Page 11 of Buck This
“You texted me?” Torrey asked, checking her phone.
Reece looked at her phone too and then laughed. “Oh wait, I didn’t text you.”
“You were textingme, dork,” the blond said with a giggle.
This was weird. Okay, so Reece had made new friends, and Torrey was supposed to be okay with this, right? These girls matched her new life well, but it was happening so fast, and Torrey was already feeling left behind.
“Bye girl, I’ll message you when I’m ready to go home! Cobalt will be staying in his trailer tonight, but I can’t sleep on RV mattresses. He got me a hotel room. You can crash on the floor with me if you want.”
“Okay,” Torrey said softly as Reece marched away with her new friends. Had she forgotten Torrey had already booked a hotel room at the same hotel so they could spend time together? They had planned this trip together. Maybe Reece was just tipsy and distracted.
That or Torrey was invisible, as always.
Shaking her head, she followed the rails to the autograph room and made her way to the bar to grab a couple of beers. Drinks in hand, she made her way around the backs of the autograph tables and to an open gate where she saw cowboyswith loops of rope hung from their shoulders walking in and out of it.
Outside of the fencing, there was a huge open field, and near the building were more pens of horses and livestock. She scanned the groups of cowboys as she passed and nodded polite greetings to a few of them who were watching her.
It wasn’t until she reached the end of it all, at the very edge of the light, that she saw a lone cowboy sitting alone on a bale of hay.
He wore jeans and nothing else. Even his hat was sitting next to him upside down. His dark hair was longer than she’d thought, and was all mussed, like he’d run his hands through it out of frustration. The moonlight cast his muscular back in blue shadows.
“Hi, Buck This Storme,” she said softly.
Buck This Storme turned his head to the side just enough to show her his profile. “I don’t go by my circuit name.”
“Okay. Hi, Buck This?”
“Buck. Now go away.”
“So polite,” she said, ignoring his request. She stepped forward and offered him the beer.
He glared at the drink, then lifted his blazing green eyes to her before he took it and straightened up, downed the entire thing, and handed her back the empty.
“You can have mine too, if you want,” she offered.
He shook his head and cracked his knuckles, turned his face away from her.
“You did good.”
He scoffed and shook his head. “Look, whatever you think that was in there between us? It wasn’t.”
“Oh, I am aware,” she said, tucking the hem of her dress under her knees as she sat on another bale of hay near him. “You don’t kiss a woman like that because you like her. You kiss awoman like that when you’re trying to distract the devil inside of you. I’m not here to see what we are. We’re strangers and that’s good enough for me.”
“Then why are you here?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
She heard snickering behind them and cast a glance back to see a group of guys looking at Buck This and talking low. Talking shit, more like it.
He could probably hear every word. Everyone knew shifters could hear better than humans.
“I’m here to see if you’re okay.”
“I’m always okay. Question answered. I’m good. You can go away now.”
She looked at his closed off facial expression for a few seconds and then leaned back on one locked arm and took a swig of her beer and looked up at the sky. “You know, I’ll never forget the way Cobalt went flying through the air when you bucked him off.”
Buck This snorted, and when she looked at him, she caught the tail-end of a smile on his lips. “You don’t like him?”
She pursed her lips and considered the question. “I don’t like the way my friend Reece is since he’s come into her life.”
