“Fuck,” I repeat, chasing her through the next four turns but not really trying to catch her anymore. Mason’s half the track back on his Blue Gator bike, and when I pull off to where Frank and my father are standing, Lorelai laps him.
“Go, go, go!” Frank yells, jogging a little down the track to keep cheering her on.
“The fuck are you doing out there?” my father snaps at me.
I rip off my helmet, wiping sweat from my head. The cold wind hits my face and helps a little, but I’m still soaked through my shirt underneath my leathers.
“You’re late off the grid, you’re braking early, and you just let her bully you out of the damn apex!”
I grit my teeth and try to keep my temper in check, everything in me still in fight mode after battling Lorelai on the track for the last damn week. Christ, I was a World Champion last season. I know what I’m fucking doing out there. But I guess he’s the only one who’s allowed to have a bad day.
My father gets in my face, the rim of his Stetson hitting my temple and his shoulders towering over where I’m sitting lower on the motorcycle. “Hey! You listening to me, boy? Or should I go ahead and pull your brother off the track and let him ride your damn bike since you don’t seem capable of it?”
That’s fucking it.
I shove myself off my bike, my pulse screaming and my teeth grinding together as I stride toward the pit box. I need water and a shower and a long phone call with Taryn where I tell her crappy jokes and listen to her laugh until I feel like I’m doing something important with my life. But I’m still not allowed to call her. I don’t think.
“Where are you going?” he yells at my back. “You don’t walk away from me!”
I whip around and storm back to him, so tired and pissed off that I get right in his face. “I’m going to take a fucking shower. That okay with you?”
“Watch it,” he growls, pointing at me. “The shit’s been hitting the fan for you lately, so I’m gonna let you get away with that. But you better remember who you’re talking to.”
Oh, I know who I’m talking to. He just doesn’t know how well I know him. “Why is it no matter what I do or how hard I try, it is never good enough for you?”
He looks around the track like he has no idea what’s going on. “Have I done something to you I am not aware of here? Because as far as I can tell, I’ve kept a roof over your head, food in your belly, showed you how to do every damn thing you know how to do, and you’re standing there yelling at me like I’m some kind of sombitch.”
I size him up as Lorelai and Mason keep going in circles, wondering when I got as tall as him and confused as to why he still seems so much bigger than me. I sure don’t feel as big as him when I tell him the secret I’ve known since I was five and my brother was three, and he got that new set of boots and I got my father’s old hat. The one I’m still wearing to this damn day. “I may be your firstborn and your namesake, but Mason…Mason’s your favorite.”
“What?” he squawks. “Where’d you get that dumb idea?”
Nah, he isn’t squirming out of this one. “Everything I’ve ever done, none of it was good enough. But when Mason does it, well, isn’t he just king of your world.”
My father looks at the sun like he’s making sure the sky is still there. Checks his boots, and yep, they’re still on the ground. Then he looks up at me with the same blue eyes that have been staring at me in the mirror every damn day of my life. “Billy, what are you talking about? You were the star pitcher of the baseball team, you were first in track, and in 4-H, you rode bulls like you were Lane Frost reincarnate…hell, you were the starting varsity quarterback! Y’all went all the way to the state finals! I’d never been so proud in my life.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you were. When Mason ran in the winning fucking touchdown!”
My father shakes his fists like he doesn’t know what to do with me. “Damn it, Billy, he wasn’t even supposed to be on the team in the first place! You were the one who insisted he was too good for JV even though he was a sophomore, and you were the one who started calling running plays in the fourth quarter after you’d thrown a three-touchdown lead!”
I stare at my father, breathing hard and rabidly pissed off and totally blank on how to counter his point. Because he’s right: I was the one who wanted Mason on the team, because he wouldn’t stop whining about the JV coach benching him for having a smart mouth. And yeah, I switched to running plays in the fourth quarter. But my wide receivers were done for, and I didn’t trust the second string as much as I trusted Mason to muskrat his way into the end zone.
“Well, it’s not like you ever said anything about it,” I tell him. “You didn’t complain about him being on the team once.”
“Because it was done,” he tells me. “You’d already gone to the coaches and the registrar to change his schedule, and I wasn’t gonna be the asshole to stick Mason back in JV. He hated me enough as it was with me busting him drinking every damn weekend.”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! It’s never mattered how many rules he breaks or how much he disrespects you. You still put him first.”
“Me?” he says. “You are the one who’s always laying over for him, if you ain’t busy covering his ass, and I don’t know what to do.” He throws his hands out to his sides and shrugs, looking completely baffled. “I can’t seem to stop you, no matter how mad I get. You’re just bound and fucking determined to coddle him. And I tell you, Billy, he is never gonna learn how to pick himself up if you don’t start letting him fall down.”
What? I’ve been pushing my little brother’s nose in the dirt since the day he could stand. “I don’t coddle him.”
“Sure you do,” my father says. “Hell, he didn’t even walk till he was a year and a half old because you insisted on carrying him everywhere. I had to get the pediatrician to yell at you just to make you stop.”
I don’t remember that. But then again, I would’ve been barely three, so I guess I wouldn’t.
