Chapter 3
SETH
The phone won’t stop ringing.
I crack one eye open and immediately regret it. Sunlight is stabbing through some gap in the blinds, and my head feels like someone stuffed it with cotton and then set it on fire.
The phone keeps ringing. Loud. Obnoxious. Relentless.
I groan and fumble for it on the nightstand, knocking over something—a lamp, maybe, or a glass—and finally get my hand around the damn thing.
“What,” I groan.
“Where the hell are you, son?” My father’s voice cuts through the fog in my skull, sharp and cold as wind. I pull the phone away from my ear, squinting at the screen. 9:47 a.m.
Fuck.
“Dad.” I push myself up to sit in bed, and the room spins for a second before settling into something that’s still too bright and too real. “I’m—”
Where am I? I glance around. Floral bedspread that belongs in a grandmother’s guest room. Wood-paneled walls. A TV so old it still has knobs on the front.
Some motel. No idea which one or how I got here.
“Everyone’s already at the ranch,” my father continues, his Texas drawl doing nothing to soften the edge in his tone. “Photo shoot starts in an hour. You plannin’ on joining us, or should I tell the photographers to just work around the empty space where my son should be?”
I run a hand through my hair, greasy, needs washing, and try to piece together what the hell happened last night.
The bar. I was at The Rusty Spur. That part I remember. Drinking soda because today was a big day and I needed to be sharp. Someone was playing country music too loud. Carter and Kai were there, being their usual troublesome selves.
Then… nothing. Or not nothing, exactly. Flashes. A brawl at the bar of fists flying, someone’s head hitting a table. The back of a police car, maybe? And then…
Hazel eyes.
The image hits me out of nowhere, sharp and vivid despite everything else being foggy. Looking up at me with a mix of exasperation and something softer. Curly brown hair. A face that squeezed my chest.
And a scent.
Lemon zest. Honey. Wildflowers.
Even now, sitting in this shitty motel room with a head full of broken glass, I can almost smell it. Like the fragrance has been imprinted on my brain. Like it’s the one thing my body refused to let go of.
Who the fuck was she?
“Seth.” My father’s voice snaps me back. “You even listening to me?”
“Yeah.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up. The floor tilts, then steadies. “I’m coming. Don’t worry about it.”
He scoffs. “That’s what you said last time. And the time before that.”
I don’t answer. There’s nothing to say that won’t start a fight, and I don’t have the energy for one right now.
The silence stretches. Then my father sighs—that long, disappointed exhale I’ve been hearing my whole life. “What were you thinking last night, boy?”
“I wasn’t drinking.”
“I don’t give a damn if you were or not. I had the sheriff show up this morning, telling me my son got into it with the town deputy. That you were arrested and spent half the night in a holding cell.” His voice rises, then drops to something colder. “And now they’re talking about pressing charges.”
I close my eyes. Flashes again—someone shoving me, fists connecting with bone, rolling on asphalt. The deputy. Right. Some asshole on a sidewalk who looked nothing like a cop.
What the hell happened?
“I didn’t start it,” I mutter, even though I’m not entirely sure that’s true.
“Don’t matter who did. What matters is how it looks.
” I can hear him pacing, the creak of floorboards under his boots.
“You want to be the face of Wildfire Star Rodeo? You want your name on the posters, your face in the ads? Then you need to damn well act like it. Not brawling in the streets like some dumb kid with something to prove.”
My jaw tightens. I run my tongue over my teeth, tasting copper. Someone got me good at some point—there’s a throb along my jawline that says I took at least one solid hit.
“I’ll handle it.”
My father lets the silence sit for a beat.
“We got major sponsors lined up this year. Big money. The kind that keeps this whole operation running. And this town—” He makes a frustrated sound.
“It’s been hit or miss for us. Profits aren’t what they used to be.
I’ve been talking to Holden, the finance guy from the town’s committee, and he insists that we’re going to make less this year than our last visit.
” He sighs heavily. “Maybe moving the circuit to the next town over, Cedarstone, is the better solution. They have a real company running events, unlike this town, which leaves it to a bunch of volunteers. Cedarstone also have better facilities, bigger crowds, more—”
“Cedarstone’s not a real town.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “It’s a tourist trap with a cowboy theme park. Our core audience is rural. Small towns. Places where rodeo actually means something.”
