Chapter 29
KAI
Thousands of voices rise and fall in waves, crashing against the metal rails, reverberating off the bleachers, filling the air with an electricity that has every hair on my body standing on end.
Dust motes dance in the afternoon sunlight, golden and glittering, suspended in the charged atmosphere.
The smell of dirt and sweat and animals fills my lungs with each breath.
Not a single seat is empty. People are standing in the aisles, pressed against the railings, craning their necks for a better view.
I’ve never seen the arena this packed, this alive, this hungry for what’s about to happen.
The energy is different from that of every other event today.
Heavier. More primal. Like the crowd knows they’re about to witness something that only comes around once in a generation.
And beneath it all, a chant is building…
“brUTUS! brUTUS! brUTUS!”
The crowd isn’t here for me. Not really. They’re here for him, the legend. For the black mountain of muscle and fury who’s been terrorizing this town for over a decade. And this is his moment, his comeback.
I’m just the idiot who volunteered to be his dance partner.
My hands grip the top rail of the chute as I position myself above Brutus’s huge back.
The metal is warm from the sun, slick with sweat from the handlers who helped wrangle him in here.
Below me, two thousand pounds of pure destruction waits, black hide gleaming, muscles rippling with barely contained violence.
The helmet on my head feels heavier than usual. The protective gear mandatory for bull riding, but right now it’s a reminder of exactly how dangerous this is. How many ways this can go wrong. How one bad buck, one mistimed twist, could end with my skull cracked open on the packed dirt.
I lower myself onto Brutus’s back.
The sensation is immediate and overwhelming.
There’s no saddle between us, just my jeans against his coarse hide, and I can feel everything.
The heat radiating off him, furnace-hot, the constant movement, the shifting of massive muscles, the coiled tension of an animal preparing to explode.
It’s not sitting. It’s balancing on an earthquake that hasn’t started yet.
Brutus grunts, low and deep, a sound I feel more than hear.
His head swings to the side, one dark eye rolling back to look at me.
There’s intelligence in that gaze. Recognition.
He knows who I am, remembers me from the visits this week, from the times I stood outside his pen while June worked her calming magic.
I set my rope hand, wrapping the braided leather around my gloved palm, testing the tension.
The burn starts immediately in my forearm, a preview of what’s coming.
I lock my wrist, adjust my grip, and feel the first real spike of adrenaline hit my system.
Those around me are watching, ready if anything goes haywire.
Brutus bumps against the side of the chute, metal rattling, the whole structure shuddering with the impact. I absorb the jolt through my hips and knees, keeping my upper body stable, forcing my breathing to stay steady even as my heart tries to punch its way out of my chest.
“Easy,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
The handlers around me are tense, ready to move.
“Time,” I call out, my voice steadier than I feel. “Give me a minute.”
The arena grows somehow louder, the anticipation building.
I focus on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Slow. Controlled. I force my heart rate down, force my muscles to relax, force my body to remember that panic is the enemy.
Brutus will exploit every moment of tension, every second of fear.
If I want to survive this, I need to be loose.
Fluid. Ready to move with him instead of against him.
So I lean forward slightly, bringing my mouth closer to Brutus’s ear.
“All right, big guy,” I say quietly, my voice lost beneath the roar of the crowd. “Here’s the deal. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not here to prove anything at your expense, but I’m not here to lose either.”
Brutus’s ear flicks. He’s listening. Maybe not understanding, but listening.
“Eight seconds. That’s all I’m asking. You give me eight seconds of your worst, and then you get to run around this arena while ten thousand people scream your name. Sound fair?”
The bull responds in the only language he knows. A deep grunt and shift of his large head. A stomp of one enormous hoof that shudders through my entire body, rattling my teeth, vibrating up my spine.
It feels like acknowledgment, and like a promise to make those eight seconds the longest of my life.
“Kai.” June’s voice cuts through everything. The crowd, the announcer, the thundering of my own pulse. June is there, pressed against the rails behind the chute.
“Hey, beautiful. Come to wish me luck?”
“Something better.” She leans in, not looking at me, but at Brutus. The bull’s eye tracks her movement, and I feel some of the tension in his body shift. Not disappear, but change. Redirect.
