He should probably be used to the way lightning and thunder boomed through his body—it seemed to happen on a near minutely basis—but he still wasn’t, even after six months of waking up and having to move his left leg over the edge of the mattress with his hands.
Ty constantly found himself in new situations he didn’t know how to control. He lived with his parents, in an adult version of his childhood bedroom, feeling just as caged and throttled there as he had the day he’d left for the rodeo.
He rode out to Three Rivers Ranch with them every day and worked with the horses at Courage Reins or Bowman Breeds, the training facility his momma had run since before he was born.
He’d seen countless doctors in the past half-year and had gone to physical therapy every day there for a while. That had helped him regain the use of his left shoulder and elbow. His primary care physician—an orthopedic surgeon who had done two surgeries on Ty in the past six months—had cleared him towalk without any sort of aid. At the same time, he’d been cleared to drive, and the freedom that coursed through Ty’s veins every time he got behind the wheel amazed him.
It felt like something so simple, and yet it meant so much to him. Today, he’d been driving for a little bit too long, though, because his hip ached and he couldn’t feel anything below his left knee. Technically, he’d been classified as partially paralyzed, though his muscles and joints generally loosened as he moved.
Because he’d been attending the ranch owners’ meetings for the past couple of months, he’d gotten Mitch Glover’s number. He’d contacted him privately and asked if it would be worthwhile for Ty to learn American Sign Language. His injury had left him completely deaf in his left ear. Ty had originally struggled with balance and figuring out where people, objects, and noises came from. He’d gotten a lot better at it, and he always positioned himself on the left side of conversations so that he could hear with his right ear.
Mitch had told him it would be up to him. They had some hard-of-hearing students who weren’t completely deaf but either had an illness, a genetic disease, or an injury—like Ty—where they were continually losing hearing or had lost function in one or both of their ears.
Mitch had copied Lacy on the texts, and she told Ty that she taught beginning ASL classes for the community on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Anyone could register to attend; he didn’t have to be a student at Signs for Success.
They’d gotten to talking about personal things, and Ty had learned that Mitch trained hearing dogs—canines that helped deaf people be able to communicate and maneuver in their world, just the way guide dogs did for the visually impaired. Ty was far more interested in that than attending ASL classes, though something in his gut told him he should do both.
Really, it was his heart, not his gut.
But Ty couldn’t trust anything his heart told him at the moment. After all, he’d been completely convinced that his longtime girlfriend of four years, Jenn Ferris, would come back to him. She hadn’t. Ty hadn’t spoken to her—not even a text or a social media comment—in four months now, yet his heart continued to weep and wail for her.
So how could he possibly trust that he should learn ASL?
He had one good ear, and surely God gave people two of certain things for a reason.
Ty eyed the campus where he would attend classes. Should he sign up?
Everything at the Academy seemed new and stood tall and proud in red brick and glass, with immaculate landscaping and plenty of parking. Lacy had told him a new class would start next Tuesday, and he could even show up the night-of, as she taught it in a theater-like setting that could accommodate hundreds.
Ty continued down the road and pulled into the circle drive of the farmhouse, which sat at the end of the long road, a magnificent structure overlooking the beauty of the land.
“I wonder how much he paid for this place,” Ty grumbled, his mood already set on Sour. Of course, his momma had told him he only had Grumpy, Sour, and Salty. And Ty couldn’t argue with her.
He’d played the role of the grumpy rodeo champion to perfection, because it allowed him to stay silent while everyone else talked. It gave him more focus on his training and events, while the others had to do interviews and satisfy PR managers. Ty had little patience for such things then, and even less now.
He’d been raised around animals, though, and he adored dogs and horses. They seemed to know that he didn’t want to talk, and they certainly weren’t going to force him to.
Peter Marshall and his son, Paul, had been extraordinarily kind to Ty since his return to Three Rivers Ranch, and they’dtaught him how to take care of the therapy horses at Courage Reins.
Libby and the foreman at Three Rivers Ranch, a man named Beau Peterson, and his wife, Charlotte, who was the barn manager, always seemed glad to have Ty there to work in the stalls, move a horse, take one of the tougher ones out for a walk, or simply hang around and chat with them as they did their work.
And his momma, of course, had over seventy-five horses she cared for and trained to be rodeo stars. Ty had once been an expert at training cutting horses—something he’d learned from his daddy—but he’d fallen out of practice when he’d gone into the rodeo to make his mark on the world as a championship bull rider.
He shelved his past as he got out of the truck, taking care to hold on to the door handle while he found his balance and put his weight on both legs. His left side ached in protest at his attempted use of it—not quite as violent or as painful as it had been in the past, but definitely still there.
He put all of his weight on his left side and quickly stumbled back to the right, just enough to get out of the way of the door so he could close it. His parents insisted that he bring a crutch or a cane, as well as a walker, with him everywhere he went, even if he didn’t use it. Though he’d been cleared by the doctor, he’d also been driving for the past hour and twenty minutes, and Ty didn’t need to hide anything from Mitch or Lacy.
He took another shuffling hop-step to the back door and opened it. The crutch hurt under his arm, but the cane made him feel like an eighty-year-old. Still, he opted for that, because he could lean his weight into it and sort of hide it behind his leg.
He pushed the button, and it telescoped out—another perk, because he could also shrink it up again and stick it in his pocket if there came a time when he didn’t need it. He leaned on thecane, finding his balance much easier, and relief moved through his leg and lower back.
He managed to move out of the way, close the door, and face the house. At least ten steps led up to a wide front porch that spanned the width of the house and wrapped around on one side. Stairs were Ty’s known enemy, but he took the first step toward the house anyway.
He knew Lacy would be there, as Ty couldn’t talk to Mitch—and Mitch couldn’t talk to him—and they needed her to interpret. But Mitch couldn’t hear that Ty had just pulled up in his diesel truck, and Lacy hadn’t come out front.
So like a child learning to walk, Ty approached the front steps, his brain shorting out as he tried to decide if he should push off with his right foot and step up with his left, or try to push up with his left and step up with his right.
No matter what, he had to rely on his left leg to hold his entire body weight for the time it took to get his right leg up on the step. He hated feeling like he didn’t know how to walk or which leg to use, but that came every time Ty got up off the couch, got out of bed, faced the stairs, or even had to step over a lip into the barn or a house.
