Chapter 8 Brick
brICK
By the time I pull my vest on and slide my hand down the rope, the sun is a gold coin sitting right on the rim of the grandstands.
The noise rolls at me in warm waves—boots on planks, tinny speakers, somebody whistling loud enough to peel paint.
I give the gate man a nod and hang my jaw loose the way I always do right before the world gets small.
Swagger’s a joke and a shield both. I wear it like a second hat.
The bull underneath me breathes like a forge. Hell’s Thunder. He’s got a reputation, but I know him by feel—shorter hop, quick spin, likes to fake a direction change and see if you’ll overcommit. I’ve ridden worse.
My glove hand finds the pocket in the rope just right. Free arm floats. I tell my back to be a spring and my hips to be a hinge. Somebody yells my name. The gate bangs.
We blow out into open air and light. He hits a left spin, head down, shoulders popping.
I stay with him, left with him, left again, drawing figure eights with my free hand to keep the judges awake.
The crowd goes up a notch and my lungs do that thing where they forget to count seconds and just count fun.
He fakes right, but I don’t buy it. We’re both old enough for each other’s tricks.
Four seconds. Five. I can hear him sucking wind and the announcer sucking vowels.
I’m there. My core’s tight, my knees are iron, chin low.
Then he throws a dirty little hop-skip that’s less buck and more insult, and I feel my weight get a breath too far ahead.
It’s nothing, a bad blink. Then it’s everything.
Seven.
I pull, I claw, I’m on, I’m off. The air surrounds me, in place of half air, half bull.
Dirt comes fast and sideways. My shoulder kisses ground harder than I planned and I roll the way I’ve taught a hundred kids to roll.
The bullfighter flashes across my eyes like a miracle in bright pants, and the pickup horse steals the big man’s attention with a swagger prettier than mine.
I’m on my knees, then my feet, then I’m tipping my hat at the grandstands like this was all choreography I meant to do. They buy it because they want to.
Scoreboard says I didn’t waste anyone’s time. Not a winning ride, not a loser either, and I’ll get another go if the draw’s kind. My shoulder is wet and gritty. I wipe and my palm comes back red. Huh. Didn’t feel that happen.
I walk out under the back gate and Blaze is there already, bouncing on the balls of her feet like she can’t decide whether she’s a human or fire itself.
Her ribbon is crooked, lipstick perfect, eyes bright with the kind of worry she pretends is admiration.
“You good?” she asks, already reaching for my arm.
“Always,” I say, and only then do I look down and see the slice. It’s not deep-deep, but it’s long and messy, from mid-bicep to just shy of the inside of my elbow. Blood has made a little river through the dust on my skin. My vest is scuffed, my pride less so.
“Dad,” she says, in that tone that means I should not argue if I want peace. “Get that patched.”
“Looks worse than it is.”
She snorts. “And infections are worse than that…wait. You fell on purpose, didn’t you? That pretty doctor—”
“Watch your mouth,” I say, but I can’t help the grin. “Point me to my doom.”
She grabs my wrist—careful of the slice, my smart girl—and tugs me along the back lane.
It buzzes with the usual traffic. Livestock guys talking in short sentences, sponsors in clean boots trying not to step in anything, kids hauling coolers.
The medic tent isn’t too far away, which is good because I don’t want half my clothes turning red.
Definitely not because I want to see Annie.
Blaze peeks around the flap like she owns the place. “Doc? Delivery!”
Jaden, the nurse with the good eyes and the better attitude, looks up first and then steps aside with a smile that says he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Come on in, Blaze. That looks like a good one.”
Then Annie turns, and the tent gets smaller.
She’s in scrubs again, hair pulled back, a little line between her brows that could be concentration or irritation. Her hands are gloved, steady. There’s a calm around her that doesn’t match the carnival outside. My shoulder steals her attention.
“Hey, Doc,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m proud of bleeding.
