by Vicki Tharp
She nodded once, her throat too tight to speak.
The smile slid from his lips as he worked the tail end of the rope around his hand and settled on top of the bull. He gave a quick, tight nod and the chute opened.
* * *
She loves me.
For the first time since he’d climbed on the back of a bull as a lanky kid, the adrenaline that hit him had absolutely nothing to do with the upcoming ride. His vision cleared, his constant headache dulled, and the thump of his heart in his chest beat for one reason.
Josephine.
But he had a job to do, and a bull’s rideless record to break.
Silas gave a quick, tight nod and the chute opened.
For once he had no sense of time, his internal clock never started. All he saw was the blur of the stands, the shouting and clapping and stomping was so loud it shocked his eardrums into silence. Thrasher spun to the left then spun to the right, then twisted and turned. Silas held on as if his life depended on it, and in this case, with this bull, it did.
He wasn’t going home in a body bag. He was going home with Josephine.
The sound of the buzzer came quick. He freed his hand and jumped clear of the bull.
Silas’s feet hit the ground and he sunk to his knees, the eruption of cheers from the stands drowning out all other sound.
He’d done it.
He’d ridden an unrideable bull.
As he went to get up, he stumbled. One of the gateman ran over and helped him to safely to the chutes while the bullfighters dealt with the bull. He climbed over and almost fell to his knees on the other side. The other bull riders thumped him on his back, congratulating him. They thought he was overwhelmed with emotion, but something was wrong. Very wrong.
Someone found a folding chair and dumped him in it, but all he wanted to do was find Josephine. He grabbed onto the rails, his legs steadier now, despite the relentless pounding in his head.
He hadn’t made it five steps from the chute area when a reporter, a camera guy, and Maynard rushed toward him.
“Silas,” the reporter said, “How’s it feel to be the first one to ride Thrasher to the buzzer, and with a personal best score to boot?”
He hadn’t seen the score. Personal best? Hot damn.
Another reporter showed up, with another cameraman. Maynard wedged himself beside Silas as if he were the one who’d beaten the beast.
The interviews dragged on and on. He and Josephine were supposed to meet after his ride. He didn’t have the time or the patience for all the publicity and chatter. He tried to excuse himself, but Maynard caught a hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “You stay until they’re finished, or you never ride in one of my rodeo’s again.”
He wanted to tell Maynard to go screw himself, but they both knew that he couldn’t do that. If he won the night, that check would go a long way to putting money down on a pretty piece of land. But it wouldn’t be enough.
Silas had to wonder if it would ever be.
* * *
After the interviews, Silas had to hang around because as it turned out, his personal best was enough to win the buckle and the fat check. From one of the other bull rider’s with a barrel racer girlfriend, he’d heard about Josephine’s five-second penalty.
Why hadn’t she said anything before?
Maybe because you were about to go on a suicide ride?
She had to have been devastated, but she still should have told him.
For that matter, where the hell was she? Was she avoiding him?
I love you.
No. Josephine wasn’t avoiding him. Those three little words hadn’t been his mind playing tricks. She’d said them to him. He had witnesses.
He stormed through the barn, making a beeline for Comet’s stall. If she were anywhere, it would be there.
Down the aisles, he had to dodge ropers, barrel racers, and bulldoggers as they gathered their gear and loaded their horses.
Comet’s stall door was open, and the horse lifted his head from his hay net when Silas walked in. Josephine wasn’t in the stall, but she had to be close, you didn’t just leave a horse tied in a stall with the door open.
He settled on her tack locker in front of her stall to wait her out. The lazy munching and grinding of hay as Comet ate, lulled him. He must have dozed off, because he woke when Chet tapped the locker with the toe of his boot.
“If you’re waiting for Josephine, she’s not here,” Chet said.
Silas fought to open his eyes. He adjusted his hat to cut the glare of the harsh barn lights. “Where is she.”
“Gone.”
Gone. Silas stood, and Chet tossed Comet’s grooming bucket and bridle into the tack locker. Silas tried to digest the meaning of the word, but he didn’t know if the word was incomprehensible or if his brain was muddied from his nap.
“What does that mean?” Silas sounded simple and slow minded, and he still had a slight slur.
Chet untied the hay net. Comet strained on the end of his lead rope, his lips extended to pull one last bite of hay out of the net. Chet hitched it over his shoulder and tossed it on top of the locker. “Gone. As in left. As in she went home.”
“And you didn’t try to stop her?”
“That’s not my job.” Chet grabbed a manure fork and wheelbarrow and started mucking out Comet’s stall.
Why would Josephine leave? Silas paced to the next stall and back again. They had plans to meet after. They were going to talk and make things right.
But she’d never promised.
Silas pinched the bridge of his nose, but it did nothing to stave off an impending migraine. “Tell me exactly what she said.”
Chet leaned against the manure fork with both hands. “She said ‘take care of Comet, I’m going home.’”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, man. That’s it.” With a shrug, Chet went back to mucking. He scooped a pile, shook out the shavings, then dumped the manure into the wheelbarrow. “Do you want my advice?”