“And I guess it’s a good thing he’s got you looking out for him since you’re the only one he halfway listens to. But, Son? You are the one who keeps putting Mason above yourself. And I think it’s about damn time you stopped. Don’t you?”
I blink at him. I don’t even know what to say to that. I really don’t like that it sounds a lot like what Taryn’s been telling me for months.
“Well…” I’m starting to feel like a character in a “how to be a dipshit” after-school special, but no way. I’ve gotta be right about this. He’s always been better than me. “How come he’s allowed to ride bulls and I can’t?”
My father shifts his weight and scrubs at his face. “Yeah,” he drawls, sucking his cheeks and looking weird when he glances up. “We, um, we should probably talk about that.” He squints at me, pain pulling at his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “I lied to you? There’s nothing in your contract that says you can’t ride bulls.”
All the air in my chest locks in place, then squeaks out of my throat, and this must be what Taryn feels like when I finally come clean about shit.
This sucks.
“I’m sorry, you what?”
“Yeah.” He nods, working his jaw. “Had Frank do it, too. Your mama knows, but she don’t agree.”
I stare at him, and for some reason, he doesn’t look as tall as he did a minute ago. “Why?”
“Because it was worth it,” he says, looking so much like Mason for a second that I almost do a double take. “You’re a damn good bull rider, Son, but you had a really good shot at making a career of being a MotoPro racer, and I wasn’t gonna let you risk that. So when you got moved up from MotoA I lied.” He crosses his arms, and it’s guilt. That weird look on his face I haven’t ever seen before is guilt. “You’re a good man, Billy, and I knew you wouldn’t question me or disobey me, and it was an easy way for me to keep you safe. So…I lie
d. And I’m sorry.”
I blink at him again, suddenly really pissed off I didn’t question him or ever think to disobey. I didn’t even read the damn contract. He said Sign here, and I did. “What about Mason?”
He throws his hands in the air. “Mason is a tornado of fucking chaos. I don’t know what he’s gonna do from one minute to the next, except the exact opposite of whatever I tell him. If he can make him some money riding bulls, then good. If he can make it racing, that’s fine, too. But he needs more options because he is probably gonna fuck up most of them. You are different.”
I don’t even know how I’m still standing.
He just undid over twenty-five years of everything I thought I knew. The reason behind every dumb decision I make and all the times I’ve let down the people who matter the most to me.
“So.” He claps once, rubbing his hands together. “Now that we got that cleared up, let’s go back to the part where you let Lorelai bully you out of the turn. The hell are you gonna do about that come Qatar?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble, unable to feel even the weight of my helmet in my hand anymore.
Because I thought I knew what I was doing when I deliberately said Taryn’s name wrong the first time I met her. And I thought I knew what I was doing when I went with Mason to that rodeo in North Carolina. But I’m starting to realize I don’t know a goddamn thing, because nothing about my life is what I thought it was.
All I know with any degree of certainty is that I miss Taryn, and I’m ready to go home.
* * *
The world is quiet in the minutes after midnight and freezing so bad, my legs are nearly numb. The little bit of heat I got flowing through me is purely from Gidget’s flanks. That dusting of snow we got has long melted, but I still feel bad about bringing him out here. I couldn’t risk my truck, though—too damn loud.
The last day of practice didn’t go great, my ankle throbbing from being overworked and my mood turning more sour the more Lorelai talked about her new Dabria the whole way home, asking Frank a thousand times how soon she and Mason would get to test them and badgering him over whether they could push up the date.
I’m trying to be happy for her, because she deserves to move up. She should’ve moved up sooner. But it also means the gossips are probably gonna get their wish, and my reign at the top of the leaderboards is about to come crashing down.
Usually, it’s Mason who dethrones me. Well, according to my liar father, I’ve been dethroning myself, which I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around. But Lorelai is a hardworking rancher’s daughter, and like her mama, she doesn’t know how to back down from anything once she sets her mind to it.
Either way, I’m a little tired of having my ass handed to me every time I look up. And after getting home to a hiccup with the mortgage company that took me forever to figure out, there’s only one way I can think of to make myself feel better. The one thing no one else can do as well as me, and I’ll be damned if anyone else ever tries.
When Gidget and I come out of the woods and up to the eastern crossing, light is pouring out the window to her room but muted and yellow like she’s got the curtains drawn. She’s awake, but she isn’t expecting me, surprise visits included. The windows for her parents’ room are dark, along with the rest of the house.
“What do you think?” I ask Gidget, his weight shifting under me and my pulse ticking up a notch. “Do we go for it?”
He huffs a little like my question was rhetorical, backing up a few steps and squaring off with the lowest part of the fence around her property: right where it dips a little because the tension is going slack and it hasn’t been fixed yet. Gidget snorts and fluffs his mane when he’s ready, setting his weight in his hindquarters because he isn’t just a roping horse. He’s primarily trained for dressage…and for show jumping.
“Get it!”
He charges, a smile in my heart and my heart in my horse as I hang on and let him do what he does best—barreling toward the fence before he launches and takes us over, landing a little rough and slipping a bit on the icy grass but trotting it off.
