14. Red
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Red
The second Arizona finishes describing the man, I know exactly who she’s talking about.
My fingers stay wrapped around my beer while my mind tears through old memories, fitting her description over faces I haven’t thought about in years.
Across the table, Arizona watches me with growing confusion, waiting for someone to explain why the conversation died the second she spoke.
Riley keeps talking to a customer somewhere behind me, and somebody curses over a missed pool shot, but the noise barely reaches me anymore.
“Red?” Arizona asks, and she looks like she’s said my name a couple times already. “I said no, I don’t think he spotted me.”
I rub a hand over my beard. “Good.”
Her eyes narrow. “‘Good’ isn’t an answer.”
Across from me, Willy lets out a breath and tips his beer back. “Unfortunately,” he says, “I think it kinda is.”
I shoot him a look.
He lifts one shoulder. “You’re gonna tell her eventually.”
He’s right. Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.
I set my bottle down on the table and look back at Arizona. “His name’s Travis Mercer.”
The name means absolutely nothing to her. I can see that.
Emmett, on the other hand, grimaces. “Mercer’s back?”
“Looks that way.”
The words leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Even Sadie seems to catch on that the adults have wandered into territory she isn’t supposed to hear. She pauses halfway through stealing fries from Emmett’s plate and looks between all of us.
“Who’s Travis?”
Emmett answers before I can. “Nobody you need to worry about, peanut.”
“Why not? You look worried.”
“See?” Willy says. “This is what happens when you raise smart children.”
At that moment, Riley appears carrying another basket of fries. “Emergency potato delivery.”
Sadie abandons us for the far more important issue of ketchup acquisition.
Good. Some conversations don’t belong around five-year-olds.
Arizona waits until Sadie’s distracted before turning back to me. “Okay, who is he?”
I stare at the condensation running down my beer bottle.
I’ve always known this story would come back eventually. Small towns never truly let things die. They just pack them away until somebody opens the wrong drawer.
“Years ago, Travis and I rode the same circuit.”
Arizona nods, encouraging me to continue.
“He was good.” The admission comes easier than expected because it happens to be true. “One of the best bronc riders I’d ever seen.”
Willy nods. “He was a pain in the ass about it, too.”
A reluctant smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “That part’s true.”
Arizona glances between us. “What happened?”
I lean back in my chair and look past the crowd. Twenty years disappear in an instant.
“Championship weekend.” The memory settles into place with uncomfortable clarity. “Biggest purse either of us had ever ridden for. Whole place was packed.”
I can still see the arena if I let myself.
The lights, the dirt, the smell of livestock and diesel fuel hanging over everything, the kind of night every rider dreams about.
“Travis had been drinking.”
Arizona’s eyebrows rise.
I hold up a hand before she can interrupt. “He wasn’t falling over drunk.” I shake my head. “But he’d had enough that he should’ve stayed off a horse.”
Every rider knows the difference. Most of us ignore it at least once. Some of us get lucky afterward.
Some don’t.
“He got warned more than once, but Travis wasn’t interested in listening. That wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. If a bad idea walked into a room, Travis usually offered it a beer and invited it to stay awhile.”
Willy huffs a laugh into his bottle. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said about him.”
Arizona’s attention never leaves me. “What happened?”
I stare down at the label peeling off my beer bottle. Twenty years later, I can still see the ride clearer than I’d like.
The announcer introducing him. The crowd packed shoulder to shoulder. Travis grinning like he was bulletproof while half the people around him tried to talk sense into him.
“Draw wasn’t in his favor that night,” I say. “Mean horse. Strong. The kind that makes experienced riders think twice.”
“And Travis wasn’t famous for thinking twice,” Willy adds.
“No. He wasn’t.”
Arizona folds her arms on the table and waits.
“He climbed on anyway. Gate opened. Horse came out hard and ugly from the start. One bad move turned into another, and before anybody could react, Travis got hung up.”
Arizona’s expression changes. She knows enough about rodeo to understand what that means.
Anybody who spends enough time around arenas learns fast. Getting thrown is part of the job. Getting dragged is a different story entirely.
I rub a thumb against the neck of the bottle. “The horse kept going. Travis didn’t.”
The words sit between us.
Willy looks away first. Even after all this time, none of us enjoy talking about it.
“By the time they got him loose, he’d taken a hell of a beating.”
Arizona swallows. “How bad?”
I let out a breath through my nose. “Bad enough that most people thought he wasn’t getting back up. He spent months in hospitals. More surgeries than I can remember. Rehab after that. The doctors managed to put him back together, but his riding career was over.”
Arizona winces. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
It was. Still is.
No matter what happened afterward, I wouldn’t wish that ride on anybody.
Arizona doesn’t look away. She waits with the stubborn patience of someone who knows she’s missing a piece of the puzzle, and I’m trying to decide how much of that puzzle I can safely hand her.
Eventually she asks the question everybody asks. “What does that have to do with you?”
I give a short laugh that doesn’t contain much amusement. “Depends who you ask.”
Her brow furrows. “Red.”
“Travis blamed me.”
The confusion arrives. “Why?”
“Because I was the last person who told him not to get on the horse.”
She blinks, and I can practically watch her trying to force that logic into place.
It doesn’t fit.
It never did.
“He figured I’d talked him into doubting himself because I wanted the championship.”
Willy snorts. “Which is ridiculous. Red would’ve beaten him anyway.”
I shoot him a look.
Willy lifts both hands. “What? You would’ve.”
