Cowboy Take Me Away

Oh, thanks?

I groan as my alarm clock goes off, I know there is no such thing as "too much sleep". I only got a couple of hours of sleep last night because of my night terrors. It's weird, I've been getting them more lately and I have no idea why. I would of thought over time that the pain and fright would of went away but it hasn't. I don't flinch as much anymore when men touch me, so why am I having these night terrors? 

If it keeps happening, I'll mention it to my mom, but for now I'll just keep it to myself. When my mom and dad found out, they didn't leave it alone for two weeks. They would come check on me during the night to see if I was okay, they've seen it twice and it really messed up my mom. She's never seen me struggle so much in my sleep, me fighting for my life when all I have to do is open my eyes and be free. 

Disregarding my lack of sleep, I push the hair out of my face and turn off my alarm. It's 7:30, but I have a busy day in front of me. I have to do all my chores, pick up a shift at the diner, and then rush to the local rodeo and help out. I am being a flag girl for sponsors and the national anthem. I haven't been competing lately because I'm trying to focus on school more, because certain events in the past have been distracting me from it. 

So after getting my face washed and getting me dressed in my Stetson flare jeans and a cinch cotton tee, I went downstairs for breakfast. "How'd ya sleep?" My dad asks me as I grab a plate from the cabinet. 

I hesitate before I answer him, "Fine, just had a lot of things on my mind." I shrug off as I dish up a waffle and add some blackberries to it. 

"Like?" My dad asks curiously, revealing his face from behind his newspaper. 

"Boy stuff, dad." I make up so he'll drop the topic. 

"Do I have to talk to Ryder about something?" He says with his macho tone, making me roll my eyes. 

"No, it's our three month anniversary today." I mutter, because I know Ryder is up already and he hasn't texted me anything yet. I'm not that girlfriend who needs her boyfriend to text her 24/7, but it'd be nice if he would of said something already. 

"Wow, three months," He breaths out and checks the date on the newspaper. "Time flies, I guess." 

"For you." I whisper to myself as I cut up my sausage and eggs. Sure, I have a good time when I'm with Ryder and I really like him and all, but something deep down inside me is keeping me from having a great time with him. That something always seems to get in my way of everything I do, and I can't figure out what it is. It's like I'm trying to turn the next page in the chapter, but my fingers stop working and I am stuck on that page. 

I put my hair into a pony as I walked to the pens to separate the horses. I had to seperate the horses for feeding because the older ones get fed something different, more fats and such. Our rodeo horses get more muscle building nutrients. And our ranch and trail horses get normal feed. 

The horses surrounded me as I had their grain buckets in my hands, trying to get to the troughs before start to bite each other. I tossed the grain into the two troughs and let the horses settle it out by themselves. And then I went back to the barn and grabbed the other grain buckets for the other horses and repeated the same thing. 

Now I had to feed the cows, which is a lot easier to do than the horses. The cows like to keep their distance when you're near, all I gotta do is put the cubes in the trough and leave. I put the empty bags in the gallon buckets on the end of the four wheeler and went back to the barn.  I parked the four wheeler and threw away the garbage. My next chore is to clean all the tack, my favorite because of the leather and horse smell. 

*****************

I knelt against the cushion of the booth as I wiped down the table and adjusted the condiment holder. I put the wash cloth down and pulled out my phone and checked to see if I had any messages, looking for one in particular. When I saw I had none from Ryder, I sighed and looked out the window. I pulled my eyes away from outside, but a black power stroke made me do a double take. My heart started to race immediately, could it be him? I crawled closer to the window to get a better look, I couldn't see the front licence plate. He took off the back plate because he dented it with a trailer hitch.