Page 36 of Sexting the Cowboy
10
BRICK
The gate bangsand the world narrows to breath, hide, and the thin rope in my fist.
He fires out of the chute like a bottle rocket and the crowd turns into one big hot sound. He goes left, exactly like I figured he would, shouldering down, humping the air mean and stiff. I meet him there with my hips and keep my chest proud, free arm drawing the shape of my answer. He’s got a hitch on the third jump—little fake-right he throws at boys who don’t know better—and I ride through it with the kind of patience you can’t teach, only earn.
Four seconds. Five. I can hear his lungs and my name braided together in the announcer’s mouth. He corkscrews just enough to see if I’ll blink. I don’t. I’m not twenty and bulletproof anymore, but I am what happens to bulletproof when it learns to think.
Seven.
The horn splits the air at eight and I’m still with him, still where I meant to be. Ten, thirteen, and I peel off clean. Boots kiss dirt, legs steady, and I tip my hat like the old-fashioned ham I am.
The pickup man swings by and taps my shoulder with a grin big as Montana. The scoreboard coughs up a number that tastes like payday and pride both. Not just good. Showy good. The kind that reminds a crowd their favorite silver fox ain’t shaving the gray to pretend.
My blood is singing, like a river rushing with fresh snowmelt.
I jog the long way along the fence because my legs want to move. Boys clap my back with the easy respect of people who adore you. Somebody yells something about teaching clinics and I bark a laugh I can’t help. Not happening anytime soon.
Ford finds me before I hit the lane to the trailers, moving fast like he’ll get fined if he doesn’t congratulate me within thirty seconds.
“Knew it,” he says, grinning hard enough to crack his hair gel. “Knew there was fight in the old dog.”
“Experience beats being too dumb to know better,” I tell him, still riding the shape of the bull in my muscles. “Twenty-year-old me would’ve bought that fake and kissed the rail. Forty-something me lets him perform his little theater and stays paid.”
“Preach.” He claps my shoulder, a staccato of pride and calculation. “Sponsors will love this. You can do a lap with a smile and shake hands without a sling. Take a shower. I’ll text you the postgame glad-handing, but you’ve got a few hours to breathe. Kids aren’t up, so go wash the dust off and remember you like your job.”
“I never forgot.” I squeeze his forearm. “Go tell the money men I’m still photogenic.”
He laughs and peels off toward the committee booth, already on the phone with someone who buys ad space. I cut through the vendor alley, past a cotton candy machine sighing blue sugar, past a kid with his hat too big using both hands to hold a corn dog like it’s a lightsaber. The noise changes as I leave the grandstands—less roar, more hum—and the smell shifts from adrenaline to kettle corn and diesel, which is just a different kind of rodeo perfume.
My trailer sits in the row by the stock rigs. Home away from home. Not that I go back all that often. My Colorado ranch is managed by my sister, Daisy, and I thank God every day I don’t have to run the show there too. She’s content to live in our grandmother’s old cottage on the property and handle our family herd without too much complaint and zero oversight.
I shoulder the trailer door open, kick the boots off, and shed the vest and shirt in two practiced shucks. Dust falls out of everything like salt. My right shoulder pops the way it always pops after a good one, not a complaint so much as an old friend clearing his throat.
The hot water comes up fast in this unit—the only part of it that feels like a luxury—and the steam throws a clean curtain over the grit. I scrub until my skin feels like it belongs to me again. The bull is still under my hands, an echo in muscle memory, a pleasant ache. I soap my hair and rinse until the water runs clear.
I stand there in the quiet a little longer than I need to, letting the thrum in my veins settle into something that feels like a settled horse. Good run. Hell of a run. Been a minute since I paintedthe air like that and meant it. There’s a taste to nights like this—something like metal and something like laughter—and it makes me twenty-two again for a few heartbeats, when the money got real and the first buckle felt too heavy on my belt.
I twist the knobs off and step out, water ticking off my shoulders to the mat. Towel around my waist. The mirror’s fogged and I’m glad. I don’t need to see the map of years on my body to know the routes by heart. I can pretend to be twenty-two a little while longer.
Knock-knock.
I freeze. Not the scared kind. The curious kind. Folks don’t come to a trailer row by accident. I knot the towel tight, sweep a hand through my hair, and pad to the door. No peephole, unfortunately, so I crack the door open enough to see who’s there.
Annie stands, shoulders bright in the low light, eyes steady. Her hair’s back in a no-nonsense tie, but one curl has mutinied and fallen toward her cheek. She’s in jeans and a simple top that makes the rest of the world look overdressed. She’s holding nothing in her hands, like she came on purpose with only the thing she meant to say. My breath stops.
“Hey, sorry to bother you,” she says, and her voice has that careful layer I’ve learned means there’s more to this than she’ll admit. “I—just wanted to say congratulations. That was…that was a beautiful ride.”
The compliment barely registers. The blood rushes through me faster than a bullet train. “Come in,” I say, because I don’t trust the other riders to keep a secret and I don’t trust myself not tolean too close to her where other eyes can guess. I step back. She follows. I shut the door with a soft latched click.
For a second we just stand there and listen to the little noises that mean a trailer’s alive—AC humming, water settling in pipes, the tick-tick of cooling metal. She looks at the towel, one eyebrow a question, and I huff a laugh.
“Sorry. You caught me mid-civilization.”
“I noticed.” Her mouth curves even as her eyes try to stay serious. But they keep dipping downward. “Hazards of the job. My timing’s terrible tonight.”
“Your timing is perfect.” I motion to the sofa. She doesn’t sit. She’s not here to rest. She’s here to leap or run, and she hasn’t decided which.
