Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
As bitter cold as Boston had been in February, Cheyenne was as blistering hot in August. Joa had to admit he liked the heat better, or at least he handled it better.
It felt a lot like being home, except home didn’t feel any cooler in the shade than it did in the sun and here the sweat evaporated.
They’d ridden through cowboy Christmas—him and Raul—trying to make money at all the events, big and little, and now they were on the big show again, fixin’ to ride in an outdoor arena like real cowboys. Joa loved that about Cheyenne. They didn’t have to cart the dirt in here. It stayed year round.
Raul bounced a few feet away, rolling his head on his neck and warming up. He watched from the corner of his eye, admiring for a moment. He’d been turned every which way but loose last night, Raul and Balta spearing him, fore and aft. Deus, he was a lucky man.
“Will you pull my rope, Raul?” Joa asked. “Balta has an interview on TV.”
“Sim.” Raul crossed himself. The cameras terrified him, made him lose his English, and he dreaded the attention that his rides inevitably brought.
Laughing, Joa raised his arm and pushed his hips back and forth, simulating a ride. “You’ll be fine. Just smile.”
Raul flashed a grin at him, bright and happy. Yes, that was all the cameras really wanted to see.
He turned to look when his bull was loaded in the chute. Big monster this one.
“Turns to the right out of the gate,” Cotton told him, squeezing past to go to the next chute. “Likes to throw his head up like Bodacious did back in the day, so be careful.”
“Okay. I wouldn’t want to break any teeth.”
“Or your face.”
They all nodded. No one would ever forget the first time they saw that ride on the TV—when Tuff left the arena with his face in a zillion pieces. Bodacious was still famous in the world of bull-riding, even though most riders still around had never even seen him.
Joa breathed deep, twisting side to side, warming up his ribs and hips.
He began to talk to himself, remind himself to lean hard.
If the bull turned into his riding hand and he went down in the well…
No. He’d fallen enough. He was barely staying on tour and Balta was sitting at sixth, Raul still firmly in second behind Kynan.
If he couldn’t travel with them, he’d be stuck at home, alone.
The thought hurt something in his belly. Balta was his demon and Raul was his light. He needed them with him.
This arena was full of sunlight and the shine was so much better than the spotlights. Joa loved being outside, missed it sometimes in all the travel.
Focus.
Focus.
“You ready, Joa?” Raul asked. “Balta is coming. I see him.”
He beamed. Balta had finished his interview in time for both him and Raul to be there. Joa felt loved. Honored.
Now he just had to ride.
He straddled the chute, getting his bull rope ready, the bull leaning hard against the gate.
Raul pushed the bull with his boot. “I think the board, sim?”
“Sim. He’s not happy.” Of course, the ones that loved their jobs always worried him more.
Balta appeared next to him. “Where’s Nate? He will have the board.”
“Here. This one’s a bitch on leaning. He tosses his head, too. You watch your face.” Nate began to pry the bull away from the gate.
“So I heard.”
“Well, listen up. Troy keeps him coming to events because the crowds love him, but I know he wants Cash to retire the bastard.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be the reason he gets more famous.”
“No shit on that.”
Balta held Joa steady when he climbed over the rail, helping him settle on the bull’s back. The energy of the bull always filled him when his knees touched down, and this one was full of rage, ready to buck Joa off.
“Easy,” he muttered. “Let’s do our jobs and make some money, sim?”
That was all he wanted. Eight seconds, a qualified ride, and a bit of the purse money.
Raul chuckled. “Bom. All you have to do is stay in the middle, Joa. Breathe.” One brown hand found the center of his chest, holding him from the front while Balta gripped his vest from the back.
“Sim. Sim. Pull the rope now, he’s giving us some air.”
Raul nodded and grabbed the bull rope, pulling it taut. He couldn’t focus on the way Raul looked, tugging and huffing and puffing. He had to concentrate on the bull, on the readiness of the heavy muscles beneath him. Two thousand pounds of bull just waited for him to lose focus at the wrong moment.
He wrapped the rope around his hand, pounding his fingers closed tight. The bull began to lean again, trying to squash his leg against the gate, so he grabbed one horn with his free hand, pulling hard. “Stop it, bife!”
Raul stepped off and he groaned as the pressure on his leg increased, then suddenly eased as the bull readied himself to take a jump. He nodded his head, the gate swinging open, the excited cries from the audience so loud for a half second before he forgot them altogether.
