by April, Dani
“I sent you a text last night. Don’t pretend you never got it.”
“I never did.” Raven realized she had forgotten to check her messages this morning because she was so caught up in her quest for the new GPS system. “Why didn’t you just call me?”
“I am calling you now.”
“I meant last night.”
“You were with Tyler last night. I didn’t want to interrupt you two.”
“Well you could have called earlier today. I wasn’t with anyone then. I was waiting for you.”
“You sure you’re not just trying to blow me off? Maybe having second thoughts about taking a guy like me into your bed?”
“I’m not having second thoughts!” she yelled at him, her voice too high.
“Then why have I been standing out here in this godforsaken place all day by myself?”
“Well I waited around this lousy trailer all day by myself!”
“I don’t want to play games with you, Raven. If I’m not good enough for you, just tell me.”
“You’re an idiot! Why would you even think something like that?”
“It’s obvious to me. You’re too stuck up for me. You can forget it…” Raven’s phone went dead. He had hung up.
As soon as he was gone, she pounded on the touch screen of her phone to bring up her text messages. Sure enough, there was his message right there on the screen in front of her from : last night. He had been telling the truth about trying to contact her.
Raven was so angry she almost threw the phone at the wall, but then she remembered she had no money, and if she broke her phone she couldn’t afford a replacement.
She stormed through the trailer, strangling a cry of rage in her throat and wanting to hit something. If Roy had been standing there then, she would have hit him. Who did he think he was to talk to her like that when all she had wanted to do was help him?
The phone rang again. Acting on instinct, Raven put it to her ear and shouted, “What?”
“Meet me on the west fifty in twenty minutes.” It was Roy.
“I don’t know where that is.”
“Take your bike west on the main access road. When you get to the red mile marker, turn north. You can’t miss it.”
“All right.”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
“See you.”
Raven just had time to grab her shoulder bag and her hat and she was heading out the door, not even taking time to lock it behind her. She picked her bike up off its stand, fastened her wind-protection goggles over her eyes and tied a string to her cowboy hat and around her chin to keep it in place. Then she was off.
She ripped down the gravel road, debris flying in her wake. The wind attacked her as she leaned forward into the motion and let loose the speed of her bike. She was moving so fast she almost missed the mile marker he had told her about. Sliding around the turn at a ninety degree angle, she continued on. Now she was on a dirt road and the path more treacherous, but she never let her speed fall, instead she gunned it out a little more, desperate to get to her rendezvous.
At last she spotted Roy off in a pasture to the side. He was wearing a black cowboy hat, as he was the only ranch hand who felt comfortable wearing that color. He was leaning next to a bike of his own. This was news to her. She never knew that he owned one before. She had to slow down, as there were cows milling about the pasture, and a calf almost got run down by her as it strayed across her path.
Skidding to a stop in front of him, her tires kicked up black soil. The two of them stared at each other for a minute.
“Here I am,” she told him defiantly.
“Just half a day late is all.”
She climbed off her bike. Once more her anger toward him was building. “Where can we go fuck?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You want to fuck me here?” She was already unbuttoning her shirt. She had forgotten to wear a bra beneath it.
“Get over it, Raven!” he yelled at her, not interested in her anger.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t I a good enough piece of ass for you?”
“I did send that text.” He changed the subject.
She halted before him and covered up her half-undone shirt. “Yeah, I know. I saw it.”
“You know that little bike you’ve got there is never going to hold up to this terrain out here.” He changed the subject again and patted his own bike. “Now this baby here is a real all-terrain vehicle. She was built to stand the pounding this land gives a bike.”
Raven inspected his bike and wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, cowboy. Your bike doesn’t look like much to me. I’ll take mine over yours any day.”
“Then race me.”
“Where to?”
“Straight up that road as far as she leads.”
“You’re on.”
Raven rebuttoned her shirt, fastened her goggles again, and climbed on top of her bike. He already had his revving up by the time she turned her engine over. She kicked off her stand and started out ahead of him.
Immediately, his bike fell in behind hers and they were off, dirt flying off their tires in every direction.
She soon realized that she was riding too fast on the undulating dirt road and slowed herself after almost spilling out a couple of times. But she had built a nice lead over him and was willing to coast for a few moments.
The road was not really a road at all, not even a trail in some spots. It cut through pastures and across the range. Cows flew by on both sides. A large bull walked in front of her path, and she almost spilled out again as she dodged her bike to prevent a collision.
When they raced across the range there was an entire herd of cattle they became mixed with. There was a lot of mooing and not a little stampeding as their bikes raced down the middle of the herd and forced the dim-witted animals to clear a path. Again, Raven almost went for a tumble as a big cow lumbered in front of her path and refused to move. She dodged the animal with not a foot to spare. On the other side of the cow, Roy raced around and got ahead of her. He looked back over his shoulder at her. Was that a smirk on the cocky cowboy’s face?
