God help her, she would give anything if she hadn’t sold his horses.
Sitting a saddle about as well as any man could do, Finn looked competent and sexy as hell as he whistled for Milo, who came charging around the building. “Let’s ride, boy,” he said to the dog, and the years melted away. Milo ran ahead of them and Finn looked over his shoulder. “Ease up a little, Macy. You don’t want to snap her head off,” he said with a laugh, and spurred Fred to move.
It hardly mattered if Macy gave Barney some slack or not—he wasn’t letting Fred leave him behind, and with a lurch forward, he trotted after the larger horse.
The day was beautiful, but hot. Finn liked it that way. His uncle used to say you could tell a native from a transplant because real Texans, he claimed, thrived on heat. Finn had known plenty of native Texans who didn’t like the heat, but he did. It felt good seeping into his bones.
If it hadn’t been for Dr. Rock, Finn believed he wouldn’t be where he was. He was lucky that Dr. Rock had had a last minute cancellation and could fit him in when he’d called. He’d only known the doctor an hour before Dr. Rock suggested Finn attend a group he’d started. All of them were veterans, Dr. Rock had said, all of them having the same sort of troubles Finn had described.
“What—they were presumed dead and came home to find their wives remarried?” Finn had scoffed.
“No—that would be a coincidence of huge proportions,” Dr. Rock said with a wry smile. “All of them are having trouble settling back into their old lives. As it happens, they are meeting at four today.” He’d said that at a quarter past two on Friday.
Finn didn’t want to go to any damn group. Sharing his grief and his confusion with Dr. Rock had been difficult enough, but to share it with a bunch of vets would be tantamount to admitting he was weak, and he had declined.
“Suit yourself,” Dr. Rock had said. “You’re a man. You can choose to drink yourself to death, and if you find some doctor who will prescribe pills, add that to the mix. It’s sure to kill you eventually. And while you’re killing yourself, you can alienate everyone who ever cared for you and possibly end up on some street corner begging for coins with a sign that says
hungry veteran
on it. Or maybe you’ll take it out on your family, a bitter vet with a big axe to grind. Or, you can take steps to put your life on track. They may be hard steps, but they will get you to where you want to be.”
“I’ll handle it,” Finn had said, and stood to go. “I just wanted something to help me sleep.”
“Fine,” Dr. Rock had answered congenially. “You’ll have to get that someplace else. In the meantime, you might consider if you are any use to Macy right now. Or maybe a better question is, would Macy have any use for you like this? Is she going to take the hard step of coming back to a soldier who has to get his drink on to sleep? Who has some lingering issues from the war and from his return, and blames her for part of it?”
“I don’t blame her—”
“Are you sure?” Dr. Rock had asked. “Because you kind of sound like you do.”
The conversation had stopped Finn in his tracks. He’d stood there, his back to the doctor, a battle waging inside of him.
In the end, he didn’t know what it was that had made him agree to go to the group session, exactly, but he’d known that if he didn’t go, he’d end up drinking instead, because he had to fill that emptiness inside him before it grew too big.
When he’d walked into the church where the session was held and had seen the other men sitting around, he’d felt like a fool, like a weak, stupid fool. These guys were soldiers. They’d suffered through months of combat, had watched friends and comrades die. Finn had sat chained to a wall in Afghanistan, rolling a ball back and forth between a boy and a dog. He was a fraud.
When it came time for him to talk, Finn held up his hands. “Sorry for wasting everyone’s time,” he said. “I don’t think I belong here.”
“Why not?” asked one of the bigger guys, whose name, Finn would learn later, was Deon. “You think you’re better than us?”
“No,” Finn said. “Just the opposite. I didn’t do a long combat tour. My first months in Afghanistan were mostly securing supply lines. We had some sporadic engagement, but it was a lot of wait and see. I had it pretty easy compared to what you guys probably saw.”
“You’ve probably read about Finn in the paper,” Dr. Rock said casually. “He survived three years of captivity among the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
All eyes turned to him. “It sounds worse than it was,” Finn said.
But Deon gaped at him. “
You
are that guy?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let me shake your hand,” Deon said, getting up and lumbering across the circle to shake his hand. “Dude, you got some
grit.