Arizona ignores him. “That’s insane.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“But people believed that?”
I take a drink before answering.
Small-town gossip has a life expectancy longer than most marriages. People hear half a story, add details nobody asked for, then pass it along until it barely resembles the truth anymore.
Some people blamed Travis for climbing on the horse after drinking.
Some blamed bad luck.
Some decided I must’ve had a hand in it because blaming a person is easier than admitting terrible things can happen all by themselves.
I don’t need to answer.
Arizona reads it on my face. “Oh.”
I hate that particular oh. It’s the one that means she’s figured out more than I wanted her to.
She watches me for a few beats before asking, “Did you blame yourself?”
I take another drink. The beer isn’t helping nearly enough. “Didn’t matter.”
“Red.”
“It didn’t.”
The answer leaves my mouth too fast.
Arizona catches it. “You did.”
I look away before she can see how close she is. “Maybe a little.”
Arizona’s eyebrows rise.
That answer should probably embarrass me more than it does. The truth is, “a little” is one hell of an understatement.
For a long time, Travis Mercer was impossible to escape.
Every rodeo eventually circled back to his accident. Every conversation about bad rides seemed to drag his name out of the dirt again.
Some nights I’d wake up convinced I’d heard the same crack of bone I’d heard in that arena all those years ago.
Guilt’s funny that way.
It settles in, rearranges the furniture, then starts acting like it pays rent.
Arizona’s expression softens, and I wish it hadn’t. Sympathy has always made me uncomfortable. I’d rather get punched. “Red…”
“I’m fine.”
She gives me a look over the rim of her beer.
I’ve seen that look before. Women seem born knowing exactly when a man is feeding them bullshit. I still haven’t figured out how they do it.
My current theory involves black magic.
Before she can call me on it, I push forward. “After the accident, Travis disappeared from the circuit. At least for a while.”
“Mostly,” Willy says.
I glance toward him.
He’s spinning an empty beer bottle between his hands now, his usual grin nowhere in sight.
“Mostly?” Arizona asks.
Willy shrugs. “Word gets around. Rodeo people gossip worse than church ladies with unlimited coffee. Every couple years somebody would hear he’d shown up somewhere. Usually because trouble arrived shortly afterward.”
I nod. “Underground circuits. Illegal betting. Bar fights. Assault charges. The kind of headlines that make your grandmother sigh and say she always knew you’d end up on the evening news.”
“Grandma actually says that,” Willy adds. “To be fair, she’s usually talking to me.”
“Because you’ve earned it.”
Arizona almost smiles before the concern returns. “What happened to him?”
“He kept making bad decisions until a judge got tired of watching it.”
She blinks. “He went to prison?”
“A couple years.”
She sits back in her chair and processes that quietly. “And now he’s out.”
“Recently.”
Saying it aloud makes my stomach tighten again.
Maybe because it turns an old story into a current problem. Or because Arizona saw him with her own eyes.
Either way, I don’t like it.
She watches me for several seconds before reaching the same conclusion everybody else already has. “You think he’s here because of you.”
“No.”
The answer comes out fast enough that Willy actually laughs.
I shoot him a look.
He raises both hands. “Hey, don’t drag me into this. I’m just enjoying the world’s least convincing answer.”
Arizona doesn’t take her eyes off me. “The man spent an entire afternoon watching you.”
“Could’ve been coincidence.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Across the table, Emmett slowly lowers his beer.
Willy stares at me. Arizona stares at me.
Hell, even Sadie glances up from her fries like she’s evaluating my judgment.
Willy scratches his jaw. “That’s what we’re going with?”
“Apparently.”
“Interesting strategy.”
I glare at him.
He grins, because this is how Willy handles things that scare him.
The problem is I don’t know what to think.
Part of me wants to believe Arizona spotted an old rival who happened to be sitting in the stands.
Rodeo’s a small world. People cross paths all the time.
Twenty years is a long damn time to carry a grudge, and prison should’ve given Travis plenty of opportunities to find a different hobby.
My beer suddenly tastes like cardboard.
Across the table, Arizona studies me with the same focus she brings to everything that catches her attention. Songs, people, and trouble.
I suspect she’d put all three in the same category if given the opportunity.
Before I realize what she’s doing, she reaches across the table and touches my wrist.
It’s barely a touch at all. Just her fingertips brushing my skin.
Still, every thought in my head stumbles over itself.
I look up.
Concern sits plain as day on her face. “I don’t like this.”
“Join the club.” I sigh. “Travis Mercer’s spent most of his adult life finding somebody else to blame for his mistakes. That man’s been mad at the world since before some of these rodeo kids were born.”
Willy snorts. “That’s putting it politely.”
“Trying a new thing.”
“Don’t. It doesn’t suit you.”
I glance toward the bar where Riley is attempting to convince a customer that ordering a salad inside The Silver Bit is an insult to ranching culture. The customer appears to be losing the argument.
Then I look at Emmett, who hasn’t said much since Travis’s name came up. Neither of them looks convinced.
Hell, Willy looks like he’s already preparing for trouble.
When my attention returns to Arizona, she’s still watching me.
“Doesn’t mean he’d come after me.”
The silence stretches long enough that I almost wish somebody would argue.
Instead, they all look at me the way people look at a man insisting he can fix a fence that’s actively falling over.
And that’s unfortunate, because judging by their faces, nobody at this table buys what I’m saying.
The worst part is that I’m not doing a great job convincing myself either.