He had veered off the path and was now racing through tall prairie grass. What was that dumb guy thinking? He was even looking across the meadow at her with a teasing look in his eye. Then Raven realized what he was thinking. About a hundred yards ahead was a tall wooden fence. The path led straight into it for a certain crash. She almost let her bike get out from under her as she realized what she was riding toward.
Off in the meadow at her side, Roy climbed a mound of dirt and then jumped the fence, his bike flying high in the air. He landed with a thud on the opposite side and shot forward effortlessly, barely losing speed.
Calm, just be calm, she told herself and started to brace for impact. She hit a gate in the fence. It flew off its hinges as her front tire crashed into it, and she sped through, no damage done to her or the bike.
She let loose her speed again in an effort to overtake him. She was determined, even if it killed her. She was going to defeat him. Soon they were off the range land, the road had picked back up again, and they were headed upward at a fairly steep ascent, headed into the foothills.
Her engine strained beneath her to maintain the high rate of speed as it climbed up the first hill. She thought she had taken the climb better than he did because now she was right back up with him. He was racing across from her, only a few yards away.
They were headed toward another hill and an even steeper ascent this time. She looked off into the distance and then down. They were several hundred feet in the air already, and got a bird’s-eye view of the cattle land behind and the badlands valley in front.
Now they were climbing again and both had to reduce their speed. The engines wouldn’t take the climb at max speed, and safety warranted they cut back, as there were no roadside fences for protection up here, and when they took a bend in the road Raven looked down and saw a three-hundred-foot fall. Her heart lea
ped at this, but no matter how scared she was, she refused to stop or slow any more than was necessary. She was going to beat him.
Boulders fallen in rock slides dotted the path in front. She had to zig and then zag to keep out of their way. He was just ahead of her. She had gained most of the lost ground on him. She leaned into her bike every chance she got while traveling over smooth ground, using each opportunity to close the distance between them.
Just in front of her by a few yards, he jumped over a boulder rather than went around. She gritted her teeth against what was to come. If he could do it, so could she. She let her bike fly in the air. For two seconds she was soaring. The steep drop off to the valley floor hundreds of feet below was only a yard to the right. She landed on her hind wheel, did a wheelie for a few feet and then regained the bike, her butt having flown up off the seat in the fall.
Now she was right back on his trail again. She thought he might have even been slowing for her, allowing her to keep pace with him. This thought angered her to no end. Go on, cowboy, give me all you’ve got. She gunned her engine against all common sense.
Then she was right up against him, close enough to see his long hair flying behind him in the breeze and even the whiskers on his scruffy face. She spun her tires and kicked up rock and dirt behind her, some of it flying into his face and causing him to briefly lose control. This was her chance. She raced past him and was ahead.
A sharp turn in the path brought her dreams of beating him to an end. She was going too fast and could never take that bend. Beyond it was another unprotected descent straight down the canyon wall. Kicking out her left leg she tried to break her progress, but it was too late. She lost control. The bike spun out beneath her, and her left knee went crashing into the ground. The leg of her jeans was ripped open, skin from her shin was torn off, blood flew in the air, and her left boot was literally torn from her leg with the force of the crash. The bike flew out from between her legs and raced on its side for another ten yards before it fell over the precipice.
Raven was left alone in the dirt, blood running down her leg and tears of pain stinging her face.
Roy dropped his bike and ran to kneel at Raven’s side. She was dazed but conscious. Her leg hurt so badly she thought it had been torn from her knee, but she was able to quickly move it up to clench at her belly. Mostly it was her pride hurting her. The greatest source of her pain was to be lying on the ground at the feet of the man she wanted so badly to beat.
“Are you all right?” Roy asked, lifting her head off the ground in his arms.
“I’m still in one piece.” Tears fell down her face, and she reached up to wipe them away, hoping he had not seen them.
“You almost killed yourself. Another few feet and you’d be at the bottom of the canyon now.”
“I’m all right!” she shouted, trying to push out of his arms.
“It’s okay, Raven, take it easy.”
“Just leave me alone. I’m fine.”
He climbed back to his feet and walked around to survey the damage, leaving her to herself.
Her leg still hurt like hell. “What was so damn important that you had to drag me all the way up here?”
“Wait just a damn minute! I didn’t drag you anywhere. You followed me up here most of the way. Nobody made you do anything.”
She wanted to cry out in pain but refused to let him see how much it hurt her. “All right, damn you. I’m sorry. You win. Are you happy now?”
“No, I’m not happy now. Do you think I want you to get killed?”
She placed herself in a seated position on the ground and bent her knee. It hurt, but she still had full use of it. However, the tears were still pouring down her face and she had to turn away from him so he would not see them.
“I don’t even think you care,” she told him, tasting the salt of her own tears in her mouth.
He picked up her cowboy hat off the ground where it had fallen, hit it against his pant leg a few times to get the dust off of it, and handed it back to her. She grabbed it out of his hand, forced to look up at him, and she knew he would see her tears.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he told her. “You actually beat me, you know. The finish line was about a hundred feet back there.”
