Page 47 of Eight Seconds to Fly

Caly shook her head, but she knew I was right. I could see it in the disillusioned look in her eyes. Junior was rich, white, and came from a family with a lot of clout in a lot of different circles. He could murder someone, and he still probably wouldn’t see jail time.

I mumbled my goodbyes, getting the hell out of there before guilt consumed me completely.

18

Apparently, we became a convoy overnight. I drove down the interstate, Beau’s big truck behind me.

Dylan slept in my backseat, even though I told him it was okay if he wanted to fly back to Denver. He’d just said, ”Nah I’m good,” and climbed into the back of my truck. Within six miles, his head was tipped back against the headrest and his mouth was wide open as he slept. Frankie was singing along to some angry country song by a female artist, singing about her cheating ex. Frankie did sassy well, and I was laughing as he snapped his fingers to the words of the song.

Damn, this was nice. Temporary but nice.

In my wildest dream, I got to have my cake and eat it too. I’d get my quirky best friend, the nurturer, the alpha asshole, and the sexy one. If this was a romance novel, we’d all ride off into the sunset together, living happily ever after.

But this was real life, and in real life, you couldn’t have four boyfriends. Or four husbands. They didn’t just get along by the magic of pussy power and I couldn’t imagine any of them being satisfied with a quarter of me each. We still hadn’t really talked about it all together, but Beau and Branch had booked into the same hotels as me and Frankie, and Dylan was bunking with us, so I guess there’d be ample opportunity to figure shit out.

I knew both Dylan and Branch had responsibilities other than babysitting me, but I didn’t argue too hard. You know why?

Because I wanted them all with me.

We were staying just outside of Denver, so the commute between Dylan and Branch’s sponsorship duties wouldn’t be too bad for most of the week, and the drive to the arena wouldn’t be too far on the weekend. It was weird how we’d fallen into the domesticity of the arrangement, but I wasn’t fighting it.

When we’d pulled into the motel and gone into reception, the girl behind the desk had looked from me, to the guys, and back to me. I could see why she’d think it was weird. Frankie was holding my hand and Branch was standing so close to my back that when I moved, my ass brushed the front of his jeans. Dylan was picking up brochures and saying shit like, “We should go on a date to Echo Lake,” and no one was even trying to hide the fact that they were all dating me.

The girl behind the desk looked somewhere between envious and scandalised.

She handed over our room keys and I hustled everyone out of the reception office. Frankie and Branch moved the trucks around to the space in front of our rooms and Beau hooked his hand in mine as we walked down the row of doors. Dylan grabbed my other hand, and swung it gently. When I raised an eyebrow, he just lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “What? Everyone else was doing it and it looked kinda nice.”

“Aren’t you worried what people will think? Pretty sure the receptionist thought we were going to have an orgy. Or is it a gang bang if there's only one woman?” I asked Beau.

“How the hell would I know?”

I laughed at the blush on his cheeks. “Either way, she's definitely tallying up cleaning costs and going to rub one out in the back room over the thought of being the April to your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Beau laughed and Dylan just looked confused. Beau let go of my hand and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’d forgotten you were once obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. It was the only thing that swayed you from the life of a bull rider for even a moment.”

Hell yeah it had. If I’d been able to get martial arts lessons in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, I might have had a different life. Luckily for me, there was nothing but flat fields and dirt where I came from. I had a wave of homesickness for a place I hadn’t laid eyes on in five years, but it was more than the place. It was my father. If I never went home, I could imagine that maybe he was just back there, working bulls and shooting the shit with the farm hands. Not in a coffin in the ground next to my mother.

I swallowed hard and forced a smile. “Hell yeah. I wanted to be Michaelangelo. You wanted to be Donatello. Branch always wanted to be Leonardo so he could be in charge.”

Dylan laughed. “Not much has changed then I guess.”

When the man in question slid out of his truck, my eyes ate him up like I was starved. Yeah, not much had changed. Especially this soul deep yearning I had whenever I saw him. I’d put it down to teenage hormones, but that wasn’t it. It was like my body knew that he was a piece of my puzzle.

Frankie grabbed my bag from the back of the truck and flung it over his shoulder. I was already sick of living out of a suitcase. I was desperate to unpack my clothes. Have some stuff. But Frankie and I were modern day gypsies, and everything we had that was even remotely sentimental and couldn’t be transported was in a secure storage locker in Tucson. For the last few years, we’d lived close to Frankie’s family in Tucson in the off season, with Frankie working for his uncle's construction business and I picked up ranch hand work where I could, or waitressing work when I couldn’t. I had no other skills except riding bulls. It was all I ever wanted to do, despite my brief dream of being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

This year, I thought I might go to school during the break. Maybe find some kind of Plan B career because I knew more than anyone that shit could change in a heartbeat. You lost people you loved, dreams turned to ash. You needed something to fall back on.

Other than throwing their bags in their own room, Beau and Branch ended up in our room almost immediately. Beau wrapped me in his arms, and I snuggled into his chest, appreciating the smell that was uniquely Beau. “You hungry, Nugget? Want to go out or order pizza?”

I looked at the double bed and the single pushed against the wall. “Let’s stay in and eat pizza. Drink some beers. I...” I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t want to be in large groups of strangers right now without sounding like I was losing it and was in desperate need of therapy. But Beau, my beautiful perceptive Beau, knew. He knew me.

“Sounds good. We passed a liquor store a block or so up, I’ll make a run now. Anyone want anything?”

Everyone seemed to agree on the same beer, which made it easy for Beau and difficult for me. How did I pick one of these guys without breaking my own heart, let alone theirs. I got lost in my own head as I unpacked my bag, hanging up my civilian clothes and my shirts. Frankie worked alongside me and it was a routine we’d done so many times that we moved around each other with innate ease.

Dylan chuckled as he hung his shirts beside mine. “You two are adorably domestic,” he teased, but there was a hint of something else under there. Maybe a touch of jealousy or envy or something. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Frankie and I have been together for a long time. After the sixtieth time stepping on his toes, he’s learned to dodge quicker.”

Frankie snorted. “She’s not wrong. I can’t feel my little toe anymore because she crushed it so often in her boots.”

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