”
Finn didn’t think he had so much grit as luck, and said so. Another guy—Jamie—asked how it had happened. It was odd, looking back on that group session now. Strangers asking those questions made Finn uneasy. But he’d wanted to tell those guys his story, and he did.
Finn looked at Macy now. She was holding the reins too tight like she always did, chattering about a rug or something she was making of the Lockhart plaid. He thought about what that group had said to him about Macy. They’d told him to go for it, to let Macy know exactly what he wanted, how much he loved her. And then they’d told him if she couldn’t give him a straight-up answer, to take a straight-up hint and go on with his life.
“You already lost some of your best years, man,” Deon had said. “And you gonna lose more of your life waiting for her to figure out if you’re her man or not?
She-it.
”
Deon had a point. Finn had been back in Texas a little more than three weeks. He recognized it was not an easy situation for Macy, but she needed to make her decision and stand by it, for all their sakes.
“Ease up, Macy. Give him some slack,” Finn said.
She snorted. “Slack or no slack, Barney is not going to change direction or speed,” she said laughingly. At that moment, Barney walked under a tree. “Oh!” she cried, bending down to avoid being hit by a limb and grabbing onto her big floppy hat at the same moment. “And I think he is determined to kill me!”
“He smells water.”
“I hope so, for his sake,” Macy said. “It’s really too hot for a beat-up old horse. He’s staggering along, it’s so hot.”
“He’s limping because he had a hoof problem. But we’re almost to the river.”
They crested a small rise, and below it was the abandoned grove of pecan trees that Luke had told him about. “We’re almost there,” he said to Macy. He’d no sooner had the words out when Fred picked up his pace. He smelled water, too.
Finn let him canter down to the water’s edge. Barney was slower; Finn had already dismounted under the row of old pecans and caught Barney’s bridle as the horse crowded in beside Fred. He helped Macy get down—pulled her down, really—before Barney waded into the shallow edge of river. Macy stumbled a little when Finn let her go. “Ouch,” she said, grimacing. “Ouch, ouch,
ouch
. My legs feel like jelly.”
Finn smiled and tossed the backpack onto a rotting picnic table. Milo, who had disappeared some fifty yards back, reappeared once more, swimming downstream, then going round in a big circle before climbing up on the bank, shaking off, and diving back in again.
“Nice spot,” Finn said.
“It’s gorgeous!” Macy exclaimed, and removed her hat to wipe her forehead. “It reminds me of the creek that runs through Two Wishes.” She smiled brightly. “Do you remember that place?”
“I remember.” It was just a small little clearing on the creek’s edge, and in the fall, the leaves of the burr oak would fall, blanketing it. Finn loved that little place—he swore some of the best fishing in Cedar County was to be had in that spot.
How many lazy Sunday afternoons had they spent there, Macy reading under a tree, Finn fishing? They didn’t talk—they didn’t need to. They just existed, as comfortable with one another as they were in their own skin. Finn had never felt that way about another person in his life. He doubted he ever would again.
Macy walked down to the water’s edge as he pulled out the things he’d brought along for a picnic lunch. She scolded Milo when Milo swam out and sprayed her, then scampered back to the cover of the pecan trees.
Finn smiled to himself and glanced at what he’d laid out. He wasn’t much of a gourmet. He’d brought some apples for the horses, some ready-made sandwiches he’d picked up at a little deli on the square in Cedar Springs, and, because he knew Macy as well as he did, some bottled water and a couple of gourmet brownies.
“Hungry?” he asked her.
“Starving,” she said as she wandered over to survey the spread.
“It’s nothing fancy, but it ought to tide us over,” he said, and handed her a sandwich.
She grinned at him, her smile as bright and beautiful as a summer morning. She grabbed the offered sandwich out of his hand and settled on top of the picnic table beneath the shade of the pecan tree. A steady breeze made it comfortably warm.
Finn took apples down to Fred and Barney, scattering them on the grass. For Milo, Finn had some jerky. He returned to the picnic table, picked up a sandwich, and opened the wax paper. It was halved; he took one half and munched as he looked out over the scenery.
“This is really a treat, Finn. Thank you,” Macy said before taking a bite from the second half of her sandwich. “I needed to get out and just…
breathe
,” she said with a sigh.
He idly glanced at her. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were hungry,” he teased her.
“Are you going to eat that?” she asked, pointing to his second half.
