Page 28 of Knot Your Problem, Cowboy
“Yeah,” I manage, though my own voice sounds strange, distant on one side.
“Don’t try to sit up. We need to?—”
Yet I’m already trying tosee past him, to find Abby in the stands, but someone is holding my head down. However, I caught a quick enough glance at where she was standing now, hand over her mouth, that man’s arm around her shoulders. Comforting her. Like he has the right.
“Who’s that?” I say, my words slurring slightly.
Walker follows my earlier gaze. “Ridge, buddy, we need to focus on?—”
“WHO?”
“Another rider,” Cash answers quietly.
All I see is her hand on his arm, resting there like it belongs, and it guts me worse than the fall. She was here for me. And still, she found someone else to hold her. Like I’m already gone. Like I never mattered.
They get me on a backboard, then a stretcher. The crowd applauds, that polite acknowledgment that I’m moving, not dead or paralyzed. As they wheel me toward the ambulance, I catch sight of the replay on the arena’s big screen.
There I am, perfect form until the instant I’m not. The fall plays in slow motion, my head grazing against the rail with a violence that makes me nauseous to watch.
Three years of dominating the circuit. Three years of almost reaching the top, unstoppable. All of it ending in six point nine seconds because I let a Beta’s disinterest in me break my concentration.
“You’re going to be okay,” Walker says, jogging beside the stretcher. “You hear me? You’re going to be fine.”
But the ringing in my ear saysdifferent. The way medical is moving, fast but careful, says different. The look in Cash’s eyes says different.
I’m a rodeo cowboy. Was. We know injuries, live with them, collect them like badges of honor. And this is the one that ends me.
Three years later, and I still wake up tasting arena dirt and lost dreams.
I shoot right out of bed, sheets soaked with sweat, phantom pain screaming through my skull. My ear rings with the memory of it. Sharp, high, endless. The pain radiates from my temple down my neck, across my back, following pathways that exist only in my dreams.
“Fuck.” The word comes out rough, angry. Three years, and the damn dream won’t leave me alone. Of waking up tasting failure.
I grunt. My room is exactly how I need it, with white walls, bare of decoration, spacious enough for the king bed, walk-in closet, and the leather couch where I sometimes sit when staring at the sky doesn’t cut it. My guitar waits on its stand in the corner, a Martin D-28 that’s seen me through too many sleepless nights.
The dream clings like cobwebs. Abby’s laugh. Her hand on the rider. That split second of distraction that cost me everything.
Anger floods throughme, hot and familiar. Not at her, as I got over blaming her years ago. The fury is all for myself. If I’d been good enough, strong enough, focused enough, I would never have fallen. Would never have let something as simple as a woman’s attention shatter my concentration.
I shake off sensations that aren’t real anymore and stumble into the adjoining bathroom. The shower runs hot, almost scalding, but it helps wash away the phantom aches. By the time I’m out, I can almost pretend I’m whole again.
I pull on blue jeans, worn soft from years of ranch work. My belt slides through the loops, the buckle catching the early morning light. It’s a bronze piece depicting a rider on a cutting horse, working cattle. Cash bought it for me two Christmases ago, said I needed something that showed who I was now, not who I used to be.
A gray button-up comes next, pearl snaps instead of buttons because some habits die hard. I run my hand through wet hair that’s getting too long again, auburn strands falling past my collar. My stomach growls, reminding me I skipped dinner last night in favor of whiskey and stars.
The sun is just cresting the horizon as I head out, painting the Montana sky in shades of pink and gold. Walker is already out there somewhere, probably in the round pen with that new colt that’s been giving everyone hell. Cash will surface eventually, the lazy bastard.
We’ve been a pack for eight years now, bonded by choice. After my family couldn’t handle having a damaged Alpha in their ranks, couldn’t stomach that my scent glands got fucked in the fall along with my hearing, these two became everything. Walker and Cash.
They pulled me through those first months when I couldn’t see past the wreckage of my career. When I’d stare at the prescription bottles and wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just… not. They gave me purpose again, showed me I could be more than Ridge Colter, fallen rodeo star.
This ranch became our salvation. Just over four years, we’ve poured everything into it, every sunrise, every blister, every sleepless night when the horses were sick or the fences were down. It’s in my bones now, this land. These mountains. This life we’ve built from nothing.
Which is why Sophia scares the shit out of me.
She could destroy it all with a signature. Sell to some developer who’d turn our home into vacation condos for rich assholes who think Montana is quaint. The thought makes my jaw clench hard enough to ache.
Last night replays through my mind—her in the moonlight, clutching that kitten, looking at me like I was someone worth knowing. She almost made me forget why I don’t need complications shaped like beautiful Omegas with curious eyes.
