Page 36 of The Wildest Ride

The signs he wasn’t getting any younger.

Fortunately, with age came good sense. He was past both the age and income bracket where he should have to tolerate discomfort.

And Winnie, as he’d begun calling the RV, was damn comfortable to drive.

The driver’s seat sat high and plush with the kind of view that made you feel like the king of the road. Adjustable armrests and an ideally positioned steering wheel meant long stretches of driving remained gentle on the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. He appreciated that on a day when he had an event, particularly as tonight’s rodeo was dedicated to roping and wrestling.

The Closed Circuit officially kicked off with a demonstration of the basic ranch skills that were the seeds of rodeo: steer wrestling and tie-down roping. But to make sure the folks of Dallas didn’t go home feeling like they’d been cheated out of a real show, the Closed Circuit was upping the ante.

Every cowboy was going to do both events in the classic rodeo style. For wrestling, that meant cowboy in the box, calf behind the rope, hazer helping out. For roping, it would be just cowboy and calf.

After that, things got creative. For the second round of wrestling, each cowboy would have to do it without a hazer. For the second round of roping, the Closed Circuit had created a ranch simulation with one cowboy, seven calves, and one goal: rope your mark just like you’d have to out on the range.

Contestants would be given two hours for practice in the arena before the space was cleared out to prepare for the show, but there would be no time to practice with multiple calves.

The exercise was a first, like just about everything else about the Closed Circuit, so nobody had an advantage on that front—but any cowboy that had ever worked a real ranch damn sure had a leg up.

AJ hadn’t worked on a ranch a single day in his life.

Although he’d finally shed his gym rat label after his third championship, the rub hadn’t become any less applicable. AJ might be the greatest rodeo cowboy in a generation, but he’d learned everything he knew in a downtown Houston gym.

As the son of two teachers, rodeo wasn’t exactly in his blood.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. His father came from multiple proud Tejano lines—all of them Texans longer than Texas.

There’d been more than a few cowboys in that ancestry.

But his mom had been born and raised in Houston’s third ward, as her parents had been before her. There hadn’t been a cowboy or a farmer in that family line since 1865.

And if things hadn’t gone so wrong with his dad, he’d never have discovered rodeo himself. Blessings disguised as tragedies.

Ahead of him in the caravan—the driving order of which reflected the Closed Circuit standings—Lil Sorrow’s RV signaled and turned left onto the off-ramp. They’d arrive at the arena in another fifteen minutes.

Two and a half hours later, AJ lay in the soft dirt of the arena grounds, grinning like a fool. The calf he’d been practicing with gave a moo, and he quickly untied her. The greenie timing him called out three-point-nine seconds, and his grin stretched wider. Six attempts, and all of them under four seconds—that meant a certain shorty’s days in that first-place RV were numbered...

Around him, other contestants practiced to a symphony of shouted advice. As usual, a few coaches had approached AJ, but, as usual, he’d declined their assistance.

He worked with The Old Man, or alone.

It wasn’t just because he was loyal, though that was true, as well. He’d just learned a long time ago not to trust every helping hand that came his way, and he’d learned it just like he learned everything else: the hard way, at the rodeo.

Whether it was cowboys trying to sabotage the competition or sweet little bunnies that wanted to get a little closer to his money, jackals had been sniffing around him since back in the days when he’d still been called an up-and-comer.

It was hard to keep your money a secret when you made it in front of audiences of thousands. He wouldn’t have it any other way, though. Rodeo had saved his life.

After his dad moved out, he’d been a wreck. Literally. He’d wanted to wreck everything, and he had.

He started with his bike. Red, with chrome accents, it had thick, high-tread tires and straight handlebars. It was a grown-up bike, not just a kid’s neighborhood bike, but also a bike he could take with him when they went camping in the desert. In his head, he’d named it Stallion, though at twelve, he’d never have in a million years admitted that out loud. He and his dad had spent his whole birthday putting it together, and he hadn’t resented a second of the time. He took it with them camping two years in a row. The second time, at thirteen and with no idea what was coming, he’d ridden the bike out farther than he’d ever gone from camp.

He’d brought a flashlight and a telescope. He’d used only the telescope. The moonlight had been enough to ride by. He made it back to camp to find his mom and dad sitting at opposite sides of the fire, looking up at the stars. They’d smiled and asked what he’d seen. He’d told them the constellations he’d seen, and when they got home, they told him they were getting a divorce.

A week after that, he found the tallest hill in Houston that also had railroad tracks at its base. The requirements were oddly specific, but so was his intent. He waited for two hours and then let go. The train’s horn had been shrill and urgent, but not enough to save the bike.

A light tap on his shoulder shook him from the memory. A young man in a green shirt stood above him, shifting his weight from side to side.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garza. Practice time is over. We’ve got to clear the arena now.”

AJ rose to his feet, head swiveling around. The arena had cleared out to just him and a handful of staff while he’d been lost in thought.

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