He tied Razor next to Zeus and walked toward the fire, still avoiding my gaze.
"Mitch. Where's the rider?"
"There isn't one."
"What do you mean, there isn't one? The horse has a saddle. Someone was riding him."
"Razor is Frank’s horse. My dad’s." Mitch grabbed a handful of twigs from the collection we’d gathered last night and tossed them onto the coals so hard sparks flew up into the dim light.
My brain stuttered. His dad's horse? But where was Frank?
Mitch added more branches, his movements stiff and mechanical, as if he was fighting to keep himself locked down inside. "So, where's your dad?"
He didn't answer. He just kept feeding sticks to the fire until the flames grew high enough for us to see the area around us.
"Mitch. Will you talk to me, goddammit? Where's your dad?"
His jaw clenched. For a long moment, he just stared into the fire, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he didn't want to say. Finally, he looked at me. "I don't know where Frank is."
Mitch looked calm on the surface, but fury blazed in his eyes.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean, I don't know, Charlie." He turned and strode back to Razor.
I blinked after him, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. In the firelight, the dark bruises across Mitch’s ribs and shoulder were nasty shades of purple and blue, and dried blood still caked the scratches along his back from when he and Doug tumbled down that cliff.
He'd always been so worried about my wounds, yet he’d never mentioned his own.
But that was Mitch. The soldier cowboy. Taking care of me while he bled in silence. He’d fought off dingoes, carried me when I couldn't walk, and made love to me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world. But ask him to tell me what he was really feeling? That was where he drew the line. I'd thought last night had changed us, and that we'd crossed some threshold together.
But maybe I'd been fooling myself.
Maybe Mitch only knew how to give his body, not his heart.
His gaze skipped to me, and there was so much emotion in his green eyes that my breath hitched. It was like he was somehow telling me he was trapped, wanting to open up but unable to break free of whatever was holding him back.
He led Razor to the water, and as the horse drank, Mitch ran his hands over Razor's muddy back and down his legs, checking the horse over as if looking for injuries.
"Did your dad fall off Razor? Is that what happened?"
"I don't fucking know, Charlie." He dropped Razor's hoof and moved around to the other side. Now that I could see his face, tension radiated off him like heat waves rising from the baked red earth.
"Well, bloody hell, Mitch. What do you know?"
His chest heaved as if he was battling to contain his anger. At last, he met my gaze. "Frank rode away from the ranch a week ago and never came back."
A week ago? My stomach dropped. That was before I’d met Mitch. Before the flood. Before any of this.
Mitch ran his hand over the other side of Razor's body. "Shit."
"What?"
"Blood."
I gasped and moved closer. "Is Razor hurt?"
"It's not Razor's blood." Mitch's face appeared over the saddle, but he still wouldn't look at me as he brushed dirt off the worn leather.