by Alisa Valdes
“You there, you all right?” called the young man’s voice, tinged with a rural Western accent.
I tried to respond, but no sound came. I was weak. Breathing was incredibly difficult. The adrenaline had run out now, and I was overcome with a searing agony in nearly every part of my being. I leaned against the wreckage. My breath came fast and shallow as the world dimmed yet again.
“Hello?” he called.
“Here,” I managed to choke out, my eyes blurred, the world spinning, the warm, horrible metallic taste thick and suffocating in my mouth. “I’m here.”
The horse rounded the edge of the wreckage, and the young man brought it to a halt, swinging himself down off his saddle. He dropped the reins to the ground and said softly to the horse, “Stand.”
It was an effort to keep my head lifted anymore, so I stared at the ground, tired, so very tired. I watched as drops of my own bright-red blood fell from my head to the snow below. This is the end, I thought. This is it for me.
I heard footsteps crunching over the snow toward me, and saw his well-worn brown leather cowboy boots as he approached.
“It’s gonna be okay now,” he said gently, no trace of concern in his voice. “Help’s on the way. Just try to calm down.”
I tried to get a look at his face, but my vision blurred as I lifted my head. The ground lurched beneath me and I heaved again. “I’m dying,” I moaned frantically between wretches.
“I won’t let you die,” he said, easing Buddy from my arms.
“Buddy,” I whispered, groping in the air for my dog. I tried to see the young man, but my vision was still not right, and blood filled my eyes.
“Dog’s all right. I got him. Try to stay calm. It’s real important you do that.”
The guy placed a hand on my shoulder and gently told me to relax and focus on his touch. I could feel the heat of his body through the frozen air. His touch gave me a strange and instant sense of peace in spite of all that had happened, and I felt my pulse slow down. For the first time since the crash, I was able to take a full, deep breath without immense pain.
He reached out to open my jacket, and I felt a literal electrical current course through me as he brushed against me, almost as though I’d been shocked, but without any pain. He reached around me, and placed his hands upon the bare skin of my back, along my spine, almost holding me in an embrace.
That’s when I felt a buzzing inside my skull, a low humming sound as some sort of energy zipped out of his hands, through my skin, into my spine and on into the rest of my body. Suddenly worried as I realized this was not even remotely normal, I tried to push back from him. He held me in place, his grip nonnegotiable, and I felt his powerful heat and energy move through me, to my legs, directly into my broken foot, bringing relief with it. The pain began to simply drain away out of me, as quickly as it had come.
I was amazed and confused. “You’re scaring me,” I said.
“Listen,” he said gently. I felt the electrical pulse again, mellower this time, and it filled me with the oddest sense of hope, and happiness, and calm. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”
“But what are you doing?” I managed to ask.
I felt his mouth near my ear as he moved his hands to a different part of my spine. “Just shhh. Let it fix you.”
“Okay,” I whispered, feeling so strange and light-headed. I wondered if I was imagining the whole thing. How much blood had I lost to be so delirious? And yet, the heat and his touch were so incredible, so welcome, so soothing, I couldn’t help but feel a powerful happiness.
“That’ll do for now,” he said.
The guy released me and backed away a few feet. He squatted nearby and looked at me. I wiped my eyes, and it was now that I got a good look at him for the first time. He was tall, probably about my age or a little older, with an uncommonly—almost intimidatingly—handsome, kind face. He wore a heavy denim jacket, with a leather collar turned up against the snow. His head was capped with a cowboy hat the same pale brown as his boots. The handsome face was shaved clean, with a square jawline and a nicely formed mouth framed by dimples. He had a cute nose and large, intelligent brown eyes with incredibly long lashes. He carried himself with the rugged, countrified demeanor of kids from rural New Mexico, the type of kids I’d seen here and there all my life but, because I was from the city and came from money, never had any reason to talk to. I was startled by his unusually direct, almost grown-up way of looking at me. His cheeks were pink with the cold, and he looked straight into my eyes without a hint of self-consciousness, as though he could read my thoughts—or was at least trying to. He was unlike any teenage boy I’d ever known, and I can only describe him as seeming wise.
He spoke calmly. “Hey. I know you’re scared. You’re probably in shock, too. You got banged up real good. But it’s all okay now.”
Still unable to speak, I lifted a hand to my head and found the gashes there closed up. There was no new blood. I still had some pain here and there, but nothing like before.
He turned his attention to Buddy, on the ground at his side. He lifted him up. My sweet puppy was limp and unconscious, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. The guy folded his strong legs beneath him, a calm yet serious expression on his face, and sat in the snow with Buddy in his lap. He ran his hands over my dog’s legs and body, with his eyes closed and his forehead creased deeply. His lips moved silently as though chanting. He’d stop in a spot, hold his hands there for a moment, and then move to the next; wherever he’d been, it seemed the wounds just stopped bleeding and closed up. The coyote bite incredibly stitched itself together and was gone, just like that. Just like that, Buddy lifted his head and wagged his tail.
