Page 35 of Untaming the Cowboy
Teylor appeared at his flank, scent of clean sweat and powder, brimming with purpose. “I’m stealing your girl for a photo under the string lights when you’re free,” she announced, then caught his expression and paused. Her eyes gentled. “You want me to stand here a minute?”
“I’m good.” The words sounded wrong in his mouth, foreign.
A little boy ran into the gate path chasing his cap. Luc reached without thinking, snagged the collar, handed him to his mother, who said something grateful he didn’t catch. Another crack of backyard fireworks laced the beat, and the ground under Luc tilted.
Then the DJ, gassed by the crowd and not reading the room, hit his country set harder. “Boots on the Ground!” The hook zoomed out on a siren sample that stabbed the night; drums rolled in relentless cadence.
Luc’s neck locked. The song’s first verse punched through memory and ripped the scab from a year he had buried deep. Heat flashed. Sand grit. The metallic taste of fear. He wasn’t at the gate anymore. He was back by a burned-out market in Iraq, night stretched tight as wire, Ramirez missing after the blast. Radios hissed. Someone was shouting over them. He smelled diesel and something else he refused to name. He pivoted, searching for a silhouette that had not lifted his hand when roll was called. Ramirez, where you at, brother? Answer.
“Luc.” Beau’s voice again, closer. “Hey, man. Look at me.”
He couldn’t. He laughed instead, a sound scraped raw. His hands did inventory—rifle, mag, tourniquet—finding none of it. He braced on the gatepost that had become a wall, expecting heat against his cheek. The strobe on a side-by-side sprayed white across his eyes and they flooded with grit.
“Boss.”
Hands came in, firm, familiar. Beau on one arm, Mara on the other, one more ranch hand—Tomas—pressing in at his back. Mara spoke first, a stream of calm, precise words, and somewhere in them she said “you’re at Blaze Haven” and “I’ve got you” and “inhale” and Beau matched his breath to hers so Luc could borrow the count.
It took too long. It took an age. The field muffled. Sound turned tinny at the edges. He ground his jaw. He did not weep. Mara’s thumb dug into a point on his palm she’d taught him to use when the grid inside his skull overloaded. “Anchor,” she commanded. He found the pain and clung to it.
Dahlia reached them at a run, bow a pale halo in his periphery. He sensed her before he knew it, the shift in air when she drew near. Her touch arrowed toward his chest.
He flinched back hard. “Don’t.” The word cracked. He couldn’t bear her softness on this mess. He couldn’t stand the pity that might follow.
“Baby, it’s me.”
“Don’t.” He dragged his arms free of Beau and Tomas and stumbled a step. “You can’t fix this with sage and sunshine.” His throat burned. “You should’ve never stayed this long.”
The small circle of dancers nearest them went silent, then that silence rippled outward. The DJ’s patter stalled. Night drew in, a cold rim after the heat of music, and he felt every gaze without seeing a single face.
Dahlia’s mouth parted. She didn’t cry. She didn’t reach for him again. That hurt worse than anything.
Teylor bristled, hustling up behind her, eyes spitting warning. “Watch your tone, cowboy.”
Beau shot her a small shake of his head that said wait. “Luc,” Beau tried, voice gentle. “We’ll clear the yard, okay? But don’t?—”
“Get these people off my land,” Luc said. It came out a growl. He didn’t care. If he stayed, the past would consume the night and then it would devour the woman whose hand he had almost taken.
Beau opened his mouth, then shut it. He flicked a look at Mara and Tomas. Mara moved at once, her whistle slicing the air, her arm signaling. Volunteers peeled off to help. The word spread, and the crowd began to coil toward the exits, murmurs rising, the music bleeding out mid-song.
Luc tipped his hat brim down and shouldered past the curiosity. Boots thudded turf. He didn’t see the auntie at the gumbo pots hiding her mouth in her hand. He didn’t see Draven stepping toward him and Cashea yanking him back. He didn’t see the little boy he had saved from the gate watching him with wide, confused eyes.
He only saw Dahlia, turned to stone, then motion as she spun and ran. The house caught her; the screen door flapped; Teylor pounded after, a string of fierce words lodged in her throat—“DeeDee, wait! He’s hurting, not thinking—girllll, open this door?—”
Beau started after Luc again. “Let me?—”
“Don’t,” Luc snapped without facing him. “Handle the crowd.”
“Luc.”
He kept walking, breath sawing, pulse still hunting a rhythm that wouldn’t arrive. The cottonwoods whispered above the drive. Somewhere a horse stomped and blew. A lantern clinked against its hook. All of it felt miles away, unreal, as if the ranchhe’d built with his own hands had shifted two inches left and would never fit him again.
Behind him, Beau raised his voice, carrying across the field. “Folks, we’re cutting the music early! Keep your groups tight and head to the parking lanes—trail bosses will guide you out. Save your plates; we’ll pack to-go. Thank y’all for coming.”
The engine noise thinned. Gates clanged. The night bled back into sounds Luc recognized—the creek, the insects, the distant hush of traffic on the county road. It should have helped. Instead, he felt flayed open under the stars.
He reached the barn and set his palm against a stall door until the rough wood bit. Blaze tossed his head and snorted. Luc said nothing to the horse, no apology, no promise. Words would not mend the split thing beating behind his ribs.
Up by the porch, the door slammed again; Teylor’s voice rang through the frame. “DeeDee! Don’t you hide from me. Open this door, hear me?”