Finn laughed. “Doesn’t Laru feed you?”
“Yes,” Macy said with a smile, “but not enough.” She polished off the last of her sandwich and gazed out over the river. “I can’t remember the last time I was out in the country,” Macy said. “I miss it.”
Finn wondered what she and Wyatt did on lazy Sunday afternoons. “What’s kept you from being in the country?”
“Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “I guess I’ve been really busy—or was—with Project Lifeline. And, you know….”
“What do you mean
was
?” he asked curiously.
“Oh,” she said, flicking her wrist. “The committee seems to think that if I continued to work on the big fund-raiser, any media attention we get would be because of me—well, us, really—and it turns the attention from the cause.”
Finn frowned. “I thought you founded that organization.”
“I did.”
“That’s not right,” he said.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “They’re probably right. Mom told me that reporters keep calling, wanting my side of the story.”
Damn reporters were like dogs with a bone. He put his arm around her shoulders, pulled her into his side, and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want the attention, either.”
“I missed you so much, Finn,” Macy said softly. “I know I’ve told you that, but you will never know just how much I missed you.”
Surprised, Finn cocked his head to look in her face.
She smiled and pushed her hair aside. “I keep saying it, but I really do wish we could go back in time and start all over.”
“There have been many times that I wish I’d never joined up.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t, but you know that. I mean…I wish I could go back to the moment Lieutenant Colonel Freeman told me you were alive. I was so shocked, and astounded, and so
happy
. I couldn’t really think straight. But now that some time has passed, I think…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at the river. “I wish I would have done things differently.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“Like what?” she asked, her eyes skating over his face.
“Well, I wouldn’t have put so many hopes on two slender shoulders, for one.”
Macy colored. “I deserved that, I guess.”
“I’m not blaming you, Macy,” he said. “It wasn’t fair. You’re not alone in wishing you’d done things differently. I’m feeling a little better about how things worked out, and I’ve decided a few things. I wanted to tell you before I told anyone else.”
“What’s that?”
He took her hand in his. “I can’t start up a training ranch again,” he said. “I don’t have the money and it would take me years to get a couple of horses trained well enough to turn out to competition or training.”
Macy instantly squeezed her eyes shut, as if that news pained her. “I’m so sorry, Finn—”
“I’m not telling you this so you can apologize again, Macy. What’s done is done and there’s no point in looking back. And I think I’ve got a better idea.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him hopefully.
“See those two horses?” he asked, pointing at Fred and Barney. “They’ve been treated badly and now they’ve got no place to go. Their survival depends on some unknown rancher or outfit who doesn’t mind that they aren’t working horses anymore, just a money drain. They need food, they need care, they need space to roam and graze. That’s a lot to ask for nothing in return.”
“I don’t understand,” Macy said, looking at the horses.
“It’s an unfortunate fact that there are abused animals in this world. I’d like to turn the ranch into a large-animal rescue operation.”
Her eyes widened with surprised. “
Really
? How?”
“It would take some doing,” Finn admitted. “I’d have to raise money to get feed and supplies, and then I’d have to let people know there is a place they can bring large animals. Luke said he’d do the veterinary services. I wouldn’t be able to pay him much in the beginning, but he’s fine with that. I’d need to build a new barn and renovate the house so there’s a real office.”
“But how would you pay for something like that?”
“Donations and grants. Selling the animals I can rehabilitate. I thought I might be able to get some contracts with local governments who seize animals like Fred and Barney and need a place to put them. They could recoup the costs through court fines.”
A smile slowly spread across Macy’s face. “Finn…that’s a
wonderful
idea,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so noble and so—”
“It’s not so noble,” he said. “I just want a place misfits can go, myself included.”
“You’re not a misfit!”
“Yeah, I am, Macy,” he said. “I’ve never been the most outgoing cowboy; you know that. Now, I’m the guy who survived the Taliban. That’s all anyone wants from me, but I don’t want to talk about it; I want to forget it. I
desperately
want to forget it, and it makes me shy away from people even more than normal. The truth is, I don’t know how I fit in anymore, and horses like these two don’t fit in anymore, and there are other animals that don’t fit in either, like old steers and big cats some of these rich idiots bought when they were cute little cubs and then can’t handle when they grow up.”