Chapter Nine
Travis walked out into the waiting room where Yoda sat, tongue still lolling from the heat, and squatted down, ruffling the loyal dog’s ears.
His body’s treacherous desire to drag Skylar into his arms and let his lips crash to hers was impeding the process of diagnosing the stray, just as it had impeded the ED staff when she’d fainted. But when she’d kissed his palm, eyes misting and red around the rims, his heart had squeezed so damn hard, pounded so damn forcefully, his mind had been a swirl.
He spotted a water cooler in a darkened alcove, the track lighting turned off, probably because she technically wasn’t open today; spotted clean bowls stacked beside it; and went to pour water in one for Yoda, pushing the lever and letting it splash into the dish…
His eyes landed on the wall over the dispenser.
Roved over the darkened photos enlarged and framed upon it, severing his train of thought.
“What in the world…”
He set down the dish. Flipped up the light switch… The gallery lighting illuminated a familiar photographed landscape. The familiar face.
He took in the photos, nostalgia tugging on him as he focused on the black-and-white images. He knew these photos. Knew the paint horse in the photo on the left. Cimarron. Knew the kid atop that beautiful gelding streaking across the desert expanse, the dog and the same guy in the photo on the right. A teenage boy. Such a baby in that picture, with two working legs. Only fourteen. Courage. The old dog.
A smile pulled up his lips, softening them.
The wind was blowing Cimarron’s mane into brilliant disarray in one enlarged print, his body stretched out, rippling, sleekly galloping like a Remington painting, and Travis was perched in the saddle, leaning toward the horse’s neck as if they were one body, a skinny, lanky version of himself with his old Stetson blowing off his head and catching the wind, the likes of which he’d always balked at wearing because he knew wearing it made his dad happy. The photo was an incredible capture, just the right timing. Damn, he could almost feel that wind in his face, and for a moment, his eyes fell closed. He sucked in a slow, deep breath, distant memories of the smells, of the heat on his skin, the torque of his muscles, undulating with the gait…and yet as distant as the sensations were, as much as he couldn’t ride like that anymore, in this time snippet, it seemed like it might be like riding a bike or swimming. Muscle memory one never forgot that tugged at his heart now.
His eyes drew open as the mirage of the desert in his mind receded. He narrowed on the details of his home—the likes of which he hadn’t seen in years. When he’d visited his momma in the hospital, when he’d gone to his parents’ funerals, he still hadn’t returned to the ranch, the regular excuse being he had to get back to med school.
Cimarron’s tail was flared outward, whipping on the wind; Travis’s torso clothed in an old baseball T; waist no doubt belted in a barrel-racing buckle; a pair of boots long gone to the dustbin of history, torn to pieces by a boy who’d ridden those boots into the ground atop the gelding his momma had bought for him. The next photo was again him, kneeling down, petting Courage, laughing about something…the dog’s ears.
“That’s right.” He smiled to himself. “I forgot about that.”
His pops—such an asshole so much of the time, and yet such a pushover for the dog—had cracked a joke about those ears. Travis chuckled now. More than once his old man had snuck a bite off the grill, surreptitiously dropping it into the dog’s mouth, or let Courage ride shotgun out on the acreage while working with his foreman. Perhaps Travis had always known his dad had a softer side, but it was harder to buck against a soft-hearted father. Much easier to buck against a dictator. Maybe he’d just wanted excuses to buck.
Skylar had snapped this photo. They’d barely known each other in this snapshot. He’d just adopted the dog and invited her over to spend the afternoon to see it. She’d been so quiet then, her eyes vivid blue and silent in the face of his family’s wealth that at the time he’d hoped had impressed her but in hindsight had always known had intimidated her in her donated clothes—they’d picked her up from her trailer to bring her over. Her words, then, had been soft and awkward. He’d been an awkward fourteen-year-old, too. They’d been perfectly awkward for each other.
