Not for kissing. For talking.
Two drinks turned me into a chatty sweetheart completely unphased by my own vulnerability.
I wasemotionallyslutty.
Disgustingly so.
And two, unfortunately, was the precise number of drinks I’d had when I decided to ride that damn bull. Those gin and tonics were still wreaking havoc in my bloodstream when Brax carried me outside.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Are you?”
I stuck my tongue out at him and blew a raspberry.
“Careful, hellion,” he murmured. “The next time you show me your tongue, I might take it as an invitation.”
Feeling the need to prove something, I locked my gaze to his and dragged my tongue from the base of the ice cream to the very tip, then closed my lips around the swirl and pulled it into my mouth.
A flush bloomed high on his cheekbones, his eyes darkening as he watched. I took the opportunity to sink my teeth into the crisp cone and rip off a chunk. He winced. I laughed so hard I nearly spewed crumbs at him. Men were too easy.
“Sorry.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, still giggling.
“Are you five?” he grumbled.
“Shhh, the event is starting.”
We turned our attention to the arena, where the first rider exited the bucking chute to a loud cheer. Like bull riding, bronc riding was an eight-second ride. Zack didboth bareback and saddle bronc events, but today it was bareback, where the rider held on with one hand to a rigging attached to the girth, keeping the other hand in the air. The goal was to stay on through the full eight seconds of bucking without touching the horse with the free hand.
The first rider was bucked off in heartbreaking 7.8 seconds. The second rider stayed on for the full eight seconds, hand in the air where it belonged, but only earned tepid applause on account of the bronc being less nasty with his bucks. In bronc riding, both the rider and the horse earned scores on a scale of zero to fifty, for a combined score up to one hundred. The rider earned points for control and technique, while the horse earned points for bad behavior. The meaner the bronc, the higher the score.
Which meant Zack was thrilled when he got a nasty one. I could see the devilish grin on his face as he waited in the chute. The grin became a mask of focused concentration as they entered the arena in a fury of bucks and twists.
It felt like so much longer than eight seconds before the bell rang, but when it did, Zack was still astride the bronc. We whooped and hollered as the pickup men rode into the ring to extract him.
And then suddenly everything went wrong. Horses tangled, men shouted, Zack tumbled from the horse and disappeared beneath the frantic cluster of limbs.
I jumped to my feet, my hands over my mouth to muffle my scream. Next to me, James had turned Ben into her, covering his eyes. Brax and Adam were pushing through the crowd to get to their brother.
Zack lay crumpled on the sand floor, unmoving.
11
Brax
Lying in the hospital bed, Zack was damn near unrecognizable. A deep purple bruise bloomed along his cheekbone. His mouth was pale except for an ugly red split down the middle. One shoulder was in a sling, dislocated from when he hit the ground. His right leg was in a cast.
I had seen him banged up before, but never like this. Zack had always been the one with a glint of mischief in his eyes and a teasing smirk on his lips. He was the first one to tell a joke and the last one to leave a party. But now? He looked gray. Lifeless.
My baby brother.
“You look like shit,” he said.
I damn near jumped out of my skin. “Your eyes aren’t even open. How the hell would youknow how I looked?”
“Took a wild guess.” He cracked open one lid and eyed me up and down. “Whaddya know. I was right.”
Ah. There he was.