I shrug on my jacket and head outside. The cold hits me like a slap. My eyes water immediately.
The barn is waiting. The horses know my footsteps, and I can hear the restless shifting before I even open the doors.
“Alright,” I whisper, rubbing a palm over my face. “Let’s get this done.”
I start with Moose, the big idiot who nudges my shoulder the second I pass his stall.
“You’re fine,” I grumble, filling his hay and water. “Wish I felt half as good.”
He tosses his head and bumps me again in what might be affection or an attempt to knock me over. Hard to tell.
My vision blurs around the edges as I move down the row. Sweat sticks my shirt to my spine. My hands shake when I reach for the grain scoop.
This isn’t good. Even I can admit that. And I don’t enjoy admitting anything that implies I can’t do my job.
Halfway through the morning rounds, my legs decide they’ve had enough of this whole “being legs” thing and start pulling that unreliable, rubbery nonsense.
“Come on,” I tell them. “Just a little longer.”
They do not, in fact, last a little longer.
By the time I get to Tansy’s stall, I’m leaning on the wall just to stay upright. My breath sounds wrong, shallow and uneven, and the barn lights seem too bright, buzzing loud enough to make my teeth ache.
Tansy nuzzles my shoulder gently.
“I know,” I manage. “I’m trying.”
I bend to check her hooves… wrong move. The world flips upside down without warning. One second, I’m crouched. The next, the floor is rushing up at me fast.
Then everything goes black.
I wake to shouting.
Well… not shouting. Voices. Urgent ones. Familiar ones.
“Caleb… Caleb, hey… hey, buddy…”
“Get his head up. No, not like that, use your arm. Damn, Silas…”
My eyelids feel glued shut, but I manage to crack them open. The first thing I see is the rafters. The second is Boone’s face, pale and thunderous, hovered directly over mine. Silas is next to him, kneeling in the straw, shirt half untucked as if he sprinted straight from whatever he was doing.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Silas says, tight with forced humor.
My throat feels raw as sandpaper. “Wha?—”
“You passed out,” Boone says flatly.
Which, okay, I gathered.
He presses the back of his hand to my forehead. His palm feels cold. Too cold. Or maybe I’m too hot.
“Damn, Caleb,” he mutters. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine.”
Both of them give me the same look. The incredulous one. The one that says,If you weren’t half dead, we’d hit you.
“Can you sit?” Boone asks.
