Page 18 of The Wildest Ride

Tickled surprise filled the girl’s voice when she finally spoke. “So crazy! That’s really your name. We thought it was some kind of stage name or something.” She handed the license back without another glance at it and twisted around in her seat to pull a stapled stack of paper out of a box behind her. She trailed her finger down the list of names and, after a few pages, found Lil’s name and put a checkmark by it.

That done, the girl returned to rummaging through the box until she pulled out an envelope. On top of it was a crisp set of contestant numbers.

A thrill ran up Lil’s spine.

At sixteen it had been her greatest dream to be the first woman to win a PBRA championship buckle. She had given up on that dream, but the feeling that rose in her on seeing those large black numbers printed on the thick wax-coated paper made her realize it hadn’t really ever died.

The registration girl leaned forward with a clipboard. “I need you to sign here, here, here, on this page, this page, and this one. Then please initial each of these statements before signing here.”

Lil got to work with the pen, but stopped when someone slammed their palm against the table to her left.

A few feet away, Hank DeRoy stood in front of a trembling teenager, his palm flat and white-knuckled against the table.

“It’s ridiculous that I even have to put up with this like some kind of nobody. This place is more circus than circuit.” The arrogance in his tone was topped only by the angle of his nose in the air. Three shorter men made a ring around his back. They all laughed, which was the whole reason they were there.

Lil ground her teeth. This kind of nonsense was all too familiar, as well.

The rodeo veteran towered over the redheaded green-shirted teenager who huddled in her chair, her long ponytail shaking.

The girl held her ground, though, saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. DeRoy, but you have to wait in line like everyone else. That mob would kill me if I let you cut.” Keeping her arms close to her body, she pointed to the line of scowling cowboys.

Her braces caught the glint of the stadium lights. She had light green rubber bands.

DeRoy smirked. “You think I’m afraid of a few no-name cowboys?”

A low growl slipped out of Lil’s lips. It was too quiet for anyone else to hear, a private sign of her temper breaking its dam.

When she spoke, her voice was as low and raspy as it always was. “The young lady saidshewas scared of them—the gentlemanly thing to do is respect that.”

A hush took root in the space between Lil and Hank, quickly spreading to a ten-foot radius around them.

Hank’s smile twisted into a sneer as he turned to fully face Lil. “Well, what have we here?”

What Lil had was the complete focus of DeRoy, his three amigos, the girls at the registration table, and the cowboys behind them in line.

So much for keeping a low profile, she thought.

After a pretend pause for thought, one of his cronies lifted his knee to slap his thigh. “I got it, boss!”

Here we go, Lil thought. Insults that needed physical punctuation tended to blow their load early...

“We got ourselves an honest-to-God prairie n*****.”

The hush around them became the quiet of the grave. Then it turned into a rippled murmur. Like a skipping stone, all around Lil whispers of the insult spread through the gathered crowd, hopping from one group to the next, travelling far and fast before sinking hard in the ears of a burly pair whose green Closed Circuit T-shirts had the word SECURITY emblazoned on them. Making their way to where the three of them stood, they stopped next to a kid and the bigger of the two crouched down beside them. After a quiet consultation, the child pointed to Hank’s lackey and then the guard rose to join their partner. Both of them walked with long calm strides toward the lackey, who, of course, attempted to run. The crowd didn’t let him, though, and after a brief struggle in which the lackey ridiculously tried to crawl between a security guard’s legs to escape, losing his hat in the process, they gathered him up and carried him away while the crowd watched.

When they were out of sight, Hank laughed, shaking his head and tipping his hat in the direction of his fallen crony. “And that, my friends, is what I call affirmative action in action.”

The blood drained from Lil’s face. A strange, foamy, roar filled her ears and the storm clouds of her eyes glinted like hard flint.

Oddly, her granddad’s wisdom went strangely silent in the moment. Instead, it was Piper’s voice that filled her mind, an image of the redhead standing in her safari boots, hands on her hips, saying,Oh, it’s on now!

Lil’s hand inched closer to the rope at her hip. DeRoy missed the motion. He was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. He thought he was real funny...

Her fingertips grazed rope and the corded smoothness of its surface brought with it a different voice, her granddad’s.

Whatever it is, Lilian, save it for the ride.

The caution wasn’t enough to stop her, not after he’d mocked the first time she’d seen that kind of justice served in an event like this, but it was enough to change her plans: instead of taking his feet out from under him like she wanted to, she merely knocked his hat off his head.

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