Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

I fell backwards out of my chair, startled by Swiper’s loud neighing. I’d actually managed to enter a light sleep at the desk, so I didn’t appreciate the rude awakening.

            I noticed him staring out the window and realized that he saw something. I stepped over and gently rubbed his neck. “What is it?” I asked him. He only huffed in response.

I peered through the blinds and saw someone approaching on another horse in the distance. “Man, you’re like a dog barking at other dogs.” I rubbed him one last time and opened the front door. I figured that any of the bad guys would come in something a little more efficient than a horse, so I would probably be safe.                                                                                 

It took a minute, but eventually Hector stopped in front of the house. He was a welcome face after all of the chaos that had become my life. “Hola!” I shouted, mimicking his regular greeting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

He dismounted and ran forward to give me his customary bear hug.

Grin and bear it, I told myself as he squeezed the life out of me. Grin. And. Bear it.  When he finally let go I doubled over to try and catch my breath. “You need…to stop…doing that,” I wheezed.

“But if I did not then I would no longer get to see you make that silly face.” He bent over to get a better look at me.

“Ha-ha, very funny.” I stood up straight and crossed my arms to hide the fact that I was still in a lot of pain. I was still slightly sore from the car wreck a little over a week ago, though most of the physical evidence of it had faded. “You sure seem to be in a good mood this morning,” I commented.

“I thought that maybe you would be sad, so I thought, ‘Why not be happy and cheer up Tuck?’” He grinned, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay, how about we go inside and you can tell me what’s what. You can even bring Leña.” Leña was the Estrella family’s only horse. Whereas I acquired my six horses as part of my great aunt’s inheritance, they paid for Leña with the sweat off their backs. Hector took after me and named her with the word association method, going off of the first thing that came to his mind when he looked at her. Leña was apparently the Spanish word for “wood” or something, and looking at her I could see the resemblance. She was a brown mare with what almost looked like large brushstrokes of a lighter tan shade. It almost did look like the marks you’d find on briarwood.

“Do you mean…inside?” he asked.

“Yeah, there’s room.” As if to prove—or perhaps disprove—my point, Swiper stuck his head out the window and huffed at him. “See?”

“There has to be some kind of law against that.”

“We’re pretty far beyond the law by this point, don’t ya think?”

“Very true, very true.” He grabbed Leña by the reigns and followed me into the little shack that may or may not become my temporary new home.

Terra was not having a good day. The morning seemed to be made up of an endless barrage of questions, all aimed toward exposing Cal’s secrets in an effort to find him. Everyone was treating her overly kindly, afraid of breaking the fragile partner of the man who’d betrayed them all. She felt like a bug under a delicate microscope, or worse, a child being forced to hold her mother’s hand as she crossed the street.