Chapter 9 #2
“I’m well aware of that. I lived through it,” she said in a tight voice. It and the aftermath.
“Don’t get smart with me.” Jack Malone paused, seemingly searching for the right words.
“Michael’s loss left a hole in our lives, a hole we’ll never fill again.
Not because we don’t want to, mind you, but because we can’t.
If that makes us a little overprotective of you as our only child, you’ll just have to come to terms with it. You’re all we’ve got left.”
Her father continued, but Kenzie hardly heard the last of her dad’s words before disconnecting the call.
The conversation had stopped for her when he’d said she couldn’t fill the hole that had been left by Michael.
She’d spent a decade trying so hard to be both son and daughter to her parents, to be a strong enough personality to fill that emotional vacancy her brother had left.
She’d failed on an epic level. Now, knowing her efforts to be both daughter and lost son to her parents had failed?
Hearing him say it out loud? Fully aware she’d only be disappointing him further when she admitted her deception?
Well, she hadn’t thought she’d be able to hate herself any more. How miserably wrong she’d been.
TY COULDN’T GET the taste of Kenzie off his lips.
He brushed his teeth. He drank a Coke. He considered smoking a cigar.
That only reminded him of their last game of strip poker, the one where he’d been down to one sock and his boxers.
She’d been tossing out cards while wearing nothing but a green dealer’s visor, her bra and a black thong.
A cigar had dangled from the corner of her mouth.
Light had danced through her hair, and every time she’d moved, her smooth skin had pulled taut over that flat belly.
Sure, it had been sexy. But it was nothing compared to the way her lips had wrapped around the butt of the cigar and kicked up at one corner when he’d lost the next hand in spectacular fashion.
Oh, and his boxers. He’d lost those, too.
She had immediately declared herself the winner and claimed him as her prize.
They hadn’t slept that night.
“Damn it!” He slammed his closet door shut and collapsed into his wheelchair so hard he had to put a foot out to keep from tipping over. Settling, he wheeled over to the window in his temporary bedroom and looked up. “I’m seriously getting sick of this.”
He shoved the window open a crack. A rush of crisp, snow-laden air washed over him and made the hair on his arms stand up at the chill.
He needed the opportunity to cool off. Kenzie had left his blood so close to the boiling point that he couldn’t think.
Even now, all he wanted was to get his hands on her again and to have her put her hands on him.
He just had to get her out of his system, then he’d see her off the ranch and out of his life. For good.
He heard the sound of a single horse’s hooves pounding the earth. He stretched to peer out the window.
Who is it? Windows are too tall. So either stand and see or sit and wonder, Covington.
Curiosity won the internal debate as the sound grew nearer, the tempo increasing as the horse picked up speed in order to charge up the hill.
The rider’s sticking to the road. Is something wrong? Has something happened? Could be one of the ranch hands on his way to fetch either Eli or Cade.
He wanted the cowboy to be coming after him, coming to ask him for advice, ask him for help. It used to be that way. Not anymore. No one asked him for anything anymore.
Everyone from Kenzie to Eli had told him that was his own fault.
Their theory? If he’d make an effort to re-engage not only with others but with life in general, folks wouldn’t feel so awkward about approaching him.
They’d start to seek him out again. He just had to make sure they knew they were welcome.
But that was the problem. He wasn’t at all sure they were welcome.
He didn’t want to be gawked at, didn’t want to be—
Those pounding hooves drew closer still.
Screw it. He wasn’t standing up. He was too tired and he hurt, no matter how little Kenzie thought of his excuse. Excuse...
“Damn if she’s going to get me questioning myself,” he groused. “Incoming!” he called into the house. Then he waited.
No answer.
“Hey!” he hollered. “I said there’s a rider incoming!”
More silence.
Temper brewing, Ty grabbed the windowsill and pulled, hoisting himself up to peer out the wide but narrow bank of windows that ran nearly the full length of the wall.
The breeze carried the smells of dust and crushed grass and animal through the window.
Fresh and pungent, they tickled his nose and wordlessly encouraged him to draw in a deep breath.
Then he choked when he recognized the rider, hunched over the animal’s neck, riding hell-bent for leather up the main road as she headed deeper into the ranch.
Kenzie.
She didn’t take in nearby scenery but kept her gaze focused far ahead. She didn’t stop when a cowboy called out to her. Strangest of all, she didn’t acknowledge a group of young kids, their trustworthy little ponies plodding along in single file as they carried their charges home from a trail ride.