Fuck. He couldn’t believe he was going to say this. “Yes.”
“Let her go. You had your fun. Now it’s over.”
“You’re just saying that because you want her for yourself.”
“Says the man who wants her for himself.” A guess, but from the pinched expression on Chet’s face, not a wild one.
“Doesn’t matter what I want,” Chet said. Silas gave him points for honesty. “It only matters what she wants. Apparently, that’s not you.”
“She loves me.” Silas laughed at himself, knowing how desperate, how pathetic, it made him sound.
“Not enough to stay.” Chet set the manure fork aside and picked up the handles of the full wheelbarrow. “I’ve got work to do.”
Silas blocked Chet’s path out of the stall. “Give me her number.”
“Cox won’t want you calling.”
“Let me worry about Cox.”
It was like pulling teeth out of a saber-toothed tiger, but Silas got the number from a begrudging Chet. Silas scrounged through Josephine’s locker, found a pen and an old envelope, and wrote the number down. He didn’t trust something that important to his memory.
On his way out of the barn, he passed by Chet as the man dumped the manure into the bucket of a front-end loader. “Take good care of Comet.”
Chet sighed. Silas had that coming. “That is my job. I know how to do it.”
Back at his camper, Silas packed his gear with practiced efficiency. Which pretty much meant he threw his rig bag on the bed, made sure there were no bottles or other breakables that would roll off the counters, and locked the back of the camper.
Everything in his body screamed for him to head south to Texas and Josephine, but he headed west instead, back to Salinas, back to Toby. It wasn’t that he was giving up on Josephine.
That would never happen.
But he couldn’t leave Toby hanging. Silas had to see with his own eyes that Toby was okay, then he could throw himself one hundred perc
ent into winning Josephine over.
But before that, he had a number to call and a winning check to cash.
* * *
The endless ribbon of highway stretched out in front of his windshield, a monotonous series of headlights and small towns, and a bag full of more cash than he’d ever seen in his entire life beside him.
Despite almost nodding off a couple of times, he only stopped for gas and coffee and to take a piss. Not necessarily in that order.
He slipped his sunglasses on his face, even though it had been dark for hours, but the headlights and streetlights through the towns blinded him and sent pain shooting to the back of his eyes. The sunglasses helped. Some.
Sometime before dawn, he pulled into the parking lot of Toby’s hospital in Salinas. He poured himself out of the truck, catching his balance on stiff, creaky, legs. He took a step and stretched his arms over his head, then a blinding, searing, brain-melting pain erupted behind his eyes. A strangled cry ripped from his throat as the pain encompassed his entire head. His stomach roiled, and he latched onto his truck’s side mirror to keep from falling to his knees.
His stomach heaved again, and he tossed up the last two pots of coffee he’d used as fuel on the drive down. He pulled himself to his feet, his legs wobbly, his stomach unsettled. Toward the emergency room doors, he staggered. The doors swished open automatically, and he stumbled through.
He lurched to the reception desk, looking for a trash can in case his stomach revolted again. “I’m here t—”
Pain, hot, excruciating clamped down on his head. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets to hold the agony at bay. “I’m here to see—”
Then his vision went black, his legs buckled, and the floor sucker punched him in the face.
* * *
Since she’d been back home, Josephine had looked forward each day to getting her mother on Comet. It was the closest she’d been to riding since Cheyenne.
Each day her mother was getting stronger, thanks to Comet. At first, her mother couldn’t stay in the saddle without Chet on one side of the horse and Josephine on the other, each with a hand on her mother’s hip, keeping her centered, and even then, it was only for a few minutes at a time. Now her mother could stay in the saddle by herself and had worked her time in the saddle up to thirty minutes or more.
With infinite patience, Comet stood beside the mounting platform Chet had built so Josephine’s mother could climb into the saddle. It was still slow going getting her mother to grip the horn and lift her leg over the cantle of the big western saddle. When her mother was situated, Josephine fed her mother’s feet into the stirrups and led Comet out of the arena and past the big red barn.
“You sure this is a good idea?” Her mother looked closer to sixty than her forty-five years. The skin around her neck sagged from the rapid loss of weight, and her muscle tone had deteriorated to the point where walking and doing for herself, though improving, was a daily struggle.
Josephine stopped and glanced back at her mother. “We can stay in the arena if you want, but aren’t you tired of walking in circles? Comet won’t take a wrong step, I promise you.”
Today they were going to push her mother’s endurance a little farther and head out to the pond. There were gentle ups and downs and uneven terrain along the way, but Josephine knew her mother could do it, and Comet could use the exercise himself. Josephine had little hope of being able to leave for the fall circuit, but if by some miracle she could, they’d never win if Comet lost all his condition.
Josephine led Comet for her mother. It took them twenty minutes to get to the pond, a ride that should have taken ten at a normal walk. Comet dipped his toes in the water and leaned down for a drink. He hadn’t broken a sweat, but late August in the Texas Hill Country was hot, even when the morning sun wasn’t high.
