Titan was in his stall, head buried in a bucket of what was probably horse food, and Phoebe and Margot were tying Amos and Maple up in the aisle.
Duncan went to Margot and Maple. “I got this,” he told her.
“Yeah? You know what you’re doing?”
“Sure,” he said, which was only about half true. He remembered some things, probably the main things, about unsaddling a horse. For anything he’d forgotten or had never known, he could watch Phoebe. The important thing was finally getting a chance to be alone with her, so he could get a read on what she wanted of him.
“Okay,” Margot said. “I guess finishing supper is on me, anyway. Terry’ll be here in about an hour, so we’re probably gonna have to feed him, too.” She turned to Phoebe. “You need anything before I go, hon?”
“No,” Phoebe answered as she walked past them with Amos’s saddle.
Giving Duncan a look full of meaning he could only hope he understood, Margot left the stable.
Duncan went to Maple’s saddle and tried to remember the steps. First the back belt thing. He unfastened that. Then ... right. He lifted the stirrup, or whatever the part was called that the stirrup was attached to, and found the cinch thing. Instead of a belt buckle, this was a leather strap sort of knotted. Was he on the wrong side?
“Here,” Phoebe said and pushed him aside. She undid the leather strap. When the cinch fell free, she grabbed the saddle and pulled it off the horse’s back.
“I had it,” Duncan said, feeling defensive.
“You can bring the pad and the bridle—it’s hanging there.” She nodded at the nearest post.
He took the pad off Maple’s back, collected the bridle from its hook, and followed Phoebe back to the tack room.
She was settling the saddle on a big peg on the wall. Five other saddles rested on similar pegs. Then she took the bridle from him and hung it on a wall full of bridles, halters, and leads.
“Hang the pad by the window, next to mine. They need to air out before they get put away.”
A thick cord like a heavy-duty clothesline stretched across the room, in front of the window. Titan’s pack pad and Amos’s saddle pad were hooked over it. Duncan hung Maple’s beside it.
“Hey. Wait,” he said as Phoebe started to leave the room.
She stopped and turned back. “The horses are still tied in the aisle. I need to brush them down and put them away. Then I need to bring everybody else in and get them fed.”
He’d heard, and felt, each time she’d said I instead of we. “I can help with that. But can we just take a minute first?”
“Why?”
There was a new distance between them, but it didn’t have to be physical. Duncan went to her and took her hand. “I missed you, Phoebe. Unless I went crazy and started hallucinating while I was gone, I think we decided to be a couple. As far as I’m concerned, that is some significant shit right there. Like, life-changing shit. I’ve been thinking about seeing you again, holding you, kissing you, since the last time I saw you, and fuck, I’ve been here hours, and we’ve barely touched. You feel miles away. Did you change your mind?”
She stared at him—not at his eyes, but at, he thought, his nose. “There’s shit going on I’ve got to deal with.”
“I know. I want to help.” He figured she was only talking about the boar, but he meant more than that.
“You have helped—and thank you.” Those last two words seemed to register more deeply with her, and Duncan actually saw her pull out of her head. Her eyes came up to his. When she spoke again, even her voice was more focused. “Sorry. I’m sorry. There’s a lot on my mind. But I am happy you’re here and really thankful for the help—and no, I didn’t change my mind.”
“Good. Can I kiss you now?”
She nodded, and he pulled her into his arms. When he bent and put his mouth over hers, she sighed softly, and her hand swept up his arms and around his neck. Duncan changed the kiss and took her into the deeps with him.
This was right. He couldn’t define the difference he felt with Phoebe in his arms, except for that: he knew this was right. Not just enjoyable. Not just hot. Right.
Then a spasm went through her, and she pulled away. When Duncan looked down at her, he saw that her eyes had blurred with unshed tears.
“Hey,” he murmured as a drop slipped from its bounds and slid onto her face. He brushed it away with his still-gloved thumb. “It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “It’s not, actually. Things are shit.”
“Margot told me about the what’s going on with the health department.”
Surprise took over her face and was quickly supplanted by anger. “What? Fuck her!”
“I want to try to help. I’m going to ask if the Bulls can maybe do something.”
“Like give me a hundred thousand dollars? Come on, Duncan. That’s nuts—and I don’t want you to do it.”
“Why not? I don’t know if the Bulls can help, or how much they can, but I want to try. If I can help, and you need help, why wouldn’t you let me?”
“We can’t start being together with this between us. There’s no way I can pay back something so huge, the whole problem is I can’t pay for something so huge. So it’s us as a couple or you as a donor. Which do you want?”
Well, that was just plain stupid and self-defeating. He was not about to make that choice. “I want you and to help. There’s no ledger here, Phoebe. You won’t owe me shit. But like I said, I don’t know how much I can do, or the club can do. I just want to ask the question.”
She looked up at him for another few seconds. Then her eyes shifted away from his, and he felt the distance return. “I need to take care of the horses.”
She pulled out of his hold and went to the door. Duncan followed.
They weren’t done, but he’d let her have her distance for now.
~oOo~
They got the animals tended to and buttoned up for the night. As they left the stable, the butcher guy was pulling the boar carcass toward his truck on a hand cart, and Vin was closing up the smokehouse or whatever it was.
They all went into the house and shared a meal of hearty beef stew and cornbread.
Duncan liked these people. Even the butcher guy, Terry. The conversation around the table was real—about the boar, about the effects of the storm on properties around the area, about town politics and gossip—and rough around the edges. Everybody ate with gusto and no fuss about the fancier manners.
After the meal, Terry left, and Duncan offered to help Vin clean up. The two men didn’t talk about much beside the work they were doing, until Vin stopped at the sink and turned to face him.
“Be patient with her, man. You might be thinking she’s different from when you met her. She’s not. She’s still Phoebe, and she is good. She’s just scared right now and feeling trapped. It makes her button up tight.”
“I get it.” Duncan considered for a moment, then went ahead and said what he was thinking. “It’s PTSD, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t think anybody in a combat deployment comes back from that mess without it. But she’s got some ... complications, I guess you’d say, because of her injury.”