Kenzie morphed into the Pied Piper around children. Little cowboys and cowgirls alike flocked to her at exhibitions and rodeos, clamoring to gain, and keep, her attention. She loved the littlest ones most, though she never admitted it.
So to see her fly by kids, her mare’s jets set on wide open, without offering a greeting? No. That rang all kinds of bells, each of them chiming “wrong” in a different tone.
Ty watched her go, her shape growing ever smaller as the wind carried her dust trail off at a brisk clip.
Never easing up, she and her mare crested the hill behind the house and disappeared.
He sank into his chair, lost in thought.
What kind of skeleton did a woman have in her closet that held that much sway over her?
To chase her out into the elements in such a blind panic?
Wasn’t me, that’s for sure. She had no problem holding her own with me out there.
Frustrating woman, calling it as she sees it.
To hell with everybody else’s opinion. And changing her mind is as ridiculous as trying to take that goat from the T.
rex in Jurassic Park. You know you’ll never walk away with more than the bloodied scraps of your pride, and that’s after you scrape the pieces together.
“She’s not right about me,” he said to the empty room. Sitting deeper in his chair, he rubbed his aching belly. He should fix a sandwich or something to ease the mild nausea that had settled deep in his gut as he watched her thunder past the house. “She’s not right,” he repeated with more force.
That was when he stopped, stunned at the realization of what he’d just done.
He’d controlled his descent from the window to the wheelchair. And he’d done it without help or a single conscious thought. For the first time since the accident, he’d moved without stiff reserve and fearful awareness of every ache, pain... Hell, every threatening twinge.
With his mind tangled up with what had just happened, Ty absently moved toward the doorway, intent on wheeling himself to the kitchen...and came face-to-face with Reagan. Heat flamed across his cheeks at her stunned appearance. His chin came up a notch. “What?”
His sister-in-law looked at him, then his chair and then him again.
She raised a hand and held it halfway to her mouth before letting it fall.
Her eyes were wide. “You stood. On your own. With so little effort. How? When? And why didn’t you tell anyone you could do this, Ty?
” Skepticism vied with amazement in that green-eyed gaze.
It unnerved him. Yet no amount of curiosity could dim the inherent compassion shining from her, a beacon of hope in the muted afternoon light.
Tugging at his collar, he slumped a little.
He couldn’t explain it, seeing as he couldn’t make sense of it himself.
All he knew was that he’d stood when he’d needed to and it hadn’t hurt the way he’d both anticipated and grown accustomed to.
He had expected excruciating pain. The kind that stole a man’s breath and rendered him unable to speak, to breathe, to utter a cry for help. But it hadn’t truly hurt.
“Ty?” she pressed.
“I don’t know, okay? I wanted to stand up, so I did.
” He could add that he’d been desperate to identify the rider, that he’d needed to know why the cowboy had been riding so hard while Ty sat in his chair, worthless.
Standing had been spontaneous, the results both exhilarating and terrifying.
“You’ve seen me walk. What’s the big deal? ”
“The ‘big deal’ is that none of us thought it was so easy for you. We all believed you had excruciating pain and that’s why you were clinging to the chair so hard.” She sighed and, pulling her ponytail free, rewrapped the hair higher on her head. “What’s going on, Tyson?”
He gripped the chair’s armrests so hard the skin over his knuckles appeared bleached. “It’s not that simple.”
His barked response didn’t faze Reagan. “It should be. If you’re capable of doing more, then do more. Period. You need to get back to physical therapy. You need to stop sitting around doing nothing, letting your muscles atrophy. What you’ve been doing? It’s giving up, Ty.”
He jerked back and hissed at the sharp movement.
The reaction was instinctive but not necessary, because it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t comfortable, sure. But there was a world of difference between discomfort and hurt.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Ignoring her, he wiggled out of his brace. Then, with a tentative touch, he traced the line of his surgical scar down his cervical spine. No acute pain.
“Ty?” Reagan pressed.
He glanced at her, jaw clenched. “I don’t want to stand up.
” She started to say something, likely to protest, but he gripped the wheels of his chair and shoved them forward.
“Don’t confuse my not wanting to do something with me giving up.
Two totally different things. Make sure you get that part straight when you tell Eli. ”
With that parting shot, nasty as it was, he rolled through the door and down the hall, forcing himself to consider sandwich condiments in lieu of soul-rattling comments.
He’d take mustard over manhandling any day.
And wasn’t this embarrassing, his life reduced to sandwich analogies and defending himself to the ghosts of conversations present and past.
Still doesn’t mean either of ’em is right.
He rolled on.