Page 104 of The Wildest Ride

Twelve hours and thirty-five minutes later, long after the photos and publicity sessions, tears threatened to spill out Lil’s eyes in front of fifty thousand people.

Her bull, Terror Nuevo, a new-to-the-arena baby bull, had spun exactly twice, bucked halfheartedly a half-dozen times, and then otherwise done its well best to sabotage her ride. Well over halfway through her eight seconds, her form perfect, she knew there was no saving it. When you weren’t AJ Garza, the only thing to do about a sluggish and reluctant draw was to accept it.

After all her big words about women riding bulls for the PBRA and when she’d finally come to back up her words, the matter had been taken out of her hands.

She’d shown up battered and bruised, like a cowboy should be. Standing by sheer will after the first month of the tour, the shows, the challenges, the promos, all of it nonstop, she’d gotten on the back of this bull ready to end the debate once and for all.

The crowd cheered her, her bevy of girl fans ensuring the noise was right.

The lights were right—bright, hot, beaming down unforgiving truth on her ride—everything was right, except for the result.

Lil Sorrow, the PBRA’s first female rough stock champion was proving a fact long known in rodeo and just about every other arena of life: a cowboy could have all the skill in the world, could do it all right, but if that spark—that urgent wildness—wasn’t there, then nobody would be truly satisfied. Not the judges, not the people who paid money to feel their hearts race, and not Lil, with what was sure to be a lackluster score for her debut bull ride.

But the alignment of the stars wasn’t something that could be manufactured or forced, and the union of rider and draw was as much a matter of the stars aligning as love or any other kind of magic.

Her granddad had told her that countless times during her years in youth and college rodeo. Back then, however, there had been far less at stake. Back then she hadn’t been the barrier-busting, first-ever female rough stock rodeo champion. She didn’t have the weight of a thousand little girls watching her every move, praying for her to prove what the old-timers were so reluctant to believe: girls had try.

Well, it hadn’t happened tonight.

The buzzer had rung and she’d dismounted in a blur. Her score, in the seventies, rang out, and the audience made it sound like they didn’t mind the dull performance, but there was no cheering from her.

In the end, it had been a good thing her granddad hadn’t been there to watch. If he had been, he would have taken one look at her face and seen right to her railing heart, stiff and angry with the pain of having let them all down. And if he had been there and seen all of that in just a glance, understanding and compassion would have creased his face—with its square jaw, round nose, wide mouth, dark skin, and deep brown half-moon eyes—and she wouldn’t have been able to hold back the hot angry tears that chased all of her disappointments.

It was a struggle as it was, even with the threat of the mortification of being witnessed looming large.

Keeping her head down she tried to make her way through the gauntlet and straight back to the green room without being waylaid, but Sierra stepped into her path, high-beam smile cemented in place and aimed blindingly in Lil’s face. Blinking, both in the glare of Sierra’s shine and to ward off the evidence of her inner turmoil, Lil took a moment to focus on the other woman’s face, bracing for the usual undercurrent of aggression inevitably headed her way.

But Sierra surprised her. A quick flick of her big doe eyes was the only indicator that she’d scanned Lil and quickly summed up the situation. Without a change to her smile and as smooth as if it had always been her intent, she angled her body, brought an arm up to wrap around Lil’s shoulders and gave an imperceptibly light squeeze with her manicured hand as she did, saying to the camera, “Let’s hear it for Lil Sorrow, out here doing it for us girls!”

Knowing it was her cue, Lil forced the smile, only to realize with a start that the other woman had walked her the length of the gauntlet. With another comforting squeeze, Sierra set her free, ensuring that no one had the chance to pepper her with questions about her ride.

Lil didn’t waste the other woman’s gift, making her way quickly down the hall to the green room like there was fire behind her.

She was still there, pacing back and forth in front of the refrigerator, when AJ found her.

The door had hardly closed behind him before she burst out with, “He might as well have been goddamn Ferdinand the Bull!”

AJ raised his hands, palms up, his expression a mixture of smile and fear, and asked, “Who’s Ferdinand?”

She didn’t blame him. She was being ridiculous. How many times had her granddad reminded her that the luck of the draw was always her invisible partner in the arena? It couldn’t be everywhere all the time, and tonight it hadn’t been with her.

“Ferdinand is a bull who likes to smell flowers,” she said, to which AJ looked even more confused.

“Terror Nuevo didn’t seem particularly interested in flowers,” he said.

Lil exhaled and counted to ten. Another surge of anger that was really disappointment bubbled up in her gorge. She breathed that one out, too.

She understood the Closed Circuit’s logic behind using young, untried bulls for the first round of bull riding. Every now and then an untried bull, overwhelmed by the situation, went crazy, giving a cowboy the ride of their life. For the show tonight, it had worked that way for about half the contestants—golden child AJ included. But the other half of the contestants, the group Lil ended the night in, got scared baby bulls that were more interested in freezing than bucking or turning.

Her granddad’s voice repeated in her head, with growing sternness:luck of the draw.

And finally they penetrated her anger, dissolving it of its steam, leaving her with shame. She stopped pacing and sighed, going to sit beside AJ. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against his.

After a moment, he said quietly, “I’m sorry, Lil.”

A hot tear escaped the corner of her eye, but she didn’t wipe at it. Voice thickening, she said, “It’s okay.”

He kissed the top of her head. “It sucks.”

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