“But he was practically dead,” I said, shaking my head as my body trembled with cold and nerves. “What you did, that’s not normal.”
“Oh, I don’t know about all that. Depends where you’re from.” He grinned, and scooted toward me with a thoughtful expression on his face.
My head felt light with worry and confusion. I wanted him to touch me just once more, but I didn’t understand how he did any of it, and this scared me. I began to cry again, a pathetic weeping that was involuntary and unflattering.
“Shh,” he said. “I know it still hurts. I know. It’s okay, I promise. All right? Everything’s gonna be fine now.”
His eyes were so bright, so soothing. He smelled dry and warm, like sunshine.
“What are you?” I asked. “Like one of those healer people they have in churches and stuff?”
He took a bottle of what appeared to be water from his jacket pocket, cracked the cap, and gave it to me.
“My name’s Travis Hartwell. Here. Drink this,” he said, and I did. The liquid—I do not believe it was water because it tasted like thin, carbonated honey—was warm and tingled all the way down my throat. Soon, my whole body vibrated with warmth.
He told me to concentrate, and next put his hands over the spot that still hurt on my shoulder, closing his eyes again with that intense look on his face. His lips moved once more, and I felt a soft, powerful heat radiating from his hands, deeper down into my muscle and bone. Thirty seconds or so later, the pain was half what it had been. A minute later, it was entirely gone. He repeated this everywhere I had pain, as though he knew where it hurt without me telling him.
I breathed out a sigh of relief.
He smiled kindly, and made long, direct eye contact with me. His gaze gave me shivers—the good kind. I didn’t even feel the cold of the snow anymore, almost as though something shielded me from it.
“Glad you’re feeling better, Shane.”
“How did you know my name?” I asked, dumbfounded.
He ignored the question, and just used a white handkerchief dampened with a bit of water from his canteen to wipe the blood off my face. He smoothed the hair back from my eyes. He reached again into his jacket pocket, took out a bundle of small sticks tied togeth
er with string, and waved it slowly over the parts of my clothes that were soaked with blood. Most of the blood vanished, though not all of it. He moved the sticks over my head, presumably to take away the blood in my hair.
“This is impossible,” I whispered, breathless.
He smiled a little. “I used to think like that, too. You’d be surprised.”
I watched him wave the sticks over the bloody handkerchief, removing all stains from it before he stuffed it into his pocket again. I was overcome with awe, and a monumental hunger for him. Now that I felt better, his handsomeness was undeniable, and hypnotic. My racing heart felt an intense, inexplicable longing that frightened me. He peeked up at me, caught me staring, and blushed a little before looking away.
The hail and snow began to taper off, and Travis turned from me, moving with purpose around the crash site, digging through the snow for sticks and twigs. He dried these on the legs of his jeans, and set them in a pile near Buddy, whom he wrapped in his jacket. He scrounged for rocks next, and made a ring around the sticks. He held his hands over the twigs for a moment; incredibly, sparks rained down from his fingertips, and in this way he started a small fire.
“Come, sit,” he told me once it was burning brightly. “Keep warm.”
I did as he asked, and he pulled me in close. He did not touch me in a romantic way, exactly, but it was caring. My heart raced, and I wanted to burrow into him. I felt his hands, large and powerful, and I nestled under his strong arm. The strange sense of peace and calm, that same low thrum in the center of my chest, coursed up and down my spine. I felt that he recharged me, the way you might charge an MP3 player. He gave me strength. I wanted to stay in his arms forever.
I looked at him, and he looked back. I saw in his eyes that he found me attractive, too. He seemed confused about this, concerned. For a brief moment, he lost the look of mature confidence he’d had, and seemed like any other boy who might be nervous about a girl he liked. We shared an incredibly awkward moment where it felt like we both had things to say that we couldn’t, or shouldn’t—and didn’t.
“You live around here or something?” I asked, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” His eyes dodged mine now. He composed himself and became again the confident young man who’d saved me.
“What are you doing out on a horse in a storm like this?” I asked, hoping to draw him out, make him give me some hint about how he was able to heal me and Buddy with his hands.
He seemed slightly defensive, but still patient. “Came up real sudden. Just got stuck in it, I guess.”
“And just happened to be armed?”
“That’s how we do it out here in the country.” He seemed politely annoyed that I was prying, and then, just as quickly as he’d grinned earlier, he frowned, seeming preoccupied with something he heard in the distance. I strained my own ears, but could hear nothing other than wind.
He seemed to shake himself. “Um, so. Where do you go to school, Shane?” It was like when grown-ups try to distract children with questions they couldn’t care less about.
“Coronado Prep, down in Albuquerque.”
He lifted his eyebrows as though mockingly impressed. “Pretty fancy.”
I shrugged, embarrassed and uncomfortable. Coronado Prep was a fancy school, but I wasn’t particularly proud of that fact. It made me feel weird to talk about it outside of prep circles, because the school was obscenely expensive and elitist, and no matter how hard I tried I could never find a way to justify having been born so lucky.
