A Broken Cowboy Page 6

  He returned not long after, his arrival sped up by the fact that he rode a silvery horse with a long black mane, its tail so long that it almost touched the ground. He led another horse, this one a reddish-chestnut color, as he rode. Gabriel came to a stop in the yard and tied both horses to the dead tree.

  “What is this?” Mimi asked, stepping outside as she wiped her hands on her jeans.

  “They’re horses,” he answered in his usual tone.

  “Okay. I know they’re horses, Gabriel,” she said, working very hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. He visibly stiffened when she said his name, almost like he wasn’t used to hearing anyone use it, a mannerism that made her realize once again how many layers there had to be to this guy. “Where did they come from? I didn’t know you had horses.”

  “They’re your horses.”

  “You’re giving me horses?” Mimi clarified, wondering what she would do with them and more importantly, in what society did a man bring back horses for a woman he’d just had unbelievably dirty sex with?

  “No, I’m returning them. They belonged to the previous owner, and I took them when he died so they wouldn’t starve. Then I had to see first what kind of person you are, to see if you could be trusted with them. And you can. So here.”

  “Wow. That’s…great! But I’m not very good at riding a horse. The only experience I have is just walking around like we did over at Sarah’s place, and even that was only for a week.”

  “You’ll learn,” Gabriel said before climbing back up the ladder and resuming banging on the roof. He watched Mimi from his post carefully, as she took tentative steps toward the large animals, holding out her hand for them to smell like she was approaching a growling dog instead of two gentle horses. Soon she was rubbing their noses and picking tufts of pollen and twig out of their manes, scratching their flanks in slow, careful circles.

  After working for another hour, Gabriel came down from the roof and announced that he was done. Mimi thanked him profusely and admired his handiwork, then went inside and returned with a check.

  “You didn’t tell me how much to make it out for, so let me know if this isn’t a fair enough price,” she said, flinching when a look of anger crossed Gabriel’s face.

  “You’re going to pay me?” he demanded.

  “Well, yes. That’s what we agreed to when you first pointed out that you could do it.”

  “That was before. So now, I’m done and you’re going to give me money for helping you. I thought things were different between us,” he said, more confused sounding than hurt.

  “What do you mean? I’m not going to assume that you’re going to do labor on my ranch for free, just because we’ve had sex! So take your check and leave!” She went into the house and slammed the door, angrily kicking at the little piles of sawdust that had fallen in as Gabriel worked, spreading any evidence that he’d been nearby before sweeping them up with her broom. As she turned to dump the dustpan out the back door, she saw that Gabriel was still standing in the yard, not half a mountain away as she’d expected.

  He looked at her, completely at a loss for words. Mimi returned his stare from her place on the porch, her hands firmly planted on her hips, willing herself to be strong and not fall completely apart from the look of hurt on Gabriel’s face.

  Too late, she thought to herself. I’ve already fallen apart, and I didn’t even know it.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel began quietly. “This is all kind of new to me.”

  Mimi dropped her gaze and waited, then stepped down from the porch, crossing the yard to stand in front of Gabriel. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “And if it’s any consolation, I don’t know what I’m doing either. I bought a farm, for cryin’ out loud, all because being out here made me feel alive for the first time in years. I didn’t know you were part of the package when I bought the place, and I think I’m still trying to figure you out.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I’m still trying to figure me out, too. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

  Mimi cringed a little before asking, “Have you ever thought maybe you’re just too much to figure out on your own? There’s a reason that support groups exist. You are certainly not the only messed up soldier to come home from war a completely different person.”

  “I’m not just different,” Gabriel answered, “I’m not even sure I’m a person anymore.”

  Tears formed in the corners of Mimi’s eyes as she pulled Gabriel close to her. “Oh, Gabriel. I’m right here, and I feel a person in front of me. You’re real, and you’re a person. A good person. You might not be the person you used to be, but there is no doubt that you’re a person and that you have needs. And you deserve to have those needs met.”

  Gabriel let her hold him for a long time before he spoke, not lifting his head from where it was nestled in her hair. “I want to go inside.”

  Mimi looked up at him, somewhat alarmed. “Really? Why? I mean, wow that’s great, but why now?”

  “Because I don’t want to keep being afraid,” he said, smiling weakly. “And it gets too cold for you to live outside.”

  “Did you want to try going inside now?” she asked as he nodded uncertainly. “Well, should I go too? Or is it better if I wait out here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to go in and I’m going to leave the door open. You just take your time and do what feels right.” She smiled and turned away, returning to her cabin and trying to busy herself with anything that would take her mind off Gabriel and his struggles. She knew she couldn’t fix his situation, that whatever he needed to do he would have to do on his own timeline. If she forced the issue or tried to push him into something he wasn’t ready for, he would run away like a scared rabbit and be gone. The very last thing he needed was someone staring at him, waiting for him to move.

  Mimi passed the time looking up horse care on her computer. She had only seen the inside of the barn a couple of times, and declared it too scary to deal with since she didn’t have animals. Now that the horses were back, she’d have to ready it for their arrival and have feed delivered. She researched the price of feed from the store in town on their website, and found the name of a couple of equine vets who could come out if needed.