These images of him with his animals, laughing, before such things as 9/11 and roadside bombs and landmines had borne a new context for his life and sucked dry the innocence, were on display for everyone who walked through this door. Longing to go home, to see his gelding—now Toby’s—to feel that wind, wishing his friendship with Toby didn’t still feel so broken… It all washed over him as he backtracked to the first photograph of him atop Cimarron like a carefree spirit, his gaze tracing over the light and shadows.
His eyes moved to the third and final enlarged photo. Yet another photo of Cimarron. He hadn’t even realized Skylar had taken this picture. Cimarron held his head regally, his forelock flopping between his ears, his soulful big eyes thoughtful, his nostrils flared on the breeze.
His finger trailed over the glass, needing to touch the horse. It was only Cimarron’s head in the shot, but Cerro Casas Grandes was in the background, a snippet of those tall, plateaued mountains on the land where he’d cut his teeth, and dammit if that tug on his heart—that tug he’d buried deep and ignored for years until it relented—suddenly wouldn’t relent anymore. He hadn’t looked upon those mountains in a long, long time. But they were in his blood. They hearkened now. All of it. And he needed to make a choice. If he and Lopez went with the Dallas location, they could never take the decision back. But if he could get Toby to agree to sell or lease that front forty that he’d given up when he’d denounced his inheritance…
His smile fell. Like it was possible with his maimed leg to ride like that. Or help direct Lopez’s therapeutic riding initiative when he couldn’t even mount up to demonstrate.
Couldhe ask Toby for that land? A stable and medical facility would put him closer to V-Tech here and put him closer to his family, too. Naw, he’d feel like he was using Toby—even though Toby had hinted that that land was still his—to just say the word, and Pops could suck a heavenly big one while horses finally grazed on cattle land. He harrumphed. Toby hadn’t been as conflicted about telling Harold Dixon off. The pissant seemed to get off on doing things he suspected made their pops roll over in the proverbial grave. Ironic that of the three of them, Toby was the least obedient son and yet the finest choice for inheriting the ranch.
He moved on from the touching photos to the framed plaque beside them.
The TRDM Legacy fund. Jeezus… He ripped off his cap and raked his hand through his hair as his eyes roved over the lettering in horror, exhaling harshly and twisting his jaw to stave off mist in his eyes as his heart tore in half.
That acronym that had confused him on her website the other day suddenly clicked into place as he read the information about the charity fund for animals in need, the rescue she operated out of the All Creatures Annex, a converted cattle barn. It wasn’t spelled out, but he didn’t need those letters to be. The memorial fund, in honor of a life lost. A man she’d loved. TRD stood for him. Travis Riley Dixon, M for memorial, Legacy for his family ranch, no doubt, as well as in the general sense of a legacy fund. In memory of the man who hadn’t gotten to live on and realize this veterinary dream with her, so she’d made it live on in his name and spirit instead.
That shock on her face as she’d crumpled into his arms, the anger with which she’d pushed him away… It all made sense, even if it still didn’t explain her fear of that hospital bed. She’d seen the dead come to life when he’d walked into Bay Twelve all cavalier. He didn’t deserve her. And yet he’d be damned if he’d not fight for what they once wanted. He’d be damned if he didn’t do everything in his power to make her see that he was still head over fucking heels for her.
You always were. Maybe that’s why you buried that photo in your wallet all these years instead of scrapping it.
There were no other photos in the room, just Sky’s licenses and diplomas from Oklahoma State in pre-vet and then her doctorate in veterinary medicine—artwork of their own—framed on the wall. Summa cum laude, of course. Pieces of art. She’d flunked out of one school in the wake of his death. She’d loved him so much his death had upended her world. And yet she’d gone on to kick ass, to channel that grief, planted her grief in a seed and then nurtured it until it had bloomed into something beautiful.
The cat owner pushed out from the hallway, car keys jingling, snapping him from his swirl of emotions that pricked his eyes. He rubbed them hard.
“So good of you to bring that poor dog in,” she said to him as she adjusted her frowning cat’s carrier in her grip.
He managed a polite nod, but his throat felt so thick, he didn’t dare speak.