22. Dallas
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dallas
If Buckhorn has a heartbeat, tonight it’s thumping loud enough to drown out the arena speakers.
After the final event wraps, people spill out of the stands, laughing, stomping snow off their boots, kids running wild with half-eaten churros, and the unshakeable belief that bedtime is a myth.
The crisp winter breeze hangs thick with the smell of woodsmoke and chili, with a low hum of conversation swelling to a roar every time someone yells a familiar name.
It’s a good kind of noise. A happy kind of madness.
The kind only a small town can generate.
Clay and I walk side by side toward the pens, boots crunching over the frosted dirt. The arena lights buzz overhead, casting long orange streaks across the ground.
Clay swings his rope lazily over one shoulder, face flushed from the run. The kid looks alive. Really alive. Someone plugged him into a socket and lit him up from the inside.
“Good run,” he says again, bumping my shoulder. “We were damn clean.”
“You were clean,” I correct. “I was hanging on for dear life.”
“Liar.” He grins. “Your loop was perfect.”
He doesn’t say it, but I can tell. This isn’t just post-competition adrenaline. He gets a look in his eyes out here that he doesn’t get mucking stalls or repairing fence or quizzing Lila on spelling words. The arena wakes up something in him that the ranch keeps quiet.
“You thinking about it again?” I ask quietly. “Pro circuit?”
Clay hesitates.
Then he looks out at the arena, at the dust hanging in the floodlights, the families still milling in the bleachers, the ropes coiled on fence posts.
“I’m thinking,” he says. “That’s all.”
Thinking. That’s how it starts.
I clap him on the shoulder. “Whatever you decide, you’ll be damn good.”
Clay’s grin softens. “Thanks, man.”
Before either of us can get sentimental, a posse of middle schoolers stampedes toward him, yelling, “Clay, sign my hat!” and “You almost ate dirt that second round. It was awesome!”
Clay winks at me. “Duty calls.”
He jogs off, swallowed by the crowds.
I’m left alone with a slow spreading warmth in my chest. Pride, sure. But something else too. Change. The kind that sneaks up on you.
The after-party sits behind the rodeo grounds in the fair pavilion.
Really just a covered area with picnic tables, string lights, and a patio heater that hasn’t worked properly since 1997.
But nobody cares. People bring crockpots and cornbread and faith, in each other, in the season, in simple joys.
Buckhorn doesn’t need fancy to make magic.
There’s a band playing by the tractor shed. Three high schoolers and one retired dentist on a banjo. Kids chase each other between hay bales. Old men argue about horse breeding. Someone’s dog has stolen an entire bratwurst and is being pursued by half the volunteer fire department.
It’s impossible not to feel good in the middle of it.
I’m just settling into the noise when my gaze snags on one person.
Faith.
Standing by the firepit, cheeks pink, hair catching the light. Laughing with Jet and her sister while Becky dances in circles around them, holding a sparkler someone definitely should not have given her.
Everything else fades out.
She turns her head and sees me.
That smile of hers falters, then softens, then pulls deep inside my ribs.
It’s the kind of smile that feels familiar and dangerous at the same time.
I take a breath, tell myself to be normal, and still find my boots carrying me straight toward her as if they didn’t hear a word.
Jet notices me then.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Rodeo Calendar 2025,” she chirps. “Here to autograph something? Perhaps Faith’s—”
“Jet,” Faith says under her breath, mortified.
Charlotte leans in, deadpan. “He’s here for her number. You don’t have it yet, do you, Dallas? Faith said.”
Faith makes a strangled noise. “Why are you both like this?”
They don’t answer. They don’t need to.
Faith just hands me her phone, my thumb brushing hers. I type my number in, but that tiny touch is a spark straight to my bloodstream.
When I hand her phone back, my fingers linger for a fraction of a second too long.
Charlotte clocks it instantly. Jet pretends to faint.
Faith glares murder at both of them. “You’re all children.”
Jet salutes. “Correct.”
Then she grabs Charlotte and Becky and announces loudly, “We’re getting hot chocolate!” even though she already has one in her hand.
They disappear into the crowd, leaving Faith and me in a bubble of warm firelight and cold January air.
The music switches to something slow, soft, a tune I’ve heard at every Buckhorn gathering since childhood. Couples start drifting toward each other. Some sway. Some pretend they don’t want to.
Faith looks up at me.
“It’s loud out here,” she murmurs.
She’s not wrong.
Between the band, the kids, the smell of chili, the popping fire, and Jet screaming across the pavilion, the bedlam presses close.
“You wanna get out of here for a minute?”
She nods. She’s been waiting for me to ask.
We walk down the familiar dirt path toward the lake. Past the horse trailers, the old fair booth with peeling paint, and the row of trucks parked crookedly in the grass because Buckhorn has never mastered parallel parking.
The quiet settles around us as a blanket. The moon glints off the lake’s dark surface. Frogs croak from somewhere under the dock. Our boots crunch over the frosty grass.
Faith hugs her coat tighter. “I used to come here a lot. After school. After… everything.”
“I know,” I say. “You used to sit on that old dock and pretend you weren’t waiting for someone to ask what was wrong.”
A surprised little laugh escapes her. “You always asked.”
“Yeah. Well.” I shrug. “I cared.”
She looks at me as if that word matters more than it should.
We reach the lake’s edge. Our breaths fog. Somewhere behind us, the crowd cheers again—someone won a raffle or caught a sparkler on fire.
But out here, it’s just us.
Faith stops walking.
So do I.
“Dallas,” she whispers, “that night at the barn…”
Heat runs through me fast, sharp, unavoidable. “I remember.”
“I didn’t expect to want you.” Her voice trembles. “And I didn’t expect to still.”
My pulse jumps at her honesty.
I step closer, slow enough she could stop me.
She doesn’t.
I cup her cheek gently. Slow enough for her to flinch away if she needs to. Instead, she leans into my palm, breath hitching. And then her lips brush mine.
A spark, small but bright, pops between us.
I don’t give her time to hesitate.
I pull her in the rest of the way, my hand sliding to the small of her back, fitting her against me until the cold can’t touch either of us.
She melts into me instantly, fingers curling into my jacket, then fisting the fabric at my chest. She’s afraid I’ll pull away. Her mouth opens under mine, warm and eager, and everything in me tightens. It’s an emotion I haven’t let myself feel in years.
Her kiss deepens, grows bolder, her tongue grazing mine. I slide my hand up her spine, feeling her arch into the touch.
The cold disappears.
The world disappears.
All I can feel is her mouth.