“Our core audience is whoever buys tickets.”
“No. It’s people who grew up with this and who remember what it feels like.” I’m pacing now. “Towns like this one, like the one we grew up in. Where you and Mom had me. Where she—”
I stop myself. Too far.
The silence on the other end is different now. Heavier.
I was twelve. Just a kid running wild through the streets, spending summers at the local rodeo grounds, watching the riders with stars in my eyes. Mom was still healthy then. Still laughing. Still the center of everything.
A year later, she was gone. The car accident took her fast, and after the funeral, Dad couldn’t stand to stay in that town anymore. “Too many memories,” he’d said. So he packed us up, hit the road, and started the circuit. Been moving ever since.
Mom never saw any of it. Never saw what Dad built in the years after she died. Sometimes I wonder if she’d be proud of us or if she’d hate what we’ve become—always running, never stopping long enough to feel anything real.
“Just get to the damn ranch,” my father says finally. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Fine.”
“And, Seth?”
“Yeah?”
“Fix your mess before it becomes mine.” The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone for a long moment, then toss it onto the bed. My head is still pounding, my mouth tastes like something died in it, and apparently I’m a wanted man in a town I barely know.
Great. Fantastic start to the day.
I stare around the room, trying to find something that might explain how I ended up here. There’s a key on the nightstand—room 107, The Ridge Motel—and a piece of paper with the motel’s address printed on it. Nothing else. No note, no wallet, no phone number scrawled on a napkin.
Just the memory of hazel eyes and a scent I can’t shake.
“You smell like my scent match.”
Did I actually say that to someone last night? Sounds like exactly the kind of thing my drunk brain would decide was a good idea.
Except I wasn’t drunk. I know I wasn’t drunk. I had one drink at the bar—a Coke, because I’m not a fucking idiot. Someone must have slipped something into it. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
But then how did I get here? Who brought me to this motel? And who the hell was the woman with the hazel eyes?
I grab my phone and pull up my contacts. Carter’s name is right at the top.
Me: Need a ride. The Ridge Motel. Out front.
The response comes in less than a few seconds.
Carter: Holy shit, you’re alive. Whose bed did you end up in last night?
Me: Fuck off and just pick me up.
Carter: On my way. 20 min.
I toss the phone on the bed again and head for the bathroom.
The mirror confirms what I already suspected: I look like hell.
There’s a bruise forming along my jaw, purple and angry, and my eyes are bloodshot.
My hair is a disaster. I smell like sweat and stale beer and something else—something floral and sweet that doesn’t belong to me.
Wildflowers.
I turn on the shower, letting the water run until it’s hot enough to steam up the tiny bathroom. The pressure is shit, but it’s better than nothing. I stand under the spray and let it pound against my skull, trying to beat some clarity into my brain.
Last night.
The bar where Carter and Kai were there… We were celebrating the start of the circuit, or pre-celebrating, since the real festivities don’t kick off until the weekend. I was being good. Sticking to soda. Watching the crowd.
There was a woman. Dark hair, pale ice-blue eyes, almost white around the edges.
She was pretty, in an obvious kind of way.
She kept finding excuses to touch my arm, lean close, laugh at things I didn’t say.
I wasn’t interested, but I wasn’t not enjoying the attention either. Ego is a hell of a thing.
And then…
Nothing. A gap. Like someone took scissors to the film reel of my memory and cut out the important parts.
I punch the shower wall, and the pain in my knuckles helps. Grounds me.
What the fuck happened last night?
By the time I get out, I feel marginally more human. I don’t have a change of clothes, so I pull on last night’s jeans and button-up, trying to ignore the wrinkles and the faint smell of perspiration to the fabric.
The lobby is empty except for an older guy behind the desk who’s maybe sixty, balding, and reading a newspaper like it’s still 1985. He glances up when I approach, expression neutral.
“Hey.” I lean against the counter. “You remember me coming in last night?”
He shakes his head slowly. “Just started my shift an hour ago. Night guy’s already gone home.”
“You got cameras? Anything that might show—”
He cuts me off with a look that’s seen a thousand guys like me stumbling through his lobby. “This is the kind of motel where we don’t ask questions about who you bring to your room. No cameras. No records. That’s the whole point.”
I groan, rubbing a hand over my face. Great. So much for that lead.
“Thanks anyway,” I mutter and push through the front door into the morning.