Page 37 of Saving the Rain
Resting my ass against the basin, I take a long sip and roll my neck out. I’m no stranger to silence and doing my own thing. Hell, there have been plenty of ranches I’ve worked on where I’d have given my left nut for peace and quiet like this.
But something prickles up my nape at Kayce being in the kind of headspace he’s in.
Shrill beeping disrupts the quietness, and I push off the bench to open the microwave. As I move around the kitchen island, Kayce decides to leave for his room at the same time. Heaving his weight off the stool, he stands up just as I’m only a foot or so from where he’s been sitting.
He stumbles immediately. The act of standing and navigating the stool tips his center of balance too heavily onto his busted leg. His frame topples against mine, our chests smash together, and I catch him before he faceplants.
“Fffuuuck. Fuck.” Kayce winces. His features transform, going ashen and tight.
I feel his fingers dig into my elbows where I’ve caught him by the forearms. It takes a moment for him to collect his bearings. Everything slips into slow-motion between us as we stand there chest-to-chest, skin-to-skin, with only a few inches of breath separating us.
My pulse thumps in the side of my neck at the sight of him virtually in my arms, and neither of us seems to be able to move. I don’t want him to hurt himself any more than he already has, so I just try to support his weight and let him do what he needs to do.
He smells faintly like peppermint and citrus. A bright scent, the kind that, of course, a golden boy like him would carry around. Having him this close is warm; his skin feels heated beneath my callused fingers. I’m aware that we’re locked in this position—a very fucking intimately tight hold on one another—and Kayce’s hands aren’t on my arms anymore. His palms have slid up, pressed firmly against my chest, as he steadies himself.
But my hold doesn’t ease on him. For some goddamn reason, I don’t trust letting him go. I feel like if I do, he’ll simply slump to the ground.
If I don’t hold him up, who else is gonna?
My pulse keeps shifting up through the gears, and I don’t fucking understand what on earth is happening right now. Why do I feel like my blood is singing a tune that has no right to exist? Why does the point of contact sizzle beneath his flattened hands? It’s like the outline of his touch against my torso will be imprinted there, blistering through the thin fabric of my t-shirt.
I swallow heavily, my eyes tracing the length of his arms. Catching the way his muscles are highlighted by the soft overhead lighting above the kitchen island. And when I finally reach his face, there’s a tic pulsing wildly in the side of his unshaven jaw.
As I drag my gaze up to find his eyes, the ones I know areweary—filled with the rawness of pain and redness of insomnia—I hold him there for a moment. Trying to convey, wordlessly, in the only way I seem to know how to share that he’s gonna get through this.
He and I have been through our own versions of hell.
He’s survived shit before, and so have I.
Sensing his fingertips press a little harder over my chest, it’s as if he’s imploring me to back away, and in response, my grip flexes around his elbows. That’s when I see it. Kayce’s gaze wavers for the faintest moment; his eyes flicker down to my mouth, then back up, going wide real fucking fast.
That breaks the mesmerizing spell we’d been under.
He pushes against me, breaking us apart.
I release my hold on him, and we both clear our throats.
“Thanks.” His voice is thick, raspy. And he turns slowly, carefully, moving away with the awkward gait he has had to adopt to avoid bending his knee. He might not be able to get around easily, but Kayce damn near sprints away from the spot where he’d been only a second before.
Abandoning me to linger in the kitchen, alone, feeling incredibly fucking confused by what in the hell just happened.
All the while, my pulse has ratcheted up, thudding way goddamn faster than it has any right to.
Chapter 16
Acouple of weeks ago, all I did was eat, sleep, and breathe horses.
Riding out daily here on Devil’s Peak. Being around our team in the barn. Spending time training in Crimson Ridge. Leading groups on guided trail rides at Sunset Skies Ranch.
I was a bareback broncrider.
My worldview came almost uniquely from a position in the saddle surrounded by the sweet, musky scent of horsehair and that lingering note of hay they carry everywhere with them. The chuffs, the snorts, and quiet rumbles. Feeling those deep, solid breaths beneath my legs and leaning forward to glide a palm over a long bowed neck, to exchange a few silent words with whichever horse I was riding.
Now? I’m nothing more than a ghost of who I was before waking up in the hospital. I haven’t left the house in almost two weeks. Endlessly long days have blurred into agonizingly torturous nights without sleep. I’m on a routine of painkillers and trying to keep myself from going out of my head, surrounded by nothing but quiet on top of this mountain.
I’m caged in by self-loathing, feeling guilty as all hell that Raine has to do everything around the ranch. The guy can’t stand me, and I don’t blame him for using every scrap of daylight he can around hereto stay as far away as possible. He’s avoiding me, that much I know to be true.
Having a knee that doesn’t seem to want to heal, my recovery barely moving at a snail's pace, yeah, it’s utter crap. I’m crawling out of my skin at the knowledge I can’t just suck it up, walk it off, fuckingcowboymy way out of this. The grim reality is that I’m not fully fit yet, and I can’thelp.