She takes one look at the arm and tilts her head. “Hey yourself. Sit.”
That voice. Not sweet, not hard. Just sure. I sit on the corner cot, and Blaze perches on a stool and makes herself ten percent smaller, which is as polite as she gets.
Annie peels back the soaked part of my sleeve and the cut opens like a mouth that wants to talk. “How’s your pain?”
“Don’t have any.”
Her eyes flick up. “At all?”
“Not in that patch,” I say, and tap the meat of my bicep with my clean hand. “Been numb there the better part of a decade.”
She studies the area with that laser look, like she can see the scar tissue under the skin. “Nerve damage?”
“More like God’s sense of humor,” I say. “Took a horn wrong in Amarillo forever ago. Lost some feeling. Comes in handy when the dirt has opinions. Doesn’t when I leak the red stuff and don’t notice.”
Blaze gives me a see-I-told-you face without using any muscles. Annie’s mouth does a not-quite smile. She’s hiding it from me, but not from herself. “Okay,” she says, all business now, the kind I like. “No tendon involvement that I can see. Range of motion?”
I roll the shoulder and flex the elbow like a man showing off without meaning to. “Not my first rodeo.”
“You say that at the rodeo, and you owe me a dollar,” she says, deadpan, and I bark a laugh that makes Jaden grin. But then he points to the sign on the wall that reads If you say, “Not my first rodeo,” you owe us a dollar.
Fair enough.
She cleans—saline, gauze, the sting that means we’re not getting infected today—and I watch her hands.
Small, strong. She’s precise without being precious, and I feel myself relaxing in increments I can count.
Outside, a kid yells and somebody’s mother answers with the exact same vowel.
Inside, it’s gloves and the soft rip of packaging and the rustle of her sleeve when she reaches.
She’s carved out a tiny oasis of calm here, and that takes some doing.
“When did you last get a tetanus shot?” she asks.
“Last year.”
“You’re current. Smart in your line of work.” Her hip brushes my knee as she leans to get a better angle and my whole nervous system does a stupid little dance. It’s nothing. It’s a touch through fabric in a hot tent.
But it’s everything when I haven’t let anyone matter in a long time.
She’s close to me. Close enough to kiss. When her eyes dip to my mouth, I know what’s on her mind, because it’s all I can think about too. How soft her lips must be. How they’d feel on me. The slide of her tongue—
“You going to be able to ride again tonight?” Blaze asks, the casual tone a lie. She’s watching me out of the corner of her eye like she’s not watching at all.
“Ask the pretty doctor.”
Annie doesn’t look up. “The pretty doctor says you’ll be fine as long as you keep the dressing clean and your ego in check.”
“My ego’s bridle-broke,” I tell her.
“That so?”
“Mostly.” I drop my voice, just for me and her. “Depends who’s holding the reins.”
She finally glances up, and for half a second we’re the only two people in the entire county.
Her eyes are clear and sharper than they have any right to be.
They make me want to tell the truth I hide in jokes.
The cut is nothing. The heat is nothing.
The entire festival is something I can hear but not feel.
All I feel is the gravity between two people who haven’t decided what to do with it yet.
Her lashes flicker. “Hold still,” she says, and her thumb presses just above the wound to steady my skin. I do as I’m told. I’ve done worse for less reward.
Blaze kicks her heel against the leg of the stool and sings a little under her breath to keep herself from saying what she’s thinking. Jaden straightens the pile of gauze again just to give privacy the fiction it needs.
“Stitches?” I ask.
“Steri-strips and glue. You don’t deserve my best thread.”
“I like you mean.”
“Don’t make me give you the cheap tape.”
“I like cheap tape if you’re the one ripping it off.”
She snorts before she can stop herself, and it’s the prettiest sound I’ve heard this week. She finishes the last strip and leans back to admire her work like a carpenter deciding a shelf won’t fall. “You’re patched,” she says. “Try not to roll in gravel for a few hours.”
