Rocco and Mandy: A Red Team Wedding Novella (Book #6.5)(3)
Chapter Two
Rocco watched the security camera of the stables on his phone, waiting for everyone to leave. A young Army veteran had just finished his first hippotherapy session with Mandy. The kid held on to his walker with a white-knuckled grip. The tremors he suffered from made it look as if a cruel puppeteer jerked him around on invisible strings. Even so, Rocco knew the kid’s smile was genuine—he’d observed the whole session. The change in the guy’s demeanor as he left compared to how it had been when he’d arrived had been a one-eighty shift. There was hope in his eyes now, hope that had come from working with Mandy and her horses.
He’d seen it happen with each of her clients. Maybe there was something to the whole hippotherapy thing, which was why he was waiting for the area to empty out.
When everyone was headed to the parking area with the young vet, Rocco made a beeline for the stables, hoping to saddle a horse before Mandy got back and peppered him with questions he couldn’t answer. He needed time alone. Some room to think. Some space to find the pieces of himself he’d lost to the shadows. He hoped a long ride might help him do that.
He’d told Kit where he was headed. The team was too skittish after Fiona’s abduction to take any unexplained absence casually. The last thing he wanted was the whole f*cking group out looking for him.
As he went by Kitano’s corral, the brown and white Paint lifted his head and tracked his movement. Rocco wished he could ride Mandy’s rescued horse, but he wasn’t any more healed from his past than Rocco was, and as yet, he couldn’t tolerate being saddled or ridden.
Rocco selected a sorrel, saddled her, then led her outside and swung up into the saddle. He walked her down the narrow dirt road between the stable and corrals. Kitano jogged along his fence line. Rocco’s heart ached for the freedom Kitano lacked.
As he cleared the stable yard, Rocco saw Mandy watching him from the edge of the parking area. The late afternoon sun lit her hair to the color of flames. He could feel her emptiness—the void he himself had carved inside her.
It was good that he could feel that, no?
He’d been trying to find the part of him that cared about others, the part that could sense their emotions. Empathy. It had kept him alive in Afghanistan, where it seemed he’d used all of it up. How long had it been since he’d truly cared for anyone other than himself?
He remembered Mandy had asked him recently: “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” he’d answered.
“Do you love Zavi?”
“Yes.”
“Does that love hurt?”
“Yes.”
He did love them, but even that he saw in terms of himself. His truthful answer had only served to widen the gap between them. He couldn’t win for losing.
He turned onto the rough tracks behind Blade’s that he often jogged. For a long while, he kept his mind focused only on the wind, the sound of the sorrel’s hooves hitting dirt, the feel of the hot sun.
The now and here, as Mandy often suggested.
It wasn’t so bad, this, if he stayed in the present, looking no farther. Forward or back. The now was nice.
An hour into the ride, he reached a wide ravine, in the middle of which three buttes stood, great pillars of sandstone. The sun was behind him and poured warm colors over the bone-dry vista. The grasses that were so lush in the spring had long ago turned summer brown, dying in advance of winter’s harsh temperatures. The pale green sage and rabbitbrush’s yellow blooms were a visual break in the sun-bleached ground.
The sorrel lifted her head and scented the air.
Rocco did the same, then took an inventory of his senses. He felt the cool wind come up from the ravine, saw the changing colors that the setting sun poured over the landscape. In this minute, there was just this minute. And it didn’t hurt very much at all, really.
How long had it been since he’d taken a breath that didn’t make his chest ache? Right here, right now, it didn’t. He slowly filled his lungs, over and over, feeding on the peace he felt in that moment.
After a while, the sorrel gave a restless shake of her head and stamped flies off her legs. They turned back toward Blade’s. While she made the slow walk home, Rocco shut his eyes and focused on the waning heat of the sun; the sorrel’s gentle, rocking pace; the scents of dirt, grass, and sage; and the creak of the saddle.
There was no pain in the minutiae of the moment.
No wonder Mandy’s clients loved their exercises with her and the horses; it let them get out of their heads for a little while. Maybe she’d been right about living in the present. He could try it. He had to try something. But f*ck it all, doing so was like learning to walk all over again. Mandy’s clients were relearning things two-year-olds knew, and were happy to do so, not ashamed by what they’d lost. He could take a lesson from them.
He reined his thoughts in and again focused on the moment…the sound of the locusts hopping out of the way of the horse’s hooves, snapping until they landed nearby. No pain there. Just sound.
But if he couldn’t let his mind think, if the only way to avoid pain was to avoid his thoughts and memories, he’d be right back where he was when the f*cking day terrors stalked him.
He was navigating his way through a minefield.
Maybe it was for the best if he just ran through it and let it take him…best for him and everyone around him.