Bound to Burn

21. Wildfire

21

WILDFIRE

CASH

Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode

“s**t, I gotta go.” Her hand shakes as she pulls her keys out of her bag and drops them to the ground.

“What’s wrong?”

I round the record bins and grab her keys from the floor and hand them to her.

“They closed Temescal Canyon to residents only.” She shakes her head. “The fire is getting close.”

I move to stop her from leaving. “You can’t go there alone.”

“My grandparents are there.” Her voice shakes. “And the horses.” Her eyes go wide. “I need to help move them.”

She tries to step around me, but I block her again because I’m not about to let her run into a fire.

“The fire is getting close, and we can’t wait until the last minute to move the horses. My grandpa can’t load all of them by himself.” Tears threaten to spill onto her cheeks. “I need to go help him whether he likes it or not.”

The conviction in her voice moves me to action. “Do you have a place to move them to?” I ask.

“Yes, the Beckette’s. They run a sanctuary in the lower canyon.”

“Do you have trailers to haul the horses?”

“My grandpa has a pick-up truck but there’s only one trailer, and it’s not big enough to fit all the horses at once. He’ll have to make two trips.”

I move around her, reaching to flick off the lights and then make my way to the far wall to pull the shades down on the windows.

“What are you doing?” She follows me out the door as I lock up, pulling the gate down with a loud click.

“What does it look like?”

She walks towards her car. “Uh uh.” I shake my head and veer her towards my bike. “We’ll be able to get there faster on my bike, and I can load it in the back of your grandpa’s pick-up truck so we can go back and get the rest of the horses if needed,” I tell her, swinging a leg over the seat and stomping on the kick-start. The bike roars to life and rattles beneath me with an ominous tone.

Sasha hesitates as if she doesn’t know what to do. I give her a small comforting smile and tip my chin for her to get on. She places her hands on my shoulders and swings her leg over the seat, placing the helmet on and securing it. As soon as she settles behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist, I hit the clutch and we take off out of the parking lot.

I weave in and out of traffic, glad that I have my bike because it means we’ll get there much quicker. On the way up the canyon I can see smoke darkening the sky, like an omen threatening to overtake this beautiful hillside community. I know the fire is getting way too close for comfort, even though the neighborhood hasn’t been evacuated yet. As we ride up the winding road, we pass trucks with trailers, residents who are already moving horses and other animals. The fire department has blockades ready to go, and Sasha shows them her license to prove she’s a resident. Once they let us pass, it doesn’t take long to get to her driveway.

I follow Sasha’s direction to the back of the house where her grandpa has already started loading horses in the trailer. She wastes no time hopping off the bike and running over to him. My waist feels empty and cold from the sudden loss of her body heat.

“Where’s Grandma Jo?” Sasha asks after releasing her grandpa from a hug.

“She’s already at the Beckette’s ranch,” he explains, and takes a look over Sasha’s shoulder to see me standing awkwardly behind her with my hands in my pockets.

I can hear the agitated noises from the horses that are already inside the trailer.

“Who’s this young man?” Grandpa John asks, and I smirk at the thought of being called a young man, when all I can feel is the huge age difference between Sasha and I.

“I’m Cash.” I stick my hand out for him to shake. “We didn’t get a chance to meet at the party,” I remind him.

“Don’t have time for pleasantries. If you’re here to help, better get to it.” He tips his head and starts to climb into the truck.

“I’ll be back with the trailer. Get the rest of the horses ready,” he tells Sasha in a hurry.

“Don’t worry, your granddaughter is safe with me,” I try to reassure him, knowing he’s probably worried about her as the fire looms closer.

A mysterious smile spreads across his face and he starts to laugh, shaking his head. “Son, I’m more worried about you.” He gives me a wink. Then he calls over my shoulder to Sasha, “You better stop giving this boy peppermints or he’ll end up with diabetes.” He slaps the side of his door to signify his retreat and puts the truck into gear, the horses inside shift, their noses sniffing curiously out of the openings as they pass by.

“What does that mean?” I ask Sasha as he drives away.

She laughs and walks away from me towards the barn as I trail after her. “What the f**k is he talking about?”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s senile.” She waves me off and I can’t help but watch as her a*s sways in front of me.

“He doesn’t look senile,” I grumble.

We get to the barn and I’m immediately assaulted by the smell of hay and horses, just as I remember it from the night of the party. I don’t know how anyone could get used to it.

“Here.” Sasha throws some leather straps at me. I catch them awkwardly and hold them up for inspection. It looks like a holster, but I have no idea how to put this on a horse. I hope she doesn’t expect me to actually touch one of them.