“No promises,” I say, and I’m about to say something else ill-advised when the tent flap slaps open and Ford blows in like a weather system.
“There you are,” he says, breath and gel and agency all in one piece. “Brick, what the hell—Blaze texted me from three feet away like a teenager with a secret. You good? You bleeding? You concussed? Tell me what partnership liability I’m dealing with.”
“Hi, Ford,” Blaze says, sweet as lemonade. “He’ll live.”
Ford looks from her to the bandage to me to Annie, clocks the half inch of air between her and my knee, and recalibrates his scolding into business. He appreciates efficiency if nothing else. “Are you okay?”
“According to the doctor.”
He turns to Annie like the legal department disguised as a man. “Is he okay?”
She wipes her gloves on a towel and gives him a look I wish I could frame. “Yeah. He’s fine.”
I spread my hands. “That’s what all the girls say about me.”
For a heartbeat I think I’ve overstepped, but she laughs—really laughs—head tipping, eyes going soft. It hits me like a fist in the chest, and I don’t even mind the bruise.
Ford exhales a little. “All right. You’re back on for the short go if you want it. Sponsors are twitchy, but they’ll unclench if I tell them you’re still pretty. You have enough shirts to keep that covered so no one knows? Or do I need to go shopping for you?”
“I’m set,” I say and stand. Annie’s hand hovers in case I’m dumb, and I make a show of not needing it even though I want to catch her fingers just to see if she’ll let me. “Doc says I can ride. I’ll listen to the doc.”
“Good,” Ford says. To Annie, “We appreciate you.”
“Try keeping him off the animals if you want him to live,” she says, dry as the Utah wind.
He blinks, recalibrates again, points at me without looking. “Come on, Brick. We’ve got five minutes to pretend you’re going to live.”
Blaze hops off the stool and kisses my shoulder very carefully around the bandage. “Don’t be dumb out there.”
“Family trait,” I tease. “It’s just a matter of degree.”
“Keep it at a manageable degree.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ford makes the get-moving motion he learned from me and now uses on me. I look back at Annie because not looking feels like leaving money on a table. She’s already tossing gauze into the bin, pretending she doesn’t feel me watching.
“Thanks, Doc,” I say.
She nods without smiling. “Try not to bleed on my floor again.”
“No promises.”
I push through the flap, and the heat hits me like a wall.
Ford launches into numbers and schedules, and which sponsor wants a picture of me shaking a hand I don’t want to shake.
I make the right noises at the right times because that’s part of the job.
Blaze walks on my other side like a guardian angel who drinks.
The air is dust and kettle corn and roasted meat and the electricity that comes before anything worth watching.
But my mind is not where it should be.
We pass the lemonade stand and the same kid from yesterday sings out that he’s got pink if I want it.
Ford says something about post-ride availability and Blaze points at a boy she plans to make nervous later.
I nod and smile and carry on like a man who isn’t thinking about how close a mouth can be without being dangerous.
Almost is a mean word. It pretends to be a mercy. It’s not. It’s a dare.
I touch the edge of the bandage with my clean hand and feel the pull underneath. The glue will hold. So will the strips. So will the part of me that learned a long time ago to save the risk for the dirt and keep everything else civilized.
When it comes to Annie, I don’t want to be civilized.
But as Ford yanks my attention back to the schedule, and Blaze asks if I want a drink, and a kid calls my name for a selfie, I promise myself one thing.
I’m going to find Annie again when the gate is closed and the crowd goes home.
I’m going to find the moment we almost took and see if it’s still there when nobody’s watching.
For now, I nod at numbers, step back into the lane that leads to the chutes, and let the noise wrap me the way it always does—familiar, loud, easy to ride. My shoulder tugs once like a reminder that I’m not made of myth. My swagger fits anyway. Pride goes before a fall.
But I fell. I got up. I’m fine.
And I’m thinking about a woman who told me so.