Chapter 15
Autumn
“Hello?” I called out; stumbling in a clumsy rush down the stairs in what I hoped was at least most of my exercise gear. I was still groggy and disoriented from my alarm not going off. Eight AM! I was mortified. How the hell had I slept in for so long? The thought of Dante waiting, cross-armed and glowering at my lateness quickened my steps. I could only imagine the kind of horrific workout I'd have to do to make up for lost time!
Blasting through the kitchen, I was already apologizing when I opened the patio door. “I don't know how that happened. I always set the—”
Empty.
I looked around to be sure, but Dante was nowhere to be found.
“Huh.” I went back inside. The undisturbed room was sleepier than as I was. Dust motes in the air did agitated spirals in the yellow beams that cut across the kitchen from the yawning morning sun. By now I’d have just lost yet another round of The Game. I was so close to hitting him last night that the frustration of it even made it into my dream.
Quietness had become unnerving to me. It made me feel late for something. Nearly two weeks of structured, rigid routine made the Pavlovian dog in me uneasy at the change. I crept across the floor, scanning the rest of the room like I was Indiana Jones warily sniffing out traps in some forgotten crypt.
The only sign that anything had changed since last night was a folded card on the bar.
“Take the day off,” read the card. “No training until tomorrow. Your breakfast is in the fridge.” I turned the card over, agonizing over every word.
A whole day off?
I wasn’t buying it. This had to be some crazy test. With my thumb and forefinger on my earring stud I lingered around the adjacent room’s small breakfast table, listening intently for...something.
I ate the food that was prepared for me just in case. It felt like a crime heating the omelet and asparagus in the microwave, but it was a testament to the amazing cooking prowess of whoever made it that it still tasted amazing. After I finished up, it became painfully obvious that Dante wasn't going to spring out of one of the cabinets. Regardless I called out his name once more. Again, nothing.
Huh. Maybe this wasn’t a test. And here I figured he thought yesterday’s fittings and table read was a day off and he would train me extra hard today to make up for it.
Apparently not.
Ok. I had a full day off apparently. I was thousands of miles from any kind of familiarity, in a strange new place that also happened to be the heart of the entertainment capital of the world; what was I going to do with myself?
It was no contest. I did something I’d wanted to do for weeks; I went upstairs and crawled back into bed for a few more hours of sleep. I woke up later at a much more civilized hour in the early afternoon. It reminded me of my old routine. I was always a night owl before I came here.
All the intense workouts made the muscles in my thighs throb as I slowly made my way down the stairs. It wasn’t half as bad now that I’d been doing it every day, but the first week was hell on my body. I just wanted to die. Every step had a painful little reminder of that I wasn’t cut out for any of this.
What was I going to do with my few hours of freedom? Most of my fleeting downtime had been spent inside the house talking to Mom, recording my show or reading. I needed something more than that; a total break to recharge. What would make me feel like my old self again?
Overpriced coffee, that’s what I needed!
It had become a ritual for me. Each day before I recorded my show I’d stop over at the Blue Electric café, where my friend who worked there would totally hook me up. We called it the poor girl special. That’s what I wanted, I decided, that and maybe something decadently unhealthy to eat.
I needed to find Dante to have someone pick me up. I didn’t care that the nearest one was two hours away; the taste of the flaky, buttery croissant and creamy, slightly too sweet coffee was already on my tongue. The urge to escape this place for a little while intensified by the second.
Walking out into the naked, cloudless sunlight at such a leisurely pace felt jarring. I wasn’t jogging or sprinting anywhere. For the first time in weeks I didn’t have to be anywhere specific. I was stopped by a stiff, arid breeze as I searched the estate for Dante. It ruffled my sundress—something I never thought I’d get to use here—sending streams of hot air and grains of sand nipping at my calves. I closed my eyes, letting a small, honest smile settle across my lips, and basked in the sereneness of it all. The warmth, wind, and even the subtle exfoliation were all so disarmingly relaxing.
For a little while it cleared my near-constant state of panic.
I walked around in a haze until I found myself gravitating toward parts of the property I hadn’t seen much off, or at all, like the one place that was off limits.
Dante’s workshop.
Up close the plain L-shaped wooden building was much larger than I realized. From my window I could only see the vacant trailer bay, the opening to some kind or workshop and what I thought was a closed, empty barn. A shuffling sound drew my attention toward the closed doors. A nagging hesitation slowed my hands from pulling the door’s handle.
Dante’s warning to stay clear of this place was fresh in my mind, enough to make my palms sweat.
“Hello!” I knocked on the door instead. “I’d like a ride into town please! Dante?”
Nothing, except a bit more distant scuffling.
What was Dante keeping in there?
I tried again, and again heard no response. There was definitely someone in there. Whoever it was, maybe they had headphones in? I tested the door and found it unlocked. As I pulled it open a dark thought slapped down over me like a cold, wet blanket, stopping me dead.
What if Dante was secretly a serial killer and this was where he kept his victims?
“That makes zero sense,” I argued with my own frustrating brain and defiantly pulled the door open.
