Page 89 of The Wildest Ride

Lil’s laugh bubbled out like she couldn’t help herself. “Run a ranch.”

“The ‘all work and no play’ type, then?”

Lil’s eyebrows drew together. “I know how to have a good time.”

“Is that so? All it seems I’ve heard about is work and more work. What do you do for fun?”

Lil thought for a moment before replying, “I ride my horse.”

“Alone?”

She nodded.

“Do you ever go out?”

“You mean to bars and the like?”

“And the like,” he said dryly.

She shook her head. She explained, “I’ve lost people to drugs and alcohol. A bar’s not typically my scene.”

“That doesn’t have to keep you from going out,” he pointed out.

“Bars are the only place to go out in Muskogee.”

“You don’t have longtime girlfriends you drink wine with? You strike me as the kind who’d have two best friends she’s known since childhood.”

“How’d you come by that?” she asked with a laugh.

“You’re covered in that homegrown country girl thing. Usually comes with the territory.”

Lil laughed, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t. A combo of not having many neighbors and not having much in common with my fellow homegrown country girls. They were more interested in winning crowns than buckles. Our paths didn’t cross much.”

“But you did go to school, though?”

Lil rolled her eyes. “Rather than take offense, I’ll just write that question off as city-boy rudeness...”

AJ laughed. “So why no lifelong school friends?”

“I do have two friends now, you know. Good ones. I just haven’t known them since back in school. Back then, I suspect my lack of friends was due to the same reason that your own best friend is from CityBoyz.”

“Rodeo,” he said.

He knew it even as he realized he’d known before he ever asked her the question in the first place.

Rodeo, real passion for it, didn’t leave much room for friends—especially non-rodeo friends. To be close, people had to be willing to travel long dusty roads at your side, or be comfortable with your absence. Middle schoolers and high schoolers weren’t particularly known for being comfortable with anything, let alone the complications of long-distance friendships.

She had people in her life now, though.

“So you work and ride your horse?”

“And sign up for harebrained rodeo contests in my spare time.”

“The simple life.”

She laughed, “Yeah. It’s the simple life, alright. Riding bulls by night and chasing cows by day.”

AJ grinned. “What more could you ask for?”

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