Page 35 of Bucked By Love

This must be how people feel when they take a buckshot to the chest. This impossibly heavy, deep punch that rips out your insides and leaves you in tatters.

Arris tries again. “Randall…you can’t keep her forever.”

“She’s not ready.” A page turns. Daddy’s already unplugging from the conversation. “Next year.”

Next year. This isn’t hope. This is sinking. This is being pulled down to the bottom of the lake by the own heaviness in my heart.

Next year, next year, next year. It’s always later.

I’m never enough.

I’m never going to be enough.

I don’t have any tears to shed. There’s nothing but emptiness inside of me as I drift, zombie-like, away from the study and downstairs.

29

RANSOM

My muscles ache with the healthy exhaustion of a day well spent.

I like working with my hands. Working with the horses. Riding, training, taking care of them. Better than the backbreaking work I was doing before for pennies…working with animals, it feeds my soul.

I’d do it for free, but someone’s gotta put gas in my truck and pay my grandparents’ electricity bill.

The sun’s dipping below the mountains by time the rest of the workers pack up. I’m locking in the last of the horses when one of them says: “Hey, we’re hitting up Maeby’s after this. You coming?”

Across the way, through the open barn door, I see the light go on in Calypso’s stable.

Can’t explain it, but I can feel Claire calling out to me.

“Maybe another time.”

He nods, dips out. I shuck off my gloves and hang them up before trudging out of the barn towards the opposite stable.

It’s cricket hour. They’re singing their nighttime song as I step through the grass and enter the stable.

It’s quiet here, all the hustle and bustle of the day cleared out. Nothing but the animals. And Claire. She’s dressed in a tight pair of jeans that fits high on her hips with a blouse tucked in. All put together, in true Claire style, but she’s…off.

She paces in front of Calypso’s pen. She’s muttering—to herself or the horse, I’m not sure. She’s got her hand in her hair, that grip tight. Same as it was when she threw a fit on the road. Pulling at her skull, like she’s trying to rip the bad thoughts straight out of her head.

I step in closer. I approach her the way I would a spooked horse—calm, steady. “Hey,” I say softly.

She halts in her tracks. She looks up at me, those gray eyes hazy and far away.

“Thank God,” she says. Which is the nicest way anyone has greeted me, ever.

She rushes up to me. She stops in front of me and holds her arms outstretched, her wrists pressed together.

“I need you to…do it. The thing with the rope.” She sniffs as though she’s been crying, but her eyes are dry.

I’ve gotta be clear about this. “You want me to…tie you up?”

Those gray eyes plead. “I want you to make it stop.”

I pick out a lead rope. It’s tough and supple, but more importantly, it’s soft and flexible. It won’t itch and it shouldn’t leave marks. Claire sits on a bench and I crouch down in front of her, lacing her arms up. I start at her wrists, wrapping the rope around, making a loop, and snaking it through.

“How’s that?” I ask. “Too tight?”

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