Page 2 of Maverick
I might as well go ahead and walk into the ocean.
I hear an absolute uproar behind me, not the cheers of a winning ride, but something else. I turn around, and everyone around me is already in motion. Running toward the arena.
And that’s when I see him. Colt Campbell, lying in the arena dirt, bleeding.
Bleeding out, it looks like to me.
There’s blood everywhere, and he’s not moving. The bull is ravaging him like a predator with prey, and no amount of intervention from the bullfighters is doing a damn thing to stop him.
I haven’t felt much of anything in a long time. I can’t say that I like Colt Campbell, but I do know what it’s like to see somebody who’s so young, so vital, so full of life die. Senselessly. Brutally.
And that grips me viscerally. Makes me feel a deep, terrible grief that I try never to let myself experience at all.
Then I’m back in the moment. Colt is Colt, and not a representative of anyone else.
But still, I need him to be okay.
It’s hard to be the villain when the hero is dead.
Chapter Two
Stella
The mood of the rodeo is somber and has been for the last couple of weeks. Colt is alive, he’s stable, and thank God. I know that he’s not going to die, but I don’t know if he’s ever going to be back on the circuit.
He’s one of my best friends. Losing him like that…
I stand there, hand braced on my horse trailer as I try to catch my breath. Sometimes it just hits me. Right before an event, I’ll just be going about my business, and I’ll have this intense flashback of what it was like to watch him get attacked in the arena. What it was like to watch him nearly die.
When I went to visit him in the hospital, he wasn’t conscious.
He was out for more than a week. At least, from what I was told. Dallas has been texting me some updates, but I know that now that they’re back in Gold Valley, back in their lives, trying to figure out what to do with Colt now that he’s got this life-changing injury, they can’t update me every five seconds.
None of us are big on using our phones. We’re all action-oriented people. That’s just how we are. All of us together. Now splintered all apart.
I swallow hard.
This has been so much harder to deal with than I could’ve imagined. Not that I ever would’ve imagined one of my close friends getting injured like this.
It’s funny that I made friends with a couple of bull riders anyway. But I’m just so competitive it’s hard for me to make friends with the other barrel racers. That’s my problem, I know that it is. I’m obsessed with winning. I’m obsessed with being the best. And hanging out with a couple of highly competitive guys that I wasn’t competing with was always fun.
It was never anything more than platonic, not that I wouldn’t have been open to it. They were handsome, and they’re exactly the kind of man that I’d like to end up with. If I had time for that kind of thing. Mainly though, I don’t. Because I want to win. And I have. It’s not like bull riding, though. The pinnacle of barrel racing is amazing, and I’m excited to have reached it, but it doesn’t have the cachet, doesn’t have the prize-winnings, doesn’t have the eyes on it that bull riding does.
I never imagined myself here. When I was younger, I imagined myself in the Olympics. That’s what I always wanted. But I never found the right horse.
And so much of it is the horse, their capacity, your connection to them.
I try not to think about the ways my parents pushed my younger sister in that direction, while they left me to do it all myself.
There’s something about her. Something that made her more likable, more special, more the person that they wanted to see on top, and I had to make my own way. My competitive edge makes my family a whole mess. Especially when I’m competing with mysister. I took up barrel racing as kind of a side hustle, and riding Western is something my parents really looked down on, and so it was a rebellion of sorts.
I’m competitive, but I’m not a people pleaser.
I know they wish I were more of a people pleaser.
I also know they wish I were more focused.
I think they looked at me and my much more chaotic and impulsive nature and just couldn’t see a dressage champion. My sister moves like a ballerina in and out of the arena. She’s serene, focused, poised. Even though she’s younger than I am, she’s always had a stillness in her that I just don’t have.
