Page 7 of Moon Blind Hearts
She shrugs. “Everyone deserves to be a cowboy in cowboy country. West Texas isn’t any different when you’re around the big ranches out there.” At my look, she stops her spoon halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“You spend a lot of time in West Texas on ranches?” I ask casually, reaching for the apple Ratrick had been chewing on and tossing it in the trash.
Ivy seems to realize her mistake and narrows her eyes. “Nope. Never been. Just something I heard.” She plops the peanut butter jar on the counter. “Anyways, I gotta pack my clothes. Catch you later.”
And then she leaves me there to wonder about what sort of past she has back in West Texas, and how long it’ll take before she slips information out again.
Chapter 4
Jules
I scroll through The Velvet Rodeo website, looking at all their options and the content I can see without subscribing. It’s incredibly professional, like someone who knows about website design built it, and I’m impressed. There are no pictures of their faces on the actual website, just classy photos with their cowboy hats or baseball caps pulled over their eyes, giving it all a teasing quality that’s actually genius. I haven’t seen many cam boys pull off this air of mystery so well, let alone a group of men in it together. And the name, “Velvet Rodeo”? Fucking phenomenal. They’ve been around for less than a year and already making a huge name for themselves. They’re already at nearly three hundred thousand subscribers in such a short time. That doesn’t happen without actual work.
Bonnie is currently driving, her eyes on the road as she hums along to the song on the radio. Every now and then I flash her a picture of one of the guys and she whistles and says something like, “the good lord blessed that one.”
I don’t disagree. These three men are all wildly different just from their pictures and yet each of them is still just as sexy. It’s like they purposely chose every aesthetic that would appeal to women and represented it. I’ll be disappointed if it isn’t actually their personalities and it’s just for the camera. It could very well be a front. Just like mine is.
“I’m gonna subscribe and see what I can unlock,” I tell Bonnie. “See what we’re working with.”
“I know that’s right,” Bonnie says with a grin. “You gonna show me the good stuff or hoard it all to yourself?”
“I’ll show you.” I glance in the back seat where it’s quiet and see Ivy sleeping. She’s the worst at road trips, passing out after the first hour and sleeping most of the way. I’ll have to show her the content later. Scrolling down, I hit the “subscribe” button and enter in my card information. Within a few minutes, I’ve unlocked the highest tier of their platform and my god, is it glorious.
“Wow,” I breathe, watching the short previews of the top videos. “Damn, they’re good.”
“How good?” Bonnie asks. “Don’t keep this old crone waiting!”
I flick the phone toward her. “Like really good.”
Bonnie’s eyes bug out before she remembers she’s supposed to be driving and jerks her gaze back to the road. But she flicks back and forth a few times. “Oh, he’s very blessed,” she says, her face turning red. “Phew. I’m gonna need you to turn up the A.C.”
Laughing, I flick the temperature controls before scrolling again. “They’re gonna be big soon whether they want to be or not,” I say as I scroll. With content like this, they’re well on their way to infamy in a way I haven’t seen in a long time. It helps they’re in an underserved niche. Women like cowboys. That’s just a matter of fact. Multiply that by three with talent like this? It’s a winning combination.
“Seems they wanna be if they reached out to work with you,” Bonnie points out.
I shrug. “I appreciate the confidence it took to do that. They have clear growth and trajectory, but there are a lot of creators who wouldn’t even respond to their emails at my level. I personally think they have a lot of talent?—”
“Damn right they do,” Bonnie says with a furious nod.
“So, I think this is going to work out well. It brings my subscribers something new and it opens up other avenues. Besides, I think my subscribers will eat up the goth aesthetic meeting a cowboy one.”
“Oh, they’re gonna eat it up,” Bonnie agrees. “If I wasn’t busy taking care of all your business, I might have subscribed myself.”
“You still can,” I reason.
“Nope. That’s weird. I’ll be sure to avoid any of the content that has you in it because you’re practically my daughter at this point,” Bonnie says, laughing. “Things get weird fast when I start to think things through.”
I wince, thinking about how weird it might actually be for something like that. “You’re not wrong.”
Bonnie nods and turns down the radio a little bit more. “So how exactly are we going to handle all this?” she asks, looking in the rearview mirror. “Have you told them about?—”
“Nope,” I interrupt. “I’ve got things covered. It’s none of their business what I’ll be doing outside our collaboration as long as I’m not causing any trouble. And that’s why I’m bringing you anyways. You’re literally my lifesaver.”
Bonnie flushes. “Nonsense. You’d figure it out without me, Jules. I know you would.”
“Good thing I don’t have to,” I sigh. I flip through the photos and land on a particularly raunchy photo of one of the guys pouring milk down his body. “Oh, man. Look at this one!”
Bonnie laughs. “You know what I’m gonna say.”