In his mind, Joa did what he was sure all bull riders did. He began to count. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand… His body knew what to do, muscle memory taking over. Shift, arch. Spur.
Correct.
He felt the bull rope shift, felt the momentum start to pull him into the well and he arched, body twisting impossibly.
For a moment Joa thought he would make it, and he heard Raul screaming, a wordless noise that sounded like Brazil to him.
Then gravity took over and he began to slide down into the bull’s horns.
No.
No fucking way.
He needed this ride.
Joa gritted his teeth around the mouthpiece and held on. As long as his hand was still in the rope and no part of him touched the ground before the buzzer, he would get his points.
He made the eight, then started hunting for a get-off, but the damn bull reared up, going straight-up vertical. He let go, his heart slamming in his chest, pounding furiously as he hit the dirt. He could hear Balta screaming, and the shadow of the bull was getting closer instead of farther away.
“No! Come on! Here! Here, Bruiser! Here! Look here!” Nate’s voice was like a hail of bullets, but that shadow kept getting bigger and Joa scrambled, trying to get out of Bruiser’s way.
Time had slowed to a crawl, but then it all went into double time, as if he was fast-forwarding a movie. Joa had almost cleared the bull’s space when Bruiser crashed to the ground. Right on Joa’s right leg.
The snap was loud and he screamed before he felt the pain, his entire world going white with a pure agony deeper than he’d ever felt.
“Coop! Goddamn it! Tag, help!” Nate sounded damn scared, and Joa stared up, watching as the bull’s hooves came down again, and again.
He gritted his teeth, trying his damnedest to protect his important bits, but every move made things in his thigh grind, the sounds like the opening of hell’s gates.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t until Nate found him and yanked that the good Lord decided to have pity on him and turn everything to quiet black.
Raul drove Nate’s rental truck to the hospital. He and Balta both had to ride in the short go, and the hour and a half they waited before they could go to Joa and see him had felt like years. Agonizing.
The worst of it was Balta, actually. The man was gray. Old and tired. He never said a word, just sat in the passenger seat and waited for them to get where they were going.
“He’s fine,” Raul said, but they both knew that wasn’t true. They’d seen the bone, they’d seen the blood, but he had to say it.
“His leg is broken.” Balta’s voice sounded shredded, which made sense. He’d screamed it gone. “Not his head, though, right? Thanks to God for that much.”
“Yes. Not his head. Not his back or his neck. They have fixed broken legs since the beginning of medicine.”
“Sim.” Balta sighed. “Joa. Why Joa, Raul?”
“Because that’s who the bull fell on.” In this, he was perfectly practical.
They got hurt. All of them. It was inevitable.
Sometimes it was him who rode with a broken wrist, or Balta with a torn bicep, or Joa with a torn ACL.
They could get through this, no problem.
Balta just had to stop being…what did they call it?
A drama llama. Though in his experience, llamas were placid.
They did have long eyelashes like Joa, though.
“When we get out of this truck, I am going to hit you so hard you will be put into the next week.”
“Did you hear that from Joa?” It didn’t sound Brazilian.
“Yes. I think.” Balta shrugged. “Or Coke. Someone who lives in Texas.”
“Ah.” He nodded, though, because he understood. “Joa will be fine. He will hurt and it will not be good, but then he will heal.”
Because Raul needed it to be that way. They needed it to be, him and Balta both.
“I never wanted to see him take a hit like that,” Balta said. “He’s so young, nao?”
“Stop it,” Raul barked. “I want you to smile for him, to kiss him when no one is looking and tell him he will be fine. Do you understand?”
Balta stilled, stared at him with shocked eyes. “What? What did you say to me?”
“You heard me.” Raul glanced sideways, giving Balta a hard stare. “This is not for you to be all sighs and sorrow. He will need to believe. This is for him.”
Balta began to swell up, but whether or not he was angry mattered not one bit. Angry was better than sorrowful. Angry was better than maudlin. Raul would poke him as needed to keep Balta from sinking into a funk.
Raul waited to see if Balta would blast him and sure enough, the deluge came.
“How dare you!” Balta barked. “No one loves him like I do.”
He wasn’t sure about that. He loved Joa more than he could express, and he loved Balta enough to dare his fury. “I dare because I do love him. I love you both, caralho.”
Balta opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. Then took a deep breath. “I will be good. Shit. I need to call his parents.”
“Was it live? The cameras?” He couldn’t imagine seeing it from so far away and knowing nothing.