With a few uneasy steps, I disappeared into the part of the building that was unseen from my window. The stable was basically a long hallway lined with half a dozen stalls on either side, most of which were ajar, cleaned and empty; the only exception being a few closed ones by the wide-open double doors that led outside to a big fenced-off pen. My shoes crunched over the straw covered, concrete floor. The scent of fresh hay and even fresher refuse lingered lazily in the air like an invisible fog above a lake on a misty morning. The pungent, earthy scent of the stable transported me back to the summer before fourth grade.
It was the best and worst summer of my life.
A magnificent white horse walked to my end of its stall as I approached. He stuck his curious, handsome face through the top of the closed gate to greet me. Standing well over six feet tall, the horse was enormous…easily twice as big as any other I’d ever seen.
“Hi there,” I said, after a nervous step backwards. I tentatively put my hand out, trying to bury an irrational worry that he was going to bite it off. “You’re not a chainsaw-wielding psychopath are you, big guy?”
As if in response his dark nostrils and lips flared in a great whinny, which of course caused me to jerk my hand back. My heart immediately started racing. I felt like such a wimp. I used to be much more fearless around horses when I was a kid. What the hell happened?
I swallowed that fear and let him sniff my hand. When he turned away I gently touched the side of his face. He was so warm and so alive. I giggled like a little girl when he breathed in and yawned. It sent a shiver of excitement soaring through me. His hair was so densely matted that it was like petting a living, breathing wool blanket.
“You’re just a big softy, aren’t you?” I said, more to convince myself than as any kind of question to the horse. His playful, exuberance quickly won me over. Before I knew it I was rubbing the top of his speckled, snowy nose, jaw and muscular neck. His eyes got soft and he began licking and chewing the air. I began talking to him with the tone and exaggerated inflection that I used when holding my friend’s babies. The ten-year-old girl in me loved every second of this.
The agitated, stomping and frantic neighing sounds in the distance pulled my attention outside toward the closed pen. An angry flash of brown blurred into my view. The horse looked similar to the ones my aunt’s had; only this one was about a hundred times as wild.
Through the furious din of motion and noise I could make out Dante’s voice. I rubbed the white horse one last time and made my way over to the open doors to see what was going on. Leaning out from the doorway like a teenager slipping in way past curfew, I saw Dante wrangling a bucking horse in a high-fenced circular pen.
“Easy, boy,” Dante said in a stern, yet not aggressive tone. It was a voice you might use on a misbehaving toddler when they poured chunky soup in the couch cushions.
In his dirty, white-gloved hands was a rope that wrapped around the body and one leg of the very upset horse. The mustang had a rich coat that shined with a healthy, burnt-honey brown color. Its long black mane whipped wildly, as it jumped back and forth. There was fire and fury in the horse’s eyes that was only matched by the determination on Dante’s face.
The sleeves of Dante’s wrinkled, gray, button-down were rolled up to just below his elbows. He strained against the rope which made the black ink that snaked along his flexing forearms bulge and pop as if the tattoos had a life and rhythm all their own. His linen shirt was mostly untucked over a pair of dark jeans and heavy boots. As he twisted and turned to keep out of reach of the horse I could see that only the middle three buttons on his shirt were left fastened, the rest were all undone. The hard, chest hair-covered lines in his pecs, and the tight swatch of rough skin that ran from his belly-button to his belt buckle teased me.
“Whoa!” He said again as the stallion jumped high into the air with its remaining free legs. Threads of steaming saliva sailed from the horse’s whipping maw as it screamed and charged at Dante. Whenever it got close it would rear up and kick or bite at him.
I knew of wild horses, but had only ever seen docile, domestic farm horses growing up. This was something else entirely. I’d never seen an animal fight so hard. It was jarringly violent!
Squeamish fright squeezed at my core, shivering me the same way some people got at the sight of blood. I bit my lip to keep from yelling out unnecessary warnings to be careful. It wasn’t just the horse he had to worry about it was also the slack in the rope that he was holding. They were locked in a deadly game of tug-o-war. If Dante so much as missed one step he’d get tangled in his own excess lines and be trampled into a bloody heap.
Dante kept pace with the mustang, dodging, jumping and jogging around the circular pen in a wide dusty circle. It was an interspecies give and take dance for dominance. And the steely-eyed stuntman knew all the right moves.
“Easy, easy, easy. I’m not going to hurt you.” Dante coiled the rope around one hand and calmingly patted the air with the other. The concentration on his face was intense and absolute as he locked eyes with the fuming mustang. Beads of sweat carved shimmering paths down his cheeks and through several days’ of unshaven, rugged stubble. Confident certainty radiated from him as surely as the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Here was a man at work.
Ahh! Are you crazy? Me on the other hand… I was a complete wreck! Put both your damn hands on the rope before you get killed!
The horse finally slowed and Dante walked his hands up the ropes to bring himself closer. It looked like the stallion was finally starting to calm its tits, which allowed me a shaky exhale of relief. Somehow Dante did it. I had no clue how, but everything looked like it was going to be alright.
Now that the horse wasn’t struggling all the tension drained from the line, which loosened the loop on the horse’s foot. Suddenly all its limbs were free and Dante was practically on top of him.
