Page 4 of Coiled Tight
“So what did Da tell you about this job?”
Cam took a deep breath before exhaling loudly. He clenched his hands in fists twice before he shook his head, and a more subdued form of him took over. It was in the way he shut down, the twinkle in his eyes when he was telling me about his horse riding experience gone.
“He needed—well, you needed—a full-time vet after your last one moved. I have the contract in my phone. Pay isn’t much, but full boarding is included. He said there were a few rooms in the main house I could use.”
Outwardly, I nodded along. Inwardly, I cursed the old man to shreds. When was the last time he’d offered to let someone live in the main house?
Of course there were a few rooms he could use. I was the only one living there permanently after my sister moved out last year. Some of the ranch hands would stay a few nights if there was an issue with their lodging—like last month when a pipe burst and the whole place flooded. My cousins lived with my parents outside of the ranch and only came a few hours a day because they said they couldn’t handle the stench of the animals 24/7.
Fuck my life.
My cogs started turning.
There had to be more to my father hiring this guy than the fact that we needed a new vet—which we did. Lodging him in the main house?
I sighed.
Swiftheart nuzzled my jaw. She really was a good horse.
“Great,” I remembered to say. “Did he tell you you’ll be sharing with me?”
“I mean—” He almost stumbled again, but as I was processing this new piece of information myself, I felt less inclined to commiserate with him. “He said rooms, so I assumed I’d be sharing with the ranch hands or something. I swear no one will notice I’m there. I’m small. Don’t make any noise or anything.”
I scoffed. “I’m the only one who lives there.”
Was it lonely? Sure. My entire family used to live there, until my parents moved outside of the ranch to have an actual sense of retirement—or the closest they could get to it without losing it in the process. Now it was just me. I was certain I knew the reason why all the cousins kept finding excuses to also move away, but I was not going to sour my mood that much today.
It was bad enough I still had a day of work ahead of me. Which reminded me?—
“Mind if I make some calls?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer, simply dropping the suitcase and picking up my phone. It was rude, and I didn’t love it, but the animals came first, and a day behind in tasks could very quickly snowball into injured animals, broken fences that would take heavy machinery to fix instead of a set of pliers and some wood, and worse. No way I was going to live through that headache if I could help it.
When I finished dealing with the hands’ grunts and reticent agreements, I turned to him again. He seemed to be lostin his thoughts again, but at least carrying the suitcase was giving him something to do. He looked more focused.
“So, do you have experience with the animals here?”
I should list them to be more thorough, but it would take me the entire afternoon. Besides, we were a rescue for wild animals. We didn’t have the benefit of turning around one big cat or another because it justwasn’t something we’d boarded before.
Some other refuges might be able to sell it with all their fancy words, but it made my blood boil every fucking time. If we hadn’t had an animal before, we researched the hell out of it to give them the habitat they needed and got in touch with a specialist to train our team of vets and volunteers. Was it hard? Yeah, but for fuck’s sake, one didn’t work in a fucking refuge because they wanted things easy. It didn’t make any sense.
“Um. Saúl?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The guy had been talking all this time, hadn’t he?
Everyone said I had a way of getting in my head when I got angry.
“Sorry, come again?”
I focused on Swiftheart’s hooves against the arid terrain. It always helped to ground me in the present—and I needed to stay present if I was going to keep up with Cam’s rushed words and the shifts in his intonation whenever he grew more insecure about what he was saying.
It better all be first-day jitters. He wasn’t going to survive a day with the rest of the workers if he didn’t figure out something else soon.
“I worked in a zoo just outside of the city,” he explained. “I was in charge of all the big cats, and I’ve got the training to deal with other big carnivores. And I volunteered with the horses at the university hospital while I was studying. All mycertificates are up to date, and your dad talked with my supervisors at the zoo.”
I grunted. At least he had a decent answer.
Silence settled between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Well, I had an inkling it was uncomfortable for him because he felt like a live wire about to explode, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to it. I needed to grab some food, too. When I was working, it was easy to lose sight of that shit, especially now that there was no one to call over because food was ready. There used to be a chef—usually a student who helped Ma plan the meals and bulk freeze shit. Now it was just me, and I’d rather use that salary to keep the animals well cared for, or to handle any of the emergencies that popped up from time to time.
