Wild Ride (Stone Creek Legacy #2)

Chapter 1 The Gravity of Bone

I. The Chute

The dirt in Las Vegas didn't taste like the dirt in Montana.

Montana dirt tasted like silica, sagebrush, and deep, ancient iron. It was honest. Vegas dirt tasted like diesel fumes, pyrotechnics, and the desperate, metallic tang of ten million dollars in prize money.

Ryder Stone sat on the back of the chutes, his spurs jingling with a restless, chaotic rhythm against the steel rails.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

He looked down.

Inside the narrow metal box beneath him, eighteen hundred pounds of biological hate was waiting.

The bull’s name was Widowmaker. He was a brindle Brahman cross with a hump the size of a mountain range and horns that curved upward like scimitars designed by a sadist. He wasn't just an animal; he was a celebrity. He had a higher win percentage than the house at the Bellagio.

"He's tight tonight, Ryder," the flank man warned, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the yellow dirt. "He's looking for a fight."

"Good," Ryder said. He stretched his neck. Crack. "So am I."

Ryder adjusted his glove. He pulled the leather strap tight with his teeth, biting down until the taste of rosin filled his mouth. He slapped his cheek. Once. Twice. Hard.

He needed the sting. He needed the pain to sharpen the edges of the world.

For the last six years, Ryder Stone had lived his life in eight-second bursts. He was the "Wild One." The Stone who ran. The one who traded the slow, grinding death of the ranch for the bright, violent lights of the circuit.

And it had worked.

He looked up at the stands of the Thomas he was the conqueror who transcended it.

He climbed down into the chute.

The bull shifted. The massive muscles bunched under the loose, brindle hide. The heat coming off the animal was physical, a wall of humid, musky aggression.

Ryder straddled the beast. He slid his hand into the braided bull rope.

This was the connection point. The suicide pact.

"Tighten it," Ryder ordered.

The flank man pulled the tail of the rope. The leather cinch bit into the bull’s chest. Widowmaker huffed, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through Ryder’s thighs.

Ryder pounded his gloved hand into the rope, melting the rosin, fusing his grip to the animal. He slid up, jamming his crotch against the bull's spine.

"Don't get hung up," the flank man muttered. "This bastard spins left, then reverses. If you get hung up in the well, he'll eat you."

"I know the book," Ryder said.

He settled. He closed his eyes for a microsecond.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he didn't see the gold buckle. He didn't see the crowd.

He saw a pair of dark eyes. A woman in a white coat, looking at him with a disappointment so profound it felt like a physical blow.

Elena.

He shoved the image away. He shoved it down into the black box where he kept his father’s funeral, his brother’s anger, and the memory of the day he left.

He opened his eyes. The world narrowed to the patch of hair between the bull’s horns.

He nodded.

"Let's go."

II. The Centrifuge

The gate didn't open; it exploded.

One moment, Ryder was stationary, a potential energy coiled in a steel box. The next, he was kinetic.

Widowmaker launched.

The sensation wasn't riding. It was surviving an earthquake. The bull hit the arena dirt and turned ninety degrees in the air, a massive, impossible torque that tried to rip Ryder’s arm out of the socket.

Stay square. Chin down. Toes out.

Ryder countered. He threw his free arm back, using it as a rudder, fighting the centrifugal force that wanted to launch him into the third row.

One second.

The crowd was a blur of static. The noise was gone. In the eye of the storm, there was only the sound of the bull’s breathing—a wet, guttural roaring—and the creak of leather under extreme stress.

Two seconds.

Widowmaker spun left. A flat, dizzying spin. The G-force pressed the blood into Ryder’s feet.

Ryder leaned into the well. He was dancing on the back of a hurricane. He felt light. He felt perfect. This was the high. This was the place where the past couldn't reach him, where he was just a body moving through space, untethered to regret.

Three seconds.

The bull reversed.

It was a move called the "fade." Widowmaker stopped the spin instantly and dropped his front shoulder, fading backward. It was a move designed to snap a rider's neck or pull him over the front end.

Ryder anticipated it. He sat back, driving his spurs into the bull's neck, anchoring himself.

Four seconds.