“Monte Shaw called this morning,” her mother said. “He thought maybe you would want to go to the diner for lunch tomorrow.”
“Mooom,” Josephine warned. “I’m not going out with Monte Shaw. We’ve been over this. Why is he calling and talking to you instead of me anyway? Who does that?”
“Probably because you won’t take his calls. I don’t see why you won’t go. He’s a decent enough man, and you could do a whole lot worse than—”
“Decent enough? Since when has a Shaw ever been decent enough for this family?” Josephine’s pitch climbed with her incredulity. “Do you hear yourself?”
Her mother didn’t say anything. Comet twitched an ear in her direction, but otherwise kept munching on the weeds along the pond’s shoreline. “And even if there wasn’t that inane feud between Dad and Monte’s father, I’m not settling for decent enough.”
Not when she’d had much better.
Not when she’d had Silas.
But she’d blown that.
Even if Silas could ever forgive her for running out on him, even if she wanted to apologize, she had no way of getting in touch with him. She didn’t have his number, and she hadn’t been able to find it through information, and yeah, she’d called. More than once.
“At this point, you should consider yourself lucky that Monte is even interested.”
“What are you saying, mother? Just because I’m not a virgin anymore doesn’t make me a leper. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds.”
“Don’t talk like that. Against our better judgment, we let you go. You sowed your oats. You went out in the world and got that nonsense out of your system. We supported—”
“Whoa,” Josephine said it with enough force that Comet froze mid graze. She scratched him on the shoulder, and he went back to his snack. “I supported myself. You and dad gave me nothing, not a penny, not even a blessing.”
“We sent Chet.”
“I didn’t need a spy.”
“He wasn’t a spy.”
Josephine let her arms flop at her sides. “Fine. A babysitter then.”
“Well, you can’t waste your life on a bull rider. You’re better than that.”
“Monte rides bulls, Mom. Or hadn’t you noticed.”
“But his family has money. When he inherits his father’s land—”
Josephine huffed out a bitter laugh. “I can’t believe you just said that. So this is about money, about dad expanding the ranch. Not about my happiness. You married a bull rider. One with no money. Or have you conveniently forgotten that part?” She held her arms out indicating the whole ranch. “Seemed to have worked out for you.”
“That’s different.”
“No, mom. It’s not.”
“T-They’ll break your heart.” Her mother settled her hat lower on her head. Tears didn’t fall, but Josephine suspected they were close. Sometimes her mother was a hard woman to love, but Josephine loved her anyway.
“Mom,” Josephine stepped closer and rubbed her hand on her mother’s leg, softening her voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” Her mother sniffed and sat up straighter. “It was a long time ago. I’m tired. Take me back.”
Her mother gave Comet’s reins a light tug even though Josephine had control with the lead rope. Josephine clucked to him, and Comet took one last bite before following.
On the walk back, Josephine's thoughts spun with what her mother had alluded to. Had her father cheated? Worse? But when she looked over her shoulder to ask more questions, her mother had that firm set to her lips and that far off look she sometimes got in her eye. Josephine wouldn’t be getting any answers today, and most likely, ever.
“How about Chet,” Josephine said, more as a joke as anything else. Even though she’d known him all her life, sometimes she got the impression he might have feelings for her.
“That’s not even funny.” Her mother’s voice was cold enough to refreeze the polar ice caps and relaunch a new ice age. “Did that man ever touch—”
“No, Mom. He’s never touched me.” Her mother’s demeanor sent a ripple up Josephine’s spine. “He wouldn’t. Dad treats him like a s
on.”
The way her mother’s mouth screwed up and her lip curled, her mother would have spit if she were less of a lady. Josephine turned back around. They didn’t talk the rest of the way back.
When they returned to the arena, Chet helped her mother off the horse, but the proud woman refused help back to the house. Instead, insisting on using her walker instead of the wheelchair that Chet had brought out for her.
“I’ll cool him out,” Chet said, talking about Comet.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got him.”
“Fair enough.” Chet headed to the barn.
When he’d made it to the arena gate, she asked something she’d always wanted to know. “Chet?”
He stopped and turned.
“Did Silas really come looking for me after the rodeo?”
He released the gate lever and returned to her. “He did.”
“Okay.” Her gut caved, feeling like she’d come out on the losing end of a knockout round of boxing. Even though her throat had gone tight, she still had more to say and forced the words out, not caring that her voice would tremble or that she would sound a little desperate. She was. No point in hiding the truth. “I really miss him.”
Chet removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else but there. “Look, I never told you this, but that night after the rodeo, he asked for your number. It’s been over a month. Don’t you think if he’d been serious, he’d have called you?” Chet took a step closer, his calloused thumb brushing a lazy trail down her cheek. “I would have.”
What? His gaze grew dark, serious, and she saw something there she’d never seen before. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Chet dropped his hand and took a step back. “Forget him, Josephine. Trust me, if you’d meant anything at all to him, he would have called.”
Which only made Josephine wonder, had Silas called? Would her mother or father have told her if he had? Her stomach went wonky as if it didn’t know if it should drop with dread or slap a high-five of hope.