“Good boy!” I lean forward to hug and pat him, pulling some apple slices from my pocket and holding them down so he can eat them. I check back and the fence is fine, not even swinging. He cleared it, no problem. “Good boy,” I tell him again, sitting back and taking up his reins, slowing him so the grass crunching under his hooves isn’t as loud when we approach the house.
A good five feet back, I go ahead and get down from the saddle, leading him up to the window and carefully maneuvering around the rose bushes he’s all but destroyed. I guess it’s why her mama hasn’t bothered to cover them. Whoops.
At least Taryn’s awake, sitting on her bed and reading a piece of notebook paper folded like a letter. I wonder if it’s the one Mason wrote. He still isn’t spilling what it said, and it’s killing me to know.
I hang just out of sight, clicking at Gidget. When he looks at me, I show him my teeth. He shows me his, and I hold up the flowers, my boy taking them and immediately starting to chew. “Those aren’t yours,” I whisper. He stops chewing, looking at me like I called him a bad name. I sigh and tap lightly on her window. Still out of sight.
It opens half a minute later, warmth and peaches and lavender flowing out. Then she softly giggles. “Hi, Gidget. Are those for me?”
I nod my head toward her, Gidget lowering his big horse face so Taryn can take the flowers from his mouth.
“Thank you.” Her other hand comes out the window to pet up his nose, and he’s just loving it. “Where’s your cowboy?”
Gidget jerks his nose at me, giving away my position. Traitor.
“I see.”
I peek around the corner, my mouth twisted with guilt because I’m not supposed to be doing this anymore, and I damn well know it. “Sorry?”
“Mm-hmm.” She’s fighting a hell of a smile behind her pursed lips, the flowers cradled in the crook of her arm. “Breaking all sorts of rules tonight, aren’t we?”
I kneel in front of the window, tipping up my hat. “I know. But I needed to see you.”
Something warms her expression that I haven’t seen in so long, I can’t quite remember what it is. But it’s good, I know that much. “Something happen while you were gone?”
I shake my head, because I don’t want to worry her or put more of my crap on her shoulders. But a disappointed sigh falls from my lips a second later, because I realize that’s not telling her the truth, and I swore to be honest with her.
“Practice was…hard,” I confess, shifting a bit in my crouch and laying my forearm on the windowsill, but it’s hard to look up at her. “Lorelai kicked my ass all week. I’m not all the way back yet.”
Warmth floods Taryn’s eyes, and she half shrugs one shoulder. “You will be. You came back from your knee, and you’ll recover from this, too. It just takes time, Billy.”
I nod, letting her words settle over me like a prophecy, because I need her to be right. And thank goodness for Taryn, because she’s always right.
“It’s freezing,” she mutters, and damn it, that’s my cue to go. “Why don’t you, um, go put Gidget in the barn with Aston, and we can talk some more about it. For a bit.”
I look up at her, hope bringing me back to life. “Aston’s still here?”
“Yeah.” Taryn smiles at her floor. “She’s still here.”
I swallow, letting that sink in. It takes me longer than it should, and when I speak again, my voice is weak with all I’m hoping she’s telling me. “Won’t be five minutes.”
Taryn nods and tucks her hair behind her ear. I rise and lower the window, leaving it open a crack and collecting my horse, trying to keep my feet on the ground.
“Wanna go see your girlfriend?” I breathe to him, Gidget nodding up such a storm, he whips the reins out of my hand. I chuckle, getting them bac
k. “Okay, buddy.”
Here goes nothing.
Chapter 16
Taryn Ledell—Back Then
“Thank you so much for coming,” my cousin April said again, my hands in hers while she beamed at me in her mama’s wedding dress.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” I swore to her. “It was so beautiful, and I know Billy was really sorry he couldn’t be here. He sends you both his best.”
Kenny laughed, leaning over to give me an awkward half hug. But it was only awkward because he hadn’t been able to let go of April since my father gave her away. “Tell him to keep his best to himself and agree to a rematch the next time he’s in town.”
I chuckled as Kenny pulled back with the same bright smile I suspected he’d still be wearing long after his honeymoon was over. Because that was Kenny: always up for a laugh and constantly challenging Billy to friendly roping competitions. Though I have no idea why when Kenny sucked and Billy was amazing.
“I’ll be sure to do that,” I told him. “And congratulations again.”
I stepped away before I took up any more time in the lineup, the people behind me already squealing their congratulations before I could finish letting go of April’s hands. It really was a shame Billy missed the wedding. Not only did my cousin have a way with throwing the most elegant, understated parties—and her wedding was no exception—but the cocktail dress I borrowed from Lor was almost designed with Billy’s personal catnip in mind.
The blue crepe fabric was just a shade darker than his motorcycle and stopped a little lower than halfway up my thigh. Not stretchy or sucked to me but fitted, and the back was zipped all the way up to my neck. But the darted front was shaped like a halter, and three little pearls attached the high-shoulder cap sleeves so just the tiniest sliver of skin arrowed toward my arms. Just a peek.
And he was missing it.
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