  All the time that she worked, she watched out the window for Gabriel out of the corner of her eye. She saw him circle the cabin a few times, and heard him come up on the porch only to head back to the safety of the yard more than once. True to her word, she left the door open so he could experiment at his own pace, and resorted to placing as many heavy objects as she could on her papers to keep the gentle gusts of wind from sending them drifting to the floor.

  Finally, Gabriel made it to the doorway but stood there, unable to move. Mimi watched him, searching his face for any emotion at all. He rocked forward and back on his heels, not letting himself go any further, stuck between what he wanted and what the war-torn primal part of his brain told him was safe and logical.

  Mimi got up and crossed the room to stand in front of him. She lowered herself to the floor and gestured for him to sit, too. Once he reluctantly settled himself cross-legged on the porch, even the toe of his boot not crossing through the door, Mimi spoke.

  “How does this feel?” she asked, pointing at the floor where he sat.

  “Horrible,” he answered quietly after thinking it over. “Terrifying.”

  “Okay. At least it has a name.” She looked down, avoiding Gabriel’s eyes. “My father was shot right in front of me. He owned a little convenience store in our neighborhood, and one day in broad daylight a man came in and robbed him. He shot my daddy after getting all the money out of the drawer, just for the fun of shooting him. The man even knew I was there because he saw me sitting on a stool behind the counter, and he shot my daddy anyway, right in front of me. I was only six years old.”

  Gabriel didn’t speak, but Mimi could feel him watching her face.

  “For years, I didn’t have a word for how I felt. I knew I
was supposed to feel bad, and that I should feel something like sadness. And I did. But I didn’t have the right word to know how I felt. No word that I knew seemed strong enough. ‘Fear’ is the same word you would use when you watch a scary movie or ride a roller coaster, not when you have nightmares for years that a man is going to hunt you down and come back one night to shoot you, too. ‘Hate’ is the same word we use to say how much we don’t like broccoli. ‘Sad’ is the same word for when the baseball game gets rained out. None of the words worked anymore, so I couldn’t even know how I felt, let alone talk about it.”

  “Try to figure out what words go with what you feel, and then you can start to climb up over on top of the words and put them back where they belong.”

  Gabriel reached out his hand and slowly put it through the doorway, holding it out for Mimi to take. She put her hand in his and let their arms hang in the space between.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mimi and Gabriel slept that way, stretched out on either side of the open doorway, their hands linked in the middle. She had gotten up and made them both something to eat at some point, and they ate their dinner on either side of the front wall of the cabin. She had gotten them each a blanket and a pillow when it got to be too dark and too tiring to keep sitting. But she was still surprised by the sight of Gabriel in the morning, certain that he would have slunk off to his own bed somewhere when the hard floor got to be too uncomfortable.

  Instead, he lay motionless on his back, his eyes closed, his hand still holding tightly to hers even as he slept. She dared not move, afraid to startle him, afraid to send him running away in fear and shame. So Mimi laid there patiently watching Gabriel, waiting for him to wake up. When he did wake, he didn’t move or open his eyes. He simply spoke.

  “The word that describes how I’m supposed to feel is ‘hero.’ But I don’t feel like one. I feel like a coward.”

  How he knew she was awake was a mystery to Mimi, but this wasn’t the time to question him. “Why don’t you feel like a hero?” she asked with a soft voice, holding very still and watching his face intently.

  “Because I killed a lot people who never saw it coming. It’s one thing to fight with another person, but a sniper shoots them from far away, from a hiding place. Some of the guys I killed…I shot them in the back. Like a coward.”

  So many thoughts raced through Mimi’s mind, empty words and assurances that wouldn’t mean anything coming from someone who’d never experienced the turmoil that Gabriel was drowning in. She simply held his hand tighter and waited.

  Instead of talking more about it, Gabriel turned his head and looked at her. “I don’t know why you don’t think I’m a monster.”

  “Who says I don’t?” she teased quietly.

  “I can just tell. You like me,” he said devilishly, drawing out and emphasizing the word “like” the way a middle school girl would, making Mimi laugh lightly at his joke.

  “Okay, fine, I admit it. I sort of like you. You know, like, like-like you,” she said, keeping his joke going.

  “Good,” he answered, closing his eyes again.

  “Oh no you don’t, mister, you don’t get me to admit that I like you and then you don’t say anything,” she laughed. “Don’t make me get my best friend to ask your guy friends if you like-like me, too!”

  Gabriel actually laughed, only the second time Mimi had ever heard him. His face lit up when he did in a way that stunned her for a moment. It was enough to make a woman want to spend the rest of her life making him laugh, just to be able to see that face again.

  “I like-like you,” he finally said, slightly out of breath.

  “Good. Now let’s eat breakfast.” While Mimi busied herself putting some kind of meal together, Gabriel got up and tended to the horses, leading them to higher grass and tying them off on a tall scrub. He came back and asked Mimi to fill one of the tubs with water for them, which she did while the corn fritters she’d stirred together cooked in the skillet.

  After breakfast, Gabriel suggested they ride the horses back to where they’d been staying so the animals could eat, offering to keep watching them until Mimi had food and a place for them to bed down. She washed up and changed clothes, then headed out into the bright morning to ride.