I gasped when the horse started to rustle and screamed for Dante to look out!
The spooked mustang roared into action again, leaping and twisting in the air. The rope was ripped from Dante’s hand when he glanced my way, all his intense concentration shattered. I wanted to apologize, but watching the danger unfold made it impossible to breathe let alone form words.
One of the stallion’s lightening fast hooves snapped out and clipped Dante’s shoulder, throwing him to the ground. The light gray fabric around the wound instantly darkened and matted to his body as the blood started to flow down his torso. The newly freed horse wildly stomped around trying to find a way back out into the endless plains.
For a brief moment Dante was lost in the rising dust cloud that engulfed everything. Nearly blinded and chocking, it was all Dante could do just to roll out of the beast’s chaotic charging path.
I wanted to rush over and help, but my legs were paralyzed. Everything was happening so fast. Who did I call if there was an emergency? The police? They were at least forty minutes away. This was my fault; I had to do something! On shaky legs, I pushed through my fear and walked toward the pen, thoroughly having no idea what the hell I was going to do when I got there.
“Stay back!” Dante barked at me. He threw himself to the side and snatched the whipping rope as it flew by. Through ragged, labored breaths Dante firmly and evenly pulled on the rope, slowly repeating the words “easy” and “whoa” in a calming voice.
Soon he hooked the horse’s leg again which brought the Mustang crashing down. Instead of pressing the advantage and tying him up further, Dante backed off, letting it slowly regain its footing and keeping it from hurting itself. It was amazing how in tune he was with the animal. He easily read the mustang’s body language and adjusted accordingly.
Eventually the exhausted horse stopped struggling and collapsed onto its side. Dante reeled himself in while continuing a stern, but non-threatening tone. He kneeled next to the defeated animal and rubbed soothingly down its neck and side, relaxing the horse even more. Rivulets of blood ran down his arm and stained his white gloves.
“Bring me that halter,” he said, maintaining the same easy tone, and careful not to take his gaze from the resting horse.
“Sure,” I replied, feeling stupid for freaking out. I could’ve gotten him seriously hurt! I quickly realized why I wasn’t allowed back here. Or at least one of the reasons. “I am so so so sorry—”
Dante held a hand up, stopping me. He talked only to the horse, rubbing and massaging him for the next ten minutes until the stallion looked calm enough to fall asleep. Then he placed the leather halter over the horse’s ears and mouth then freed it of the rest of the rope. I tensed up again knowing that with only a lead line on it would be impossible to control the horse if it wanted to flip out again.
Despite that, and his wound, he moved with the sinewy confidence of a man who’d spent his whole life around horses. Dante was respectful, yet completely unafraid.
He urged the now compliant horse back onto its feet and led him in a few laps around the inside of the pen. Dante told me where the first aid kit was and asked me to get it while he led the stallion back into the stable. I was sure part of that request was just to get me well out of the way in case the mustang got spooked again or in case I did something stupid.
Dante was scratching the jaw and rubbing the forehead of the large white horse in the stall next to the mustang when I came back. The size and temperament difference between the two horses was jarring. Dante turned to me unleashing his deadly, brown eyes all down my body. “Are you alright?”
“Me?” I was taken aback. My throat went dry under his inspecting gaze. “Are you joking? I’m fine. You’re the one leaking like crazy! Is there someone I should call?”
“It’s not that bad,” Dante glanced down at his ruined outfit. All but one button on his blood-matted shirt remained fastened, the rest were either undone or torn off completely. His jeans had a nice tear along one of the mud stained legs. Dante blew his air out. “I’ll be sore later, but it looks worse than it is.”
“Oh good, because it looks pretty damn bad.” I pulled my hand from my ear and tried to steady my own rapid heartbeat. Dante had made it clear in the last few weeks that we weren’t friends, but seeing him in there still scared the hell out of me. Not that I would tell him that of course. “Is the horse alright?”
“He just needs to adjust to his new situation. He’ll be alright.” Dante went on to tell me a little more about the process and how the mustang would need to be ridden to be fully broken in, but he didn’t like to do that the same day, because it tended to stress them out. He found it better to ease into it slowly.
If only he had the same policy with training humans.
“Why?” I choked down the bitterness of such extreme training. “Why did you let him go at the end? Why not keep the heavier rope on him until you got him back in the stall?”
“Because that wouldn’t have helped him.”
“Helped him?” I scoffed. I loved horses, but that mustang was crazy. “He nearly killed you!”
“That wasn’t his fault.” Dante continued massaging the giant white plushy masquerading as a horse. “He was the alpha of his team; proud and defiant. They’re always the hardest to break.”
“I get that, but…” I turned the plastic, first aid box over in my hands. “What if he lost his mind again? I mean, how could you be sure you really broke him?”
“I couldn’t.” Dante’s smirk at the worry on my face turned to a grimace against the pain that must’ve flared in his shoulder. “Breaking couldn’t be further from what we actually do with wild horses. It’s really all about trust. And the only way you get that is by giving it.
“Now,” he said turning to me fully, that firmness returning. “You want to tell me exactly what you’re doing in the one place I told you not to go?”