“You rich or something?” he asked with a slightly teasing gleam in his eye. “Fancy car, fancy school. You even got you a fancy little dog there.” Buddy growled at him, and Travis laughed, completely unthreatened.
I shook my head vigorously. “He’s not actually fancy. He’s from the shelter. We’re not rich, really. I mean, I guess my dad is. But I live with my mom. She’s just a doctor.”
He laughed at this for some reason.
I felt on the defensive, and continued to dig myself into a hole. “I have a partial arts scholarship—music. I play classical violin.”
“Classical violin.” His voice was teasing. “Fancy music.”
I snapped, “Not nearly as ‘fancy’ as making someone better by touching them. How’d you do it?”
“Even better. You’re a fancy inquisitor. Who asks too many questions for her own fancy good.” He smiled at me again, playfully evading the question.
“Tell me.”
Travis pointed to the wreckage. “Shoot. Must be nice to have a Beemer and go to prep school, huh? Me, I’m homeschooled, and when I do drive, it’s just an old pickup truck. I play an instrument, too, kind of like yours, but where I come from we call it a fiddle.”
He looked back at me for a moment, with a gorgeous half grin on his face, and I got the feeling he was being sincere and mocking me at the same time. He seemed like the kind of guy who liked to tease girls—the kind of guy who’d be fun to spar with, verbally.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I griped, unable to stop myself from noticing his mouth, and how kissable it was when he pulled just a corner of it between his teeth to stifle a laugh.
“I bet you got you a boyfriend at that fancy school, too,” he said, noticing me noticing his lips, and smiling shyly as a result. He lifted one eyebrow hopefully.
I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I wanted to kiss him, and yet his question had forced me to remember that I did, in fact, have a boyfriend, and his name was Logan. I wasn’t incredibly excited about Logan these days, and had actually been thinking it might be time to break up with him because we seemed to have so little in common, but he was still technically my boyfriend, and this technically made it inappropriate for me to sit here lusting after someone else. Instinctively, my hand went to my neck, where I usually wore the antique gold heart pendant Logan had given to me for Valentine’s Day. It was gone. It must have come off during the crash.
“Yeah,” I said halfheartedly. My eyes darted around the wreckage for a hint of the pendant. Nothing. “I have someone.”
Travis’s hopefully raised brow fell in disappointment. “Not surprised, pretty girl like you. Must be guys all over the place after you.”
“Oh, please. I can’t even imagine what I must look like right now.”
“You’re a mess, I’ll be honest. But I can still tell how pretty you are.” His eyes strayed from my hand upon my neck to the wreckage. “You lose something?”
I nodded sheepishly. “A necklace.” From my boyfriend, whom I guess I care for, but whom I’ve never wanted to kiss as badly as I want to kiss you, I added silently.
“It’ll turn up, I bet,” he said. “Important things always do, if we wait long enough.”
He shifted his eyes to the moody, darkening sky, and his expression changed to one of subtle anxiety. I got the feeling his last sentence meant more than I understood.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nah. Not really. Just getting late, is all. I’m not supposed to be out after dark, but I can’t just leave you here with Victor out there.” He looked conflicted.
“Who’s Victor?”
“My enemy,” he said point-blank. It was a strange thing to say.
“You have an enemy?”
“Any man who stands for anything good has enemies,” he said.
“Should I be worried?”
He shook his head after a moment of thought. “Nah. Don’t think so. Last thing we want is you to worry after what you’ve been through. I’ll handle Victor.”
“Did you just say you can’t be out after dark? What is that, some kind of curfew?”
“Scooter,” he said, bucking his jaw toward the horse. “Some horses are good at night, but he isn’t one of ’em. He’s a good old boy, but he doesn’t like the dark, and horses don’t come with headlights.”
I felt foolish for not having thought of that. In the distance, I heard
the thwack of helicopter blades.
“You hear that?” I asked.
He nodded. “Your ride’s here, I guess.”
“Medics,” I said. I looked at my leg, stretched it out in front of me, and turned my foot this way and that. The ankle that had felt broken, ripped from my leg not long before, was absolutely fine now. Better than fine. It was great. No pain at all. “I don’t really need them now. Miraculously. Mysteriously. Explain.”
He laughed at me again, teasing and confident. “Yeah, you do need that chopper. That car’s not going to get you much of anywhere. Maybe a junkyard.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“Still, you better let them check you out,” he said sweetly, standing up. Gently, he unwrapped Buddy and shrugged back into his coat, handing the growling dog to me. “I think I got it all, but you never know. I’ll just leave you in their capable hands.”
“How in the world did you ‘get it all’? I know I was dying, Travis. And now I’m fine. How? You have to tell me! It’s not fair.”
He shrugged, and his expression grew pensive. “I just can’t,” he said. “I’d love to tell you, but I can’t.” He walked to the fire and stomped it out with his boots.
“Yes, you can. Come on.”
“Do me a favor,” he said, hoisting himself up into his saddle once more.
I waited to hear the rest.