  Once they were away from the imposing weight of the small cabin, Gabriel took a deep breath and turned his face up to the sunshine, like someone freed from a prison cell after too many years. He relaxed his tense shoulders and talked more easily, pointing out different plants or rock formations to Mimi. He even talked a little bit about how he came to be out here, away from everyone and everything, looking for a place where he wouldn’t have to work so hard to try to act normal.

  Mimi stayed quiet and let him talk. As a caretaker who lived out in the wilds of the ranch, Gabriel probably didn’t get the chance to talk much, at least not to real people instead of the voices in his head that told him every day how worthless he was. Besides, the life of a tax accountant and the stress that went with it didn’t hold a candle to the level of anxiety that a combat veteran had to have endured.

  After riding for more than an hour at a slow, meandering walk, Gabriel pointed out a low overhang in the rock where the ground was stamped down.

  “That’s it. That’s my home,” he said, staring at the charred remains of his camp fire and the bedroll that was neatly folded and hanging beneath the rock face by a leather chord to keep it dry.

  “Wow,” Mimi said, almost speechless at the living conditions. “What do you do when it rains?”

  “Get wet.”

  “Okay, smart guy. It doesn’t bother you to be out here, alone, and with whatever weather happens to crop up?” She couldn’t picture choosing to sleep out here on purpose. She took in the rest of the area and noticed what had to be the horse pen, another place where the rock jutted out and provided a little shelter and protected their bin of grain from the elements.

  “Nope. It’s no worse than the living conditions on any military exercise I had to do.” Gabriel made a small noise to his horse and steered him around, walking him over to the pile of grain and jumping down from the saddle. He unhooked the horse’s bit so the animal could eat, then reached for Mimi’s horse to do the same.

  Gabriel opened a large hinged box and took out some pouches of food and bottles of water, throwing them in his backpack. He held out his hand to Mimi, and together they began walking, talking about the property and the usefulness of the ranch. He showed her the small lake at this end of the property, too small and too far to be useful for the farm, but beautiful and serene just the same.

  When they sat down beside the lake to rest and have a snack, Gabriel pulled Mimi onto his lap and kissed her, then said, “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t really want to be alone, I just never could figure out how to not be. I didn’t know how to explain to someone that I had to sleep under a rock instead of a house, and that I’m going to run away every so often because I don’t know how not to.”

  Mimi didn’t answer, but instead took Gabriel’s hand and guided it between her legs as they kissed, begging him to touch her. He did as she wanted, rubbing her pussy until her breath came in short gasps and she moved her hips against his strong hand. She reached for his shirt as she had done before, but he stopped her, instead laying her back and tugging gently at her jeans and helping her slide them off. Gabriel moved between her legs and brought her leg up to his mouth, kissing her gently behind her knee and making her squeal lightly in surprise as he began sucking on the sensitive skin there.

  He worked his way up her leg and across the inside of Mimi’s thigh, guiding her foot up over his shoulder as he traveled towards her middle. She was tense with anticipation as she waited for Gabriel’s loving assault, shuddering when she felt his hot breath across her soft mound. Mimi struggled to keep from screaming from the sensation when Gabriel’s tongue finally found her wet slit and dove inside her, sucking carefully at her sex bringing almost to the heights of climax. Instead, she reached for him and
pulled him towards her, wanting to feel him inside her again.

  Their lovemaking this time was very different. Before, they were two people who simply wanted each other physically, but now, Mimi understood Gabriel in some small way. He knew that, too, and knew that this was someone who had not pushed him away, even when he had given her every reason to. They explored each other’s bodies passionately but slowly, taking their time and devoting their full attention to each other’s fulfillment.

  As they held each other afterward, Gabriel leaned close to Mimi’s ear and whispered, “Thank you for not thinking I’m crazy.”

  “You’re welcome. I admit, it took some effort at first. But you just need to be who you are, in whatever way you can in order to be happy. You don’t have to become someone else, not for me and not for anybody. But I do want to say this…if the day ever comes when you can feel safe and comfortable indoors, you are going to be absolutely blown away by having sex in a bed.” Mimi laughed and patted the hard ground, earning another smile from Gabriel before he hid his face in her hair, burying himself in the scent coming off the soft skin of her shoulder.

  As they slowly made their way back to her cabin, a revelation came over Mimi so strongly that she wondered if it wasn’t truly heaven-sent. She sat up taller in the saddle and looked over at Gabriel, and said, “I know what I’m going to do with the ranch.” He looked to her, a questioning look on his face urging her to go on. “I want to turn this place into a getaway for kids who’ve been hurt or people who’ve been damaged in some way. Let it be a place where they can just spend some time really breathing. They can’t figure out how to handle their pain until they can breathe through it.”

  A look of total admiration crossed his face, and he smiled, bigger than Mimi had seen. “That’s good. You will make such a difference to people.”

  “We, mister. Who better than two damaged people to show others how to become unbroken?” They rode in contented silence the rest of the way back, and Mimi waved goodbye to Gabriel from her doorway as he turned and led the horses back home.