"He's got it!" the announcer screamed, his voice penetrating the fog. "Ryder Stone is putting on a clinic!"

Ryder grinned. He felt the gold buckle against his stomach. He felt the vindication.

Five seconds.

The bull jumped. High. A vertical leap that defied physics for an animal of that mass.

Six seconds.

They came down. The impact rattled Ryder’s teeth. His vision blurred, a momentary gray-out.

Seven seconds.

He was almost there. One more second. One more breath. Then the whistle. Then the money. Then the silence.

And then, the bull did something he had never done before.

Widowmaker didn't spin. He didn't buck. He stumbled.

It was a micro-event. The bull’s front right hoof caught a deep rut in the yellow dirt. The massive animal buckled, his shoulder dipping violently to the right.

Ryder was committed to the left spin.

The synchronization broke.

Ryder’s center of gravity shifted three inches too far to the outside.

Physics, cold and unforgiving, took over.

Ryder felt his seat pop loose. He felt the air between his jeans and the hide.

No.

He squeezed his legs. He fought to regain the center. But the bull recovered from the stumble and whipped his head back with the force of a wrecking ball.

The back of the bull’s skull hit Ryder in the face mask.

CRACK.

The world flashed white.

Ryder slumped. He was unconscious before he started to fall.

But his hand... his hand didn't know he was out.

The suicide pact held. The rosin, heat-fused and sticky as glue, kept his gloved hand jammed into the handle of the rope.

Ryder slid off the right side of the bull.

He didn't hit the ground. He dangled.

He was a rag doll, one hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight, tethered by a single wrist to a tornado that was now angry, scared, and looking for something to kill.

The buzzer sounded.

7.9 seconds.

The ride was over.

The nightmare was just beginning.

III. The Rag Doll

The crowd didn't cheer. The sound that rose from eighteen thousand throats was a collective, sucked-in gasp. It was the sound of a Roman Colosseum realizing the lion was winning.

Ryder wasn't there to hear it. He was floating in a gray, static void.

But his body was still in the arena. And his body was screaming.

Widowmaker felt the weight dragging on his right side. To a bull bred for violence, a dead weight is a predator. It is a threat. And threats must be stomped.

The bull spun tight to the right, into the drag. This is the nightmare scenario. It creates a "well"—a vortex of centrifugal force where the rider is sucked underneath the animal’s hooves.

Ryder’s body, limp and unconscious, swung like a pendulum. His head hit the bull’s shoulder. Thud. His boots dragged in the dirt.

Then, the G-force whipped him outward.

His arm—the only thing connecting him to the earth—stretched. The humerus levered against the socket. The rotator cuff tore with a sound like wet canvas ripping.

The pain was sharp enough to pierce the veil of unconsciousness.

Ryder’s eyes snapped open.

He didn't see the arena. He saw a blur of spinning lights and brown hide. He felt the terrifying, nauseating sensation of being flung in a circle at thirty miles an hour.

Let go, his brain screamed. Open your hand.

He tried. He sent the signal to his right hand. Open.

Nothing happened. The rosin had done its job too well. His glove was fused to the rope. His fingers were locked in a rigor of tension. He was handcuffed to a tornado.

"He's hung up! He's hung up!" The announcer’s voice was high, frantic, cracking with genuine fear.

The bullfighters—the rodeo clowns whose job was to stand between death and the cowboy—rushed in.

They were brave men in baggy pants and cleats, but they were fighting physics.

They couldn't get close. The bull was spinning too fast. Ryder’s body was a flailing weapon, his boots slashing through the air at head height.

Widowmaker roared. He stopped spinning and started stomping.

He bucked, driving his front hooves into the dirt like pile drivers.

Ryder slammed into the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him, collapsing his lungs.

He bounced.

And then, he fell under.

He saw the hoof coming. It looked like a falling moon. A massive, cloven plate of keratin, caked in yellow dirt, descending with the weight of a compact car behind it.

He tried to roll.

He was too slow.

The hoof landed on his left thigh.

CRACK.

It wasn't a clean sound. It wasn't a snap. It was a crunch. A wet, sickening disintegration of structure. The femur—the strongest bone in the human body, a rod of calcium designed to withstand a ton of pressure—shattered.