1
KIT
My knee,which I’d darn near ruined on the rodeo circuit some twenty years ago, loathed my very existence. I laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling while I contemplated my life’s choices.
As owner of the Baker Dude Ranch along with other vacation rental properties, I didn’t have time for this mess, and knowing my day was already hosed at five a.m. made me want to punch something. Possibly my own face. After all, I was the one who’d insisted on doing all the things I’d already hired other people to do.
Lane, my right-hand guy, had fussed at me when he caught me mucking out the stalls yesterday, and I’d ignored him. I was paying for that hubris with interest this morning.
Deep breaths, Kit. Deep breaths. It’ll be better once your muscles are warmed up.
Ignoring the growing concern in my gut, I sat up . . . and then almost passed out. Once I got my bearings, I twisted toward the edge of the bed and put my foot down on the floor, letting out a string of expletives. I glared at the time on my phone and pushed myself to standing.
Good news: I didn’t throw up on myself.
Bad news: I couldn’t fully extend the leg.
That, plus the sensation of a thousand hot knives jamming into the back of my knee, was probably a bad sign.
Just get through today, Christopher.
By the way, you know it’s a bad day when you’re proper first-naming yourself.
I cursed all the way through my morning ablutions. I considered grabbing the knee brace I’d stuffed in the back of my towel closet, then discarded the idea when I thought about how tortuous it’d be to strap into the damned thing.
How many times had Skylar told me to slow down and stay in the dang brace?
A newer acquaintance in my tiny friend group, Skylar was an orthopedic nurse practitioner and a professional sugar baby—a confusing and heretofore unheard-of combination of careers. To be fair, I only knew about the sugar baby thing because I’d overheard Rowdy talking to Woody about it.
I didn’t pick up on everything, only that Rowdy was worried for his friend, which worried me. I’d liked Skylar from the first time I met him—he’d been flirty, but took no shit, and had helped me with a bout of knee pain. The makeup and styled hair took some getting used to, but Rowdy thought he was good people, and that was good enough for me.
Beyond that, my ex-wife liked to say that assumptions made assholes out of otherwise intelligent people, so I tried to judge people by their actions. When the knee’d become unbearable again, I called the number Skylar had given me and he came out the next day, all the way from Austin. It’d be easy to paint him with a certain type of brush, but he was saucy and bossy and generous, and I could find no fault in that.
He’d become saucier in recent weeks, warning me that these visits of his were merely a stop-gap measure. The last time Sky worked me over, he’d begged me to get the knee imaged. I’d become (predictably) ornery at the suggestion and refused.
Not like I’d ever admit it, but that might have been a mistake. The Baker stubbornness, likely branded on my DNA, had extended to my all-out refusal to buy myself a cane or any kind of walking support. It was this shortsightedness which made the long journey from my bedroom to the kitchen a well-deserved lesson in agony.
I finally limped into the breakfast nook, where my son was sitting at the table, the morning sun setting fire to his light brown hair, which was still messy from sleep. Reed Harrison Baker—both the light of my lifeandan entire pain in my ass—was a senior prom oops I’d never once regretted.
Reed shook his Totoro plushie at me in greeting, then tucked it under his chin before pulling up the text-to-voice app on his iPad. He typed for a few seconds before hitting the Send button.
“You were cursing this morning,” the mechanical voice said in a posh British accent. “Tsk, tsk. I’m buying us a swear jar.”
Our junior horse trainer, Stevie, had told him about her family’s swear jar, and Reed’d been vying for one ever since.
“It’s my knee,” I muttered, catching myself before stumbling toward the coffee station. “And we arenotgetting a swear jar.”
“C’mon, Dad,” he responded, sounding like a disappointed English librarian with a loose servo, “Do it for the plot.”
I chuckled. For a guy with nonverbal autism, Reed was a lot funnier than most people gave him credit for.
“Also, Lane said you did too much yesterday.” He ducked his head, pressing his chin into his plushie, a sure sign he was stressed out.
“Lane needs to mind his own business,” I sniped.
Even if he was right, who the hell cared if I want to muck out my own stalls?
“I made your coffee like you like it,” the mechanical voice said as Reed pointed to the steaming French press on the buffet.