As if the horses can sense the urgency, they paw at the hay-strewn ground, and I can feel their hot breaths as I pass by.

“Just hang them on the hook by each stall so when we’re ready, I can throw it on if I need to.” She runs to the back of the barn, and I busy myself by hanging the halters and staring into the eyes of Ivan, who looks like he could smash through his stall door if he wanted to with hardly any effort. Large brown eyes follow me as I move. His head stretches over the stall door, and he pulls his upper lip back, sniffing my shirt and trying to move lower as if he’s looking for something.

“He thinks you have a peppermint.”

My gaze shifts to Sasha, who’s standing a few stalls away with a bag of feed in her arms. She changed out of her glittery converse and she’s wearing tall black boots that have no business being as sexy as they are on her, especially with that short f*****g skirt she has on.

Never in my wildest dreams would I think I’d be in the presence of a real cowgirl and think it’s the sexiest f*****g thing I have ever seen in my life.

The horse brushes his teeth a little too close to my n****e and it sends me tail-spinning out of my trance.

“f**k!” I yelp and move away.

Sasha laughs. “He’s not a biter.” She digs into her pocket and produces a red and white peppermint encased in cellophane. The moment it comes out of her pocket, I notice the horse tracks her movements even though he jerks his head up and down.

I’m not convinced that he’s not a biter, but I watch how gently he takes the mint from the palm of Sasha’s hand. I am struck with the knowledge of what Grandpa John meant about the peppermints. I feel like Ivan, sniffing around her pockets just get a taste.

Motherfucker.

Before I can say anything to her, she interrupts me. “Can you grab the bottles of vitamins in the tack room? They’re on the shelf.”

The urgency in her voice causes me to abandon my thoughts and stride to the back room which contains a desk that has seen better days. The floor looks like one of the horse stalls, pieces of hay and dirt covering the wood beneath. Against the wall is a row of ancient shelves, bowed from moisture and weight. The containers of vitamins sit on the top, along with other items I have no idea as to what they are.

I find an empty cardboard box and start throwing the bottles inside. When I come back out, I see Sasha drape a blanket over each stall. I hold up one of the bottles and the contents crash against each other, making a noise that causes the horses to whinny. “What are these for?”

“Some of the horses need medical care because of what happened to them before they came to us,” she explains while straightening the blanket.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Ivan here,” she pats Ivan’s nose, “came to us malnourished and with a severe case of colic. We didn’t think he’d make it. He has to take these pills to help him digest his food so he doesn’t get impacted again.” She rubs his head lovingly.

Ivan’s nose flares and I can hear his foot pound against the floor. His mane is long and curly, and he’s just about the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen - even if he did try to bite my n****e.

“I can’t believe someone would mistreat a horse as beautiful as this.” I look at him in wonder. There’s something innately ethereal about him, the way his intelligent eyes watch me. His nose opens wider as if to inhale whether I am a threat to him or not.

“Not all people are horrible.”

“I think you’re being too kind,” I tell her.

“Some people just don’t know how to care for them.” Ivan nudges her hand, and she smiles at him. Her face lights up as he nibbles at the remnants of peppermint in her palm.

“He looks like he could easily crush you.”

“He’s a gentle giant.” She reaches inside her pocket and pulls another peppermint out. This time when he takes it from her, he sucks on the mint like a human, causing me to laugh.

Sasha’s phone rings and she eagerly grabs it from her back pocket.

“Grandpa John?” she says into the phone.

I give her a questioning look as her expression darkens, and then she switches it to speaker.

“Fire department closed the road. They’re only letting residents out, not in. You need to get out of there now.” His voice is stern, yet filled with concern.

“I can’t leave the horses,” Sasha says in a panic. Her attention turns to Ivan, and I can see the desperation bubbling up inside of her.

“I know you wanna save the horses, but if I can’t get the trailer back there then you have no choice.” His voice is still stern, but with an edge of softness as he tries to coax his granddaughter to think of herself.

“The fire’s not here yet. There’s a chance it won’t come this far.” She’s making excuses, but we both know she’s grasping at straws as we look at each other.

“The Santa Ana winds can change all that in a heartbeat. You know that, Sunshine.”

He’s right.

I knit my eyebrows together in concern as I watch Sasha crumble internally. It makes me want to hold her, to protect her, to let her know that I will not leave her.

As tears well up in her eyes, she says almost as if it’s an apology, “I can’t leave them.”

“Sasha!” He says her name in a tone rife with warning.

She lifts her eyes from the phone to me, and between us is a silent conversation.

There’s no way I’m leaving her, and there’s no way she’s leaving these horses.

She lowers the phone between us, ending the call unceremoniously.

“Where’s your water hose?” I ask.