He motioned back to the start of a big rock slide strewn out across the ground, just behind it the trail had ended for good. Now that he pointed it out to her she remembered. When she had been riding, things had been moving so fast she hadn’t had the time to comprehend.
“I think you let me win,” she told him, still not feeling like making up with him.
“Why would I do that?”
“So you could get in my pants.”
“I think I’d had a better chance of doing that if I had won.”
“Then why were you going so slowly?”
“Because I didn’t want to kill myself. Like I said, another few feet back there and…” He looked out over the side of the bluff.
She tried to get to her feet. She winched in pain and quickly fell back onto her butt. Roy came over to try and help her again. She shoved him away from her.
“Don’t touch me!”
“So much for you being my girlfriend then, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” She gritted her teeth through the pain. “You’re fired. I must have been crazy to ever offer to have sex with you. The other guys are all gentlemen. They’re real men, and all of them are wonderful lovers. I guess I thought you could be like them, but I was wrong.”
Roy shook his head and walked away from her. “Okay, you can get up on your own.”
“Yeah, I will.” Raven used her hands and arms and angrily pushed herself back onto her feet. Her joints were working well. They were just sore from the fall, but there was a lot of blood dripping down her leg where a big chunk of her skin had been torn away.
Roy had gone to retrieve her boot. It had been thrown another thirty feet in the opposite direction. He dropped it at her side. “Here, you might want this.”
She hopped on her good leg as she bent down to pick up her boot. She thought about putting it on but decided she couldn’t because her shin was too badly scraped. She watched Roy as he disappeared over the side of the bluff, taking extra careful steps so that he wouldn’t go over the edge. Now what was that crazy man doing, she wondered, and felt like a complete idiot herself as she was forced to hop around on one foot.
In a minute Roy returned and he was wheeling her bike up the rocky face with him. The bike was banged up pretty bad and looked like it had blown the front tire. Considering it could have fallen off the edge and plunged three hundred feet to the bottom, just seeing the bike again, even in a damaged state, was a welcome sight.
“Can you put any weight on that leg?”
“Yes, nothing’s broken. I don’t even think anything is strained. It just hurts, that’s all,”
He laughed as he looked down at her leg. “I haven’t seen so much blood outside the slaughter house.”
The sight of his mirth brought all of her anger back. “Go to hell!”
“That’s probably where I’ll end up.” He was still laughing. “Come on, we’ve got to get some first aid on that leg.”
He motioned for her to follow him, not even trying to help her now. Apparently she had scared him off with her temper.
“Where are you taking me now?” She groaned through her pain as she slowly hobbled after him.
“There’s a supply shed just up ahead. It just might have a first aid kit in it.”
“What’s it doing all the way up here?”
“It’s above the flood plain. We store some auxiliary equipment out here for that flood that comes around once every ten years.”
“All right, I’m coming, wait for me,” she said, trying her best to keep up with him on her sore leg.
The supply shed was just a tiny barn standing on top of the bluff. Inside, it was dark and smelled moldy. There were boxes stacked all along the walls, but Raven couldn’t make out
what any of them held in the dark. She sat down on the floor and held her injured leg out before her. When she looked down at it, she saw it was still oozing blood. It was at the stage where it looked a lot worse than it felt, and it looked really horrible.
Another embarrassment was her torn jeans. They were just an old pair, and she didn’t care about losing them. They had been ripped to shreds along the left leg, torn all the way up to the waist. The other leg of her pants hadn’t fared much better. The jeans’ right leg had a huge rent in the thigh that made it hang down to her knee. Fortunately, her right leg had escaped with just a few minor cuts.
Her panties were even showing under the carnage of her jeans and she tried to cover up with her long shirt.
Roy cranked open a window next to where she sat. Light poured inside the dark interior. Her shin was revealed to be even uglier than she first thought. She winced at the image.
After a moment, Roy brought down a small first aid kit from one of the shelves and knelt at her side. She felt too humiliated to even fight him anymore, and she let him bring her damaged leg up and set it across his knee. She smelled the antiseptic as he opened a bottle and began rubbing some on a cotton ball.
“This is going to hurt a little.” He tried to prepare her.
“Go ahead,” she told him.
She tensed up and pounded back against the wall in pain as he rubbed the cotton along her cut shin. More tears bubbled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
“The bleeding has stopped, but it’s a good thing we had this first aid kit out here. That’s a really deep cut. You could have easily gotten an infection.”
She wanted to move away from the pain of the antiseptic-soaked cotton rubbing along her leg but bravely held out her leg for him to continue.
“Almost done,” he told her. “You’re doing well, just a little more to go down here.” After a few minutes the pain level fell to that of a sting and she was able to relax and lean back. “There, all finished.”
“Thanks,” she found herself telling him grudgingly.