“Hey, Brutus,” she says softly, her tone completely different from how she speaks to anyone else. “Remember me? I used to feed you bottles when you were just a baby.”
Brutus huffs, a sound that might be recognition or might be contempt. It’s hard to tell with him.
“I need you to do me a favor,” June continues. “Don’t be too rough with this one, okay? He’s kind of important to me. Bring him back in one piece.”
The bull’s response is another huff, this one longer, almost offended. His body shifts beneath me, coiling tighter, and I feel it as both a warning and a dare. He’s going to give me everything he has. June or no June.
But maybe, just maybe, he’ll let me survive it.
“Thank you,” I tell her, and I mean it for so much more than this moment.
She meets my eyes, and everything she’s feeling is right there on the surface. Fear. Pride. Love. Trust. “I love you so much. Please, come back to me,” she says.
My heart pulses at her words. “I love you, and I’ll always be back for you.”
Seth is at the rails too, his expression hard and focused.
He gives me a single nod, the kind of silent communication we’ve developed over years of friendship.
Carter stands beside him, looking slightly green around the edges, probably still suffering from last night’s drinking competition.
But he manages a grin anyway, flashing me a thumbs-up.
My pack. My family. I turn back to focus on the event.
I adjust my posture one final time. Legs clamped against his sides, knees bent, core engaged. My free hand rises, ready to keep balance, ready to stay away from his hide no matter how much my instincts yell to grab on. My rope hand is locked, wrist turned in, forearm already screaming.
This is it.
I lean forward slightly, signaling the gate operator.
“Let’s go.”
The gate swings open.
Brutus explodes.
There’s no other word for it. One moment he’s coiled power and contained fury, and the next he’s a black tornado of muscle and violence, launching out of the chute with enough force to snap my head back and steal the breath from my lungs.
The first buck is brutal. His back end kicks up, higher than should be possible, and I’m thrown forward, my face almost meeting his neck. I wrench myself back, overcorrect, nearly lose my balance in the opposite direction.
Brutus doesn’t give me time to recover.
He twists. A savage, corkscrewing motion that tries to throw me off-center, to spin me loose, to send me flying into the dirt. I feel my body rotating, feel my grip slipping, feel the rope burning through my glove.
I clamp down harder. Hold. Breathe. Lock.
The world becomes a blur of motion and sensation. Coarse black hide rough against my thighs. Heat rising off his body, almost burning. The rope biting into my hand. Dust filling my mouth, coating my tongue, making each breath a struggle.
Every muscle in his body is dedicated to one purpose: getting me off his back.
He bucks again, a massive vertical surge that lifts me clear off his spine before gravity slams me back down. My tailbone screams in protest. My teeth click together so hard I see stars.
I find a rhythm. For one glorious heartbeat, I think I’ve got him. My body moves with his, anticipating the next buck, rolling with the motion instead of fighting it. This is what the good riders do. This is how you survive.
Brutus changes the pattern.
The drop and twist comes out of nowhere, a combination I’ve never felt from any bull in all my years of riding. He drops his front end, kicks his back end up and sideways simultaneously, and twists his entire body in a direction that defies physics.
I’m yanked forward. My rope hand nearly tears free. For one terrifying moment, I’m airborne, connected to Brutus by nothing but a fraying grip and pure stubbornness.
I hear the crowd gasp. A collective intake of breath from all the people who are watching me die.
I refuse.
Something deep inside me, some primal survival instinct, takes over. I re-grip the rope, ignoring the searing pain in my forearm. I throw my weight back, using the momentum of Brutus’s own twist to pull myself back to center. My free hand windmills for balance but never touches him.
The crowd’s gasp becomes a roar.
I’m still on.
But Brutus isn’t done. He never is. The old bastard has decades of experience throwing riders, and he’s not about to let some upstart cowboy break his streak.
He spins. A vicious rotation that creates centrifugal force strong enough to peel me off like a loose scab. I clamp my legs tighter, feel the burn spread through my thighs, feel muscles I didn’t know I had screaming for mercy.
How long has it been? Three seconds? Four? It feels like hours, as if my entire life has been compressed into this moment, this endless struggle against two thousand pounds of fury and pride.