Page 29 of What I Should Have Known

“You never know when it’ll come in handy.” He raised a foot and pointed at the spur. “For example, when someone randomly needs to get spurs to stay on tennis shoes because that someone also decided at the last minute to get on a bucking horse.”

“Your mom is going to kill you,” I replied, and he grinned even wider.

“Probably.”

My stomach tumbled, like my first glass of strawberry wine warming my belly. Despite his idiocy, I was also proud of him and jealous he seemed so easygoing.

“So, why are you really doing this?” I pushed, narrowing my gaze, and he glanced over my shoulder. His eyes glazed over, taking him away from the present to a place I’d seen him drift off to once or twice before.

His grin tightened, twisting into something harder than his usual carefree expressions he carried. There were layers to him. Layers hidden behind a shell of humor and jokes that I had yet to crack through. Something about him, despite the rather hard exterior he presented to everyone else, seemed soft.

Pained.

“Just… be safe,” I whispered.

He blinked heavily, his lashes fluttering over the far-away-look twisting his features into something I didn’t want to exist in. “No need to worry, Kit Kat. No one’s getting shot at, so I’ll be fine.”

My heart dropped to my stomach as he stepped away and didn’t even glance back at me. His gaze fixed onto the ground as his shoulders rounded forward, shifting from a hardened, confident man to one overwhelmed with a burden weighing more than the world. I watched his fading figure round the corner to the bucking chutes and disappear in the shadows and haze of chaos.

No one’s getting shot at.What a specific choice of words he’d used.

Words that confused me almost as much as half of the things he’d said to me. Except the heaviness that had slipped from his tongue hung stiff in the air. I wished there was something I could do to lift the weight from hisshoulders, yet I barely knew this man. I’d barely seen into the cracks of his exoskeleton donned to protect everyone from him, not him from everyone else.

He seemed to be drowning in something that no one could save him from. What was the point of getting on that horse? There was a deeper reason than just the fact he was bored, and while I wouldn’t say anything, I’d overheard his mom ask him to not be impulsive, which only solidified my thoughts that there was something more.

The way he looked at his mom, talked about her, he truly cared for her, so whatever reasoning he had to be doing this had to be a good one. One that mattered more to him than respecting his mom’s wishes.

As the announcer’s voice bellowed around the stadium, alerting the crowd to the next event and last-minute entry, his words faded into a jumbled mess of familiarity. Mossy green eyes, shadowed beneath a ball cap instead of a cowboy hat since this was an informal event, rose between Wyatt and Porter. His gaze, glassy and far away, stared across the stadium at nothing.

Darkness settled over his entire figure, as if morphing him into a creature of night. Something that grew as the tension and adrenaline coursed thick through the crowds. He seemed to be eating it up, siphoning it from everyone around him.

Horses kicked at the metal chutes. The pounding echoing amongst the rising excitement bounced around the arena. Then, as if shedding his skin, the glass slid away from his gaze, and Bernie became something else entirely.

Eerily calm, he listened to whatever Porter said beside him. A button-up that clearly wasn’t his strained at his broad shoulders as his browsinched together. The shadows hiding his eyes deepened. My skin prickled as I studied a man who no longer seemed human.

Most people froze or fled when danger presented itself. Most people clammed up when nerves ripped through them. And when they tried something new, hell, life was over. But as I studied Bernie, it was as if that was where he was most comfortable.

And it was hot.

Wyatt bumped up against Bernie and smirked, as if sharing a secret with him that had me concerned. Then he adjusted his cowboy hat and stepped toward the next chute.

As if lightning ripped through me, the sounds of the stadium whirred back to life. “Wyatt Benson is up on Dust Devil, Keegan Powell is on deck, and a first-time rider, Bernie Phillips, is in the hole.”

My gaze immediately shot across the arena, searching the crowd like a madman for his mom. And there she was, frozen like a statue, though I couldn’t make out what was on her face at this distance.

Sighing heavily, I returned my focus to Wyatt as he settled onto the back of the horse snorting in the chute. With a heave, the animal shoved sideways and slammed Wyatt’s leg against the wall of the box. Bernie didn’t even flinch as his calculating gaze studied every movement of Wyatt’s.

Then the green chute door swung open and they were off. Hooves raised. Dirt flew through the air as Dust Devil twisted and turned, rising and falling in a very arrhythmic movement.

One.

His back legs landed on the ground and he lunged left as Wyatt’s spurs raked up his shoulders.

Two.

Front legs reared up, Dust Devil tossed his neck sideways, and he dove forward.

Three.

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