Page 14 of Wild, Wild Cowboy

She pushed up her glasses. “Then why?”

“Eight seconds.” The memory of her twitching while I raced to get dressed made me grin. “It’s a timed event. I have a feeling these eight seconds are going to make you lose your mind, sugar.”

The way she looked at me, I knew she was remembering, too. It was an odd thing to share a memory with someone, to know what was on her mind, and know that she knew the same thing was on mine. It felt like the space between us dissolved, even though neither of us moved.

“We’ll see,” she said, but she didn’t say it like she doubted it. She said it like she hoped for it.

At the ding, the first pair sprung out of the chute. The horse, Badlands Betty, didn’t waste a millisecond before throwing out her hind legs. Betty was a fantastic ride. She bucked hard and true and rarely changed direction. Before every buck, she went airborne, bounding forward with all four hooves off the ground, before landing on her front legs and shooting her back legs higher than her rider’s head.

At second four, Hannah moved to the edge of her seat.

At second six, she brought her hands to her cheeks.

At seven-point-six, she covered her mouth and let out a muffled shriek.

When the buzzer sounded at eight seconds, she didn’t move, didn’t holler or clap like the rest of us. She stayed just as she was, her hands on her face, for another ten seconds or so, then slowly let her breath out in a big whoosh and lowered her hands to her lap.

“My goodness,” she whispered. “My goodness.”

I grinned. Yep, my fussy librarian had lost her damn mind, all right.

My grin faded slowly as it hit me hard how much I loved this. The rodeo. The cheers, the smells, the excitement and energy of it all. But most of all, I loved the ride.

And that was the thing I couldn’t have anymore.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I miss it.”

She chewed her lip, thinking. “Are you…done for good? Your leg won’t ever heal well enough for you to bronc ride again?”

“It’s not only my leg,” I said. “I don’t know if my leg will ever heal enough for me to be a top bronc rider again, but that’s not what forced me out. It’s the conglomerate of issues, I guess. I fractured my spine, too. That actually healed the fastest, but there’s a big risk of breaking my back even worse. And then there’s my spleen. I don’t have one anymore. I took a hoof to the chest and it ruptured my spleen. Doctors had to take it out. That means I’m more likely to get an infection, and if I get an infection, I’m more likely to die.” I held up my wrist. “That’s what this bracelet is for. So if I end up injured, the doctors know what to look out for.”

She looked out at the arena, where the next rider was bucked off the horse in under five seconds. “And you’re fairly likely to get injured bronc riding, I suppose.”

I cracked a smile. “It’s pretty common, in my experience. I’ve had my fair share of surgeries even before the big one. Without a spleen, every surgery has a high risk of infection.” I looked down at my leg. “I nearly lost my leg from infection this time around. I’m not interested in losing limbs or dying of sepsis in a hospital bed.”

Her head tilted. “Wasn’t that always the risk with bronc riding?”

“Maybe. I never thought of it that way though. To me, it was all or nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I…” I swallowed. “I didn’t plan on getting maimed. Bronc riding…it’s the sort of thing that takes everything you have to give. Anyone who ended their career wounded, I figured they just weren’t trying hard enough. It should have killed them. It should have killed me. I never considered I’d make it out alive.” Which meant I’d never considered what I’d do with the rest of my life. What the hell was supposed to get me out of bed every day? I’d never had a Plan B.

“You never wanted to? Make it out alive, I mean?”

I looked at her, mildly shocked that she’d even ask me that. No one else would have. But then, no one else would have wanted to hear my answer, either. I had the notion shewantedto hear it, without any preconceived idea of who I should be or how I should feel. She wanted to know what was inside me, and she would patiently sit there forever, as long as it took, for me to tell her.

It felt like a hug, the way she looked at me. Like something I wanted to burrow into.

I blew out a breath. “No,” I said. “No, I never wanted to.”

And she nodded, like that made sense.

I knewa couple of the cowboys in the bronc riding competition, so we headed to the back to say hello. I knew some of the horses, too, and I gave them each a pat as I introduced them to Hannah.

“They don’t bite?” she asked nervously as I stroked the white blaze on Cactus’s dark face.

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