Page 9 of Eight Second Hearts

I watch her walk around the suburban and climb into the passenger seat. Zander, to his credit, doesn’t say anything rude, but he also doesn’t step in. He shoots me a look before he climbs into the driver seat. I watch as they drive off, leaving me standing in a busy parking lot.

“Fucking babies,” I grumble to myself before turning to search among those still left.

After a few minutes, I realize I have a problem. Group after group refuse to give me a ride, many of them barely letting me get the question out. I stick out in my clothes, barely looking like I belong with this crowd at all, and everyone treats me like it. After asking those in the parking lot and getting the same answer over and over again, I give up.

Riding with these strangers would have probably been a drag anyways. Sucking it up, I arrange a taxi and manage to get to the airport just in time for the final flight out. I have to run to the gate, but I make it just in time to board. Everyone else will have to drive through the night to get to Mississippi on time. At least I’ll make it there with enough time to get a motel room.

The longer I have to stew on the events of the last few hours, the more pissed off I get. Kim and Zander are supposed to be on my side. We work for the same magazine. And yet here they are, as petty as a couple of children. This is why I went overseas to be a war correspondent. People over there don’t have the option to start drama because we’re worried about getting shot or a bombdropping on us. This shit ain’t nothing. But someone like Kim would never understand that. You’d never catch that woman in the middle of a war.

As I sit on the plane, I shift in my seat, my hip twinging. It’s a constant reminder of the problem that chases me no matter where I go, a source of pain that doctors have no answer for. I’ve been given every line from calling it an anxious tick to being told I need to limit my stress, but the damn chronic pain doesn’t go away. I stretch out my legs to ease the bite of pain and the growing twinge down to my toes, but it only gets worse in the cramped airline seat. Thankfully, it’s not a long flight, but by the time we land, my hip is screaming at me. Fucking traitorous body. You’re supposed to be on my side. I’m too young to hurt this bad.

I hobble off the plane and grab a rideshare out in the direction of the fairgrounds the Dixie National Rodeo will take place at. I find the cheapest motel I can, a seedy little thing that feels more like a place to do a drug deal than a place to sleep and rent a room. Unfortunately, when I see the room itself, I grimace and realize I should have paid for somewhere nicer. It’s outdated, which isn’t a problem on its own, but the old bloodstain on the once beige carpet is. The comforter on the bed looks like it’s from the eighties and the threat of bedbugs is very real. I pull the sheets back just enough to check, relieved to find it’s at least clean that way, but I pull them back on and resolve to sleep on top of them. The mattress is as hard as a rock, but I’ve slept on shattered rubble before, so this is hardly that bad. My hip, however, doesn’t agree.

I get a few shitty hours of sleep before my alarm on my phone goes off and I’m forced to drag myself out of bed again.

“Fuck,” I groan as I make myself somewhat presentable. I don’t bother fitting in again. Who fucking cares what I look like?

Only after I grab a coffee from a decent little mom-and-pop-shop do I head out to the fairgrounds for the start of the Dixie National Rodeo, a week-long event.

Hooray for me.

Chapter 6

Indie

I’m going to have to change my approach. The Crimson Three are vehemently against interviews, so I can’t just walk up to them and ask. That didn’t work last time. It’s time to figure out how I can get them to talk, how I can convince them that an interview won’t be so bad. But in the meantime, I’ll do what I do best and that’s to find the stories.

The Dixie National Rodeo in Jackson, Mississippi lasts about a week, so I’ll have time to really dig in deep and figure out what makes the men tick. I’m gonna need to see how I can exploit them, and I hate to say it, Beau Rogers seems like the weakest link. He was openly flirtatious and is clearly curious about me. Perhaps that can be my opportunity to get something from him. But the other two seem more ironclad than Beau. Ramiro seems like the second-best option, more levelheaded and put together in general. He seems like the older brother of the group, like he keeps them all in line, and he’s at least talked to press before. As for Tripp. . . I’m not sure that brick wall can be climbed.

Most legacies would be proud to talk about being a legacy. They always talk about what an honor it is to continue where their fathers left off before them, doing interviews constantly,making the name even more relevant. Tripp Savage is nothing like that. He doesn’t acknowledge his legacy in any way, leaving it to the announcer to do it and no one else. He doesn’t do interviews at all. While Ramiro talks to the journalists every now and then to discuss the show, Tripp never even spares a hello. He ignores all reporters. He shuns anyone who isn’t one of the Crimson Three. Hell, I don’t even think he partakes in the women who chase these kinds of events. Not like Beau Rogers. Beau Rogers leaves a line of broken hearts in every city he visits. That’s why there’s a large group of women at this event, all clustered together screaming his name. They have blue handprints across their faces. A few of them have the signature blue handprint on their chests even. Which is pretty fucking forward of them, but it still makes me laugh. There are plenty of people who shoot them judgmental looks for it. I think let them have their fun.

Day one doesn’t bring much exciting with it. Ramiro Mondragon enters the bareback bronc riding at this stop and qualifies for the next round pretty easily. Tripp Savage almost looks bored when he’s on his bull, and when he reaches the eight seconds, he springs off almost clumsily, falling to his knees briefly while Beau distracts the bull. I watch as Tripp stands up and picks up his hat from the dirt. There’s a slight wobble in the way he stands, not strong enough for most people to notice, but for someone like me, I recognize it anywhere.

I’d watched my father do the same wobble.

He’s fucking drunk. He has to be. I watch as he slowly walks toward the chutes, unconcerned with the bucking bull still rushing around behind him. Beau keeps the bull occupied, but if that thing were to focus on him, he’d be a goner. Tripp doesn’t even look back at his score. He just walks off as if he already knows he qualifies.

Well, I guess that would explain the less graceful dismount, but Christ, I’ve never known anyone capable of riding a bull while intoxicated. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that wobble was just exhaustion. They did drive all night after all.

Either way, I get nothing from the men for the evening, so I settle for interviewing a few members of the Beau Rogers Fan Club instead.

“Could you tell me your names?” I say after handing them a photo release form to sign. They’d all happily signed the paper and then posed for numerous photos showing off the blue handprints on their faces, their chests, and a few on their asses. It’s going to make for a great little part of the article, for sure.

“Patsy!”

“Ginny.”

“Paisley.”

I nod. “Okay, now tell me what brings you here.”

“Beau Rogers, of course,” Patsy says, and the way she says his name makes it sound like a deep sigh. “We came for him.”

“No one else?” I ask with raised brows.

“Well,” Ginny shrugs. “The other cowboys are cute, too. There’s something about a man in tight jeans that’s just hard to resist.”

Ginny has the strongest accent of the three, her southern Mississippi tone as thick as molasses. She flutters ridiculously long eyelashes at me as she talks, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s trying to look demure or because the false eyelashes are too heavy for her eyelids.

---