Page 5 of Sexting the Cowboy
Self-preservation, most likely.
“Better now,” she says, and I hear the cadence of her mama in her voice and swallow it down. Grief doesn’t ask permission. It walks into your tent when it wants and sits on your chest, and you learn to keep working around it. “Thank you, Jaden.”
Cash is up soon. My middle boy. Show-off like his old man, but prettier to look at when he does it. I catch the clock out of the corner of my eye and pat Blaze’s knee. “You got your flirt out for now? Come on. Your brother’s about to make me proud or make me cuss, and either way I’d like to be there for the moment.”
“Jaden, do you want to come with us?” she asks.
“I’m on tent duty.” He nods toward the doctor, but adds, “Y’all go cheer him loud. We’ll be here if you need us.”
I stand, joints making a private protest that I answer with a stretch. Blaze slides off the cot with her “injured” ankle miraculously fine the second it needs to be, and she threads her arm through mine like she did when she was nine and decided I was her favorite human.
We step back into the sunlight. It hits like an oven door opening. The fairground hums harder now, a big old machine cranking up—music up, crowd thick, the scent of fried food and dust and sunscreen mixing into a thing that takes up residence in your nose. We push through the bodies toward the stands, weaving past bachelorettes in fringe and old-timers in sweat-stained hats who were listening to rodeo on the radio when I was less than a thought.
“Dad,” Blaze says, tugging me to a stop by the rail for a second. “You rode good.”
“Didn’t think you noticed, seeing as you were busy flirting with Jaden.”
She ignores the commentary. “You look old when you ride.” She grins sideways, mean and loving both.
“I’m forty-six.”
“Practically a fossil in this business.” She laughs, then sobers quick like teenagers do. “I like watching you out there. But I don’t like thinking about you out there.”
“I get that. I don’t like thinking about me either.”
She bumps her shoulder into my arm, and I know what she means. She doesn’t like seeing me take the risk. What I mean is I know and I do it anyway because I’m built wrong forsafe. All us Wyatts are. I also like keeping the lights on.
Not that I need the money much anymore. But I have no idea what I’d do if I were to retire. I try not to think about it.
Cash is at the back of the chutes, hand on his rope, talking trash to a kid. He’s got my smile and his mama’s eyes and the kind of seat that makes a judge set his pencil down for a second. He sees us, tips his chin, and then flips the switch in his face from my kid to a fierce competitor. I love that switch. I taught him where it lives. He wired the rest himself.
“Ford’s here,” Blaze says, flicking her lashes. “Don’t let him talk you into anything dumb.”
“I am an adult,” I say, even though I will let Ford talk me into some things because Ford likes money. The bigger the risk, the bigger the purse, the bigger his payday. Ours too, but it’s our necks on the line.
We hear him before we see him. “Wyatts,” Ford calls in a tone that says my headache is named after you and it’s chronic. He’s threading through the row with a clipboard that has more tabsthan a well-loved Bible and the same cowboy duds as everyone else, even though the man’s never ridden a horse. Sunglasses, hair gel, all that city polish that somehow doesn’t come off on the dust. He’s good at his job, which is to get us paid and cheered for in equal measure.
“Ford,” I say, shaking his hand. “Good to see you in the wild.”
“Always a treat,” he says, which is his way of saying you terrify me and I love the commission. He kisses Blaze’s temple without asking because she lets him—Ford has uncle privilege when he’s earned it. “You injure anything I need to be aware of?”
“Just my pride. Score was fine.”
“Cash looks dialed in,” Ford says, sliding his sunglasses up to scan the chute like there are dollar signs perched there I can’t see. “He’s such a show-off.”
“He takes after his father,” Blaze says, dry, and I bump her with my hip.
“He does,” I admit. I could pretend otherwise, but lying is pointless. We know each other too well. “He likes the roar of the crowd. The trick is teaching him the roar is the tail, not the dog.”
“Good line,” Ford says, scribbling like he’s going to use it in a meeting.
“Don’t put that in a deck.”
He chuckles. “It’s already on slide eight.”
We watch Cash settle. He’s a talker in the chute—some boys are quiet, but mine mouths a little prayer made of cuss words and jokes until his body signs on to what his brain wants. When the gate bangs, he’s with the bull like he thought of the move first.He’s got a loose upper body and a tight core, which is how God intended cowboys to be made, and he milks the free-arm line for every tenth of a point he can find.
Blaze whoops loud enough to make the woman in front of us flinch. I let my grin show. Fathers should be allowed to look like fools in public when their boys do something right.
