Page 55 of Snowed In with the Rancher

“Fuck,” he murmured, tightening his hold on Dare’s reins. “Stupid assholes.” He guided Dare closer, but the horse must have found a gopher hole and with a loud cry, Dare’s knee buckled and he went down sideways, taking Asher with him.

They crashed into the barbed wire fencing and Dare screamed even louder, thrashing and crying, trying to get up but all the while crushing and pinning Asher beneath him, and grinding Asher deeper into the snow and wire.

The wire dug into and cut up his coat and jeans, piercing his skin where his coat rode up exposing his back.

Dare continued to flail, now the two of them were a tangled mess of wire. Dare was bleeding and scratched up and every time he tried to get up, he’d scream in agony and put more of his weight on Asher.

“It’s okay, buddy.” Asher said, wincing from the pain and weight of the horse on him. “It’s okay. Shhhh.”

Dare’s nostrils flared as he breathed heavily. His heart was pounding and his chest heaved.

Asher checked his toes by trying to wiggle them, it seemed like both legs still worked. But for how long? And just because he thought he was moving his toes didn’t mean he was.

Releasing the reins, he shoved his hands into the snow, attempting to find his phone which he’s stupidly put in his back pocket. He knew better than to keep it there when he rode, in case it got bounced out. He normally put it in his coat pocket to keep it safe and dry. He was just so distracted with Triss leaving and what Nate said about Mercy.

His heart hurt, his brain hurt and now his legs and back fucking hurt, too. Not a damn part of him wasn’t in pain.

Mercy. That damn horse. Here he’d been calling Mercy an asshole when really, it was Asher that was the asshole and Mercy was just a horse that didn’t trust Asher because he was unpredictable, which was entirely true.

It made so much fucking sense now that he thought about it.

And if he really thought about it, he was sure there was probably at least one if not two more times where he probably yelled or lashed out around Mercy, which of course would cause the horse to have an aversion to him. It was a wonder more of the horses didn’t go squirrely around Asher.

Dare tried to get up again, but that only crushed Asher more and the horse let out another scream.

The more Dare tried to move, the more tangled they became.

He found his phone in his pocket, thank fuck, and fumbled to drag it out from under him, but it wasn’t easy. Dare was six hundred pounds of American Standardbred muscle.

Despite wearing gloves, Asher’s fingers were stiff as he attempted to wrap them around his phone, but Dare’s struggling kept causing him to lose his grip on the phone.

“Shh, Dare. Shh, buddy. I know. I know it hurts. I know it’s scary and cold, but we need to stay calm, otherwise we’re both seriously fucked.”

This was why he and Nate spent a large part of their spring and summer laying on their bellies in the field dressed in their camo gear and shooting fucking prairie dogs and gophers. Those little bastards dug holes all over the fields, then Asher’s horses stepped in one and it was a motherfucking shit show. They’d lost three beautiful horses over the last couple of years to broken legs from those fucking holes.

Well, this coming summer he was going to increase his hunting schedule. He’d take out every little hole-digging bastard until the species were all extinct if he had to.

Dare was still breathing heavy, but he’d stopped moving.

The thought of having to put Dare out of his misery burned a hot insidious trail through Asher until bile coated the back of his tongue and he thought he might puke.

“Shhh,” Asher said, freeing his hand from beneath the horse and stroking Dare’s neck. “Shhh. It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay.”

He attempted to get his phone again, and finally managed to snag it, but when he brought it up to his face and tried to turn it on, it wouldn’t.

It must have gotten water-logged from the snow or run out of battery or something.

“Fuck,” he growled, keeping his voice low, so as to not scare Dare.

Dare panted and Asher closed his eyes.

It was starting to get dark.

How could he have been so stupid as to start riding the fence this close to dusk and in the fucking wind and snow?

Because he wasn’t thinking clearly, that was why. He was only thinking of Triss and how he’d stupidly let her go. How he’d stupidly told her to go.

He’d been so worried about scaring her away when she finally saw how truly broken he was, that he sent her away first. Idiot. If he went on the offensive, less people would get hurt. It was a mantra he’d been telling himself for years. Only he wasn’t warding off evil spirits, he was warding off good, decent people and the real evil spirits were the dark shadows of his heart and mind. The parts of him desperate to be rid of anybody who cared about him before they uncovered his faults and he tripped over them as he scrambled to collect them, falling face-first into more heartache. If he sought out those shadowy demons, if he predicted them before they arrived, they couldn’t get to him first, right?

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