Page 3 of Sexting the Cowboy
Reno Wyatt with his bad-boy grin and his stupid charm and the family name that serves as a brand. Eight months of falling too fast and then six more after the accident of trying to hold a mantogether who didn’t want to be held. Thanks to a bull he couldn’t handle, his left lower leg doesn’t have full sensation now. Instead of turning to me or therapy or anything useful, he turned to whiskey. I left because I didn’t want to drown in the bottle with him.
My phone buzzes in my scrub pocket.Macflashes on the screen with three cactus emojis and a boot.You alive?
Define alive.
She sends me a GIF of a tumbleweed.
A pair of retirees in volunteer shirts poke their heads in. “Y’all need anything?”
“Extra ice if you can spare it,” I say. “And if anybody at the midway gets woozy, send them here instead of trying to revive them with funnel cake.”
“You got it,” the man says, and they scoot on their way.
We get one more patient before the light leans truly golden—a cowboy who caught his forearm on a burr in a rail and pretends it doesn’t need stitches. It does. He sits on the cot and watches me irrigate, his jaw tight, his knuckles whiter than his undershirt. I place tidy sutures, quick and neat. He thanks me and pulls his sleeve down like the repair is a secret.
Never let ’em see you bleed, I guess.
The grandstands are churning, spots filling with locals and tourists, a handful of influencers angling their phones at the sky. The pre-show playlist slips from twang to modern pop-country and back. The animal contractor’s crew moves like a choreography, arms waving, gates swinging, big bodies funneling where they need to go. Chaos, but relatively organized.
“Okay, the suspense is killing me,” Jaden says, flipping the roster sheet like a game-show reveal.
“Don’t,” I warn, but I’m smiling, and I hate that he can yank a smile out of me even when I know I won’t like the question. Doesn’t matter, though. That’s one of Jaden’s gifts.
He ignores me. He always ignores me when theatrics are available. “Final event,” he intones. “Bull riding. Tonight’s lineup includes—” His finger slides down a column. He pauses. His mouth opens. The showman drains out of him so fast I can feel the vacuum. “Wait…theWyatts? The family of your ex-boyfriend who crashed and burned so badly that you have barely looked at another man since?”
I put the answer in the simplest words possible, the only ones that will fit past the pinch in my chest. “Yes,thoseWyatts.”
2
BRICK
The microphone squeals,settles, and then that drawl the fans love rolls over the speakers like warm molasses.
“Folks, give it up for a living legend. You know him, you love him—the Silver Fox Bull Rider—Brick Wyatt!”
The nickname still makes me snort. I don’t dye gray out of my hair, and the sport decides to brand me with it. But the roar that hits me when I nod at the announcer and tip my hat is a hell of a thing. It thumps in my ribs, straight through the vest, and reminds me that I’ve been doing this longer than most of these kids have been alive.
I slide my glove hand down the bull rope, settle my hips, and breathe. Smell of leather. Barn dust. The hot, animal funk that vibrates off the bull under me like a motor trying to shake loose. The gate man squints at me with a question that’s older than both of us—ready?—and I give him a little chin flick.
I don’t pray. I’ve never been good at asking for things. What I do is run through the mechanics in my head. Spine loose. Chest proud. Hips forward. He goes left, you go with. He goes right,you stick like a burr. Don’t get ahead of him. Don’t get behind. Eight seconds is just eight seconds like every other one you’ve ever ridden.
The gate bangs, and the world explodes.
He blows out of the chute heavy and hot, sun slamming me full in the face, the crowd clearing its throat into one big yell. He’s a spinner, I feel it in a heartbeat—left, left, left—and I slide with him, knees holding like a vise, free arm painting the air. He fakes a direction change, and I grin mean without meaning to—nice try, big man, not today—and keep my hips where my hips need to be.
It’s kinda like riding bitch on a motorcycle. You go with the bike. If you fight it, your ass is on the ground and probably missing a big chunk.
I’m not the kid I was. What I am is experienced. You learn things after thirty, and more after forty. You learn that your legs aren’t springs anymore. They’re levers, best for keeping you in place, not for trying to control the beast between them. You learn to breathe even while your teeth are rattling around like dice in a cup. You learn when to hold and when to let go.
Four seconds. Five. The sound of him sucking wind like a bellows is in my ears. He throws a hop and a skip, and I take it, body going loose when loose is the only thing that sticks. I feel my core burn. I feel my knee complain. I tell both of them to shut up and do their damn jobs.
Six. Seven. Eight—horn blows—a clean, sweet little mercy note. I peel my fingers off the rope, swing my leg, and make a tidy dismount that I’m going to pretend didn’t take every spare ounce of juice I had left. Hit the dirt running, look back longenough to make sure the pickup man’s got his attention, and the bullfighters are between him and any dumb choices I might make.
I tip my hat to the crowd. They go louder, and it’s addictive. Hell, it’s half the reason I’m out here.
The scoreboard coughs up a number that makes me nod—good, not world-shaking. I’ve had world-shaking. I’ve also had the other kind, the kind you don’t say out loud. Today’s in the black. I’ll take it.
I jog the long way around the arena, because my legs like to move after they’ve been beaten for eight seconds. The heat is all the way up today, that Utah kind that bakes you from above and below, and as I duck under the rail by the back gate, I’m already stripping the glove and loosening the vest.
