Page 64 of Eight Seconds to Fly

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Have I mentioned that riders are superstitious? Just a few times now? Well, I wasn’t about to tell anyone else, but I was performing the best rides of my damn life for the next two rodeos. I rode a bull for eight seconds each weekend, though I always crashed and burned on the second bull, but my scores were great. I wasn’t about to take out the World Championship, but I sat comfortably on the leaderboard and I brought in a little bit of cash.

I mean, anecdotally, that could just be dumb luck. But Branch rode both bulls the first weekend and one bull the second.

By the time we made it to Casper, Dylan’s doctors gave him the all clear to ride and he was so damn eager to get on a bull, I was pretty sure he’d chase one down in a field and climb on its back if they’d said no.

But still, I was nervous as hell. I listened to the commentators talking about his decision to wear a helmet, and was relieved to hear they were all for it. Some of the older figures in the WBRP were scathing of the practice, as if protecting your skull softened the sport. I wanted to take a baseball bat to those old fuckers heads and see how they felt afterwards.

Beau and Frankie stood beside me, Branch up on the chutes, holding his rope, hyping him up. My grip on the rails was so tight, my knuckles were going white.

Frankie wrapped an arm around my waist. “Relax,Querida.He will be fine.”

Logically, I knew that. Riders got concussions all the time. Hell, every time any of us hopped on a bull, we might die. But this was his first ride with the helmet. The first time really testing his new center of balance and I was freaking out. What if he got hung up? What if it threw him off and he got in the well? What if he just rode shit and decided he didn’t want the helmet anymore?

The gate flew open and I sent up a silent prayer. Dylan’s bull burst out, twisting, and I noticed Dylan’s body slipping a little to the left. Fuck. He was out of balance.

In a move that was pure strength and skill, Dylan shifted his body, righting his balance and maintaining his seat. I hollered from behind the chutes, counting the seconds in my head until the buzzer went off.

I didn’t need to hear when he hit eight seconds, because the crowd went nuts. He pulled his tail rope and slipped from the bull, tearing toward the rails where I was standing, his fist pumping. He ripped off his helmet and thrust it in the air. “Woo!”

I whistled and stomped, standing up on the railings and cheering. When he made it to the fence and climbed up beside me, his grin was so huge that I just knew it was mirroring my own. “I did it, Baby Girl!”

Then he kissed me, shocking the shit out of me. I hardly had time to process as he leapt off the fence rail and was skipping his way back through the exit gates.

Apparently the announcers were a little shocked too. “Well now, seems like Dylan Montaigne is off the market ladies. For any of you living under a rock still, that lovely lady in the crowd is T.M. Moore, our first female bull rider. Seems she can conquer hearts as well as bulls, isn’t that right, John?”

“Sure seems that way. Next up, we have North Carolina boy…” they trailed off, talking about the next ride and I looked helplessly at Beau and Frankie. They both shrugged, but there was a faint worried look in their eyes. Maybe I was imagining it, but I didn't think so. “He just kissed me.”

Frankie nodded. “I saw.”

“In public.”

They both nodded.

I swallowed hard. We couldn’t take it back, so we’d let the chips fall where they may. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to see the chips plummet to the ground.

The first signsomething was wrong was the incessant pinging of Dylan’s phone at six a.m. on Monday morning. I rolled over from where I was snuggled between Dylan and Frankie, nudging Dylan awake.

He groaned, burying his face in my hair and nudging my ass with his morning wood. But he didn’t wake up. “Dylan.” I poked him in the chest. He snored on and I sighed. I tweaked his nipple and he yelped. “Hey!”

“Your phone is going nuts.”

He blindly reached over to the nightstand, fishing his phone off the top. He opened one eye and looked. Then both eyes shot open. Then he sat up so fast, he almost fell off the bed.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck,” he cursed, and Frankie sat up too, blinking wildly.

“What? What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”

I shook my head, sitting up too. “What’s wrong?”

Dylan’s fingers moved swiftly over the screen, and then he turned the phone to me.

It was a news website, the heading reading, “Save the Bull, ride the Cowboy?”

There was a picture of me from the WBRP official shoot at the beginning of the year. Underneath that photo was pictures of me kissing all four guys. Dylan kissing me in the crowd on Saturday night. Me kissing Frankie outside a grocery store in Knoxville. Me pressed between both Branch and Beau outside our hotel room in Lexington.

I was stunned. I just blinked, reading through the article which was basically implying that I’d joined the WBRP to find men and sleep with them. That was some kind of bullshit right there, but a picture was worth a thousand words and they had three of them.

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