeping my voice low. “How’d you sleep? I slept okay.” Looking around the stables to make sure I’m the only one here, I turn back to Sugar and say, “I saw my baby yesterday. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I saw that heartbeat.”
My quiet words seem to do the trick, soothing her, just as they’re doing for me. I didn’t want Elsie to know how nervous I was pulling up to that doctor’s office, not when I knew how anxious she was. Or I thought I did. Seeing her collapsed on the ground in front of my truck almost did me in. I’ve never seen her like that before, and I have to wonder if it was the first time that’s happened. Something tells me it wasn’t, and I don’t know what to do about that.
Sugar takes a step forward, and I slowly extend my hand, palm up, in her direction, offering it to her to sniff. She does, her spotted black nose nuzzling against the calloused palm of my hand. I’ve worked with hundreds of horses over the years, many of them injured or abused or difficult to manage, and I’ll never get over the feeling when they willingly come to me, trusting me for the first time.
“I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a good dad,” I say to Sugar, keeping my voice soft and calm. “My dad is the best dad in the entire world, and I have to think that he taught me something, but I couldn’t take care of Elsie the way she needed me to.”
Gently, I move my hand to smooth down her nose. When she flinches, I pause, and I wait for some of the tension to leave her body before continuing. Her coat is soft, and I can feel the warmth of her skin beneath my chilled hands.
“I just want to do a good job,” I tell her. “For both of them.”
I spend a few more minutes smoothing my hand over her nose before moving on to her neck, pausing any time she seems skittish. But the longer I pet her, the more she seems to relax. Horses are like people most of the time. They’re slow to trust, especially if they’ve been hurt in the past. They need to be reassured over and over again that the people in their life are safe. It’s hard to do, especially since I mostly work with horses that have been abused or have difficult temperaments. Butthat only makes it more rewarding when they finally trust you completely. Usually, the ones that take the longest to warm up are the ones I end up having the deepest connection with.
“I’ve got to go, Sugar,” I say. “But I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe then we can try a harness. I bet you’d like some time outside, huh?”
I let my hand trail down her neck one last time before backing up slowly so I don’t spook her. She watches me with wary eyes, but she looks less spooked than when I came in a few minutes ago. On the first few days of training a horse that’s been abused, I keep our sessions short so they don’t get overwhelmed, increasing the time by small increments each day.
It’s not until I back out of her line of vision that I see him there—Cooper. He’s leaning against the wall a few stalls down, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His deep brown hair is much longer than mine, pushed back from his face below a backward baseball cap that he’ll likely switch out for a cowboy hat before heading out on the ranch today. I’m annoyed to see we’re wearing the same red flannel shirt.
He arches one dark brow, and I let out a sigh, knowing he heard me talking to Sugar.
Pushing a hand through my hair, I ask, “How much did you hear?”
“So it went well, then? I wouldn’t know, since you were ignoring my texts.”
