Chapter 12 #2
Every time. Every goddamn time a woman stirred something in the place below thought, the alarm fired. The system rerouted. Attraction became danger. Interest became warning. The woman in front of me became the woman behind me, and the wall went up so fast I could hear it.
"What'll it be?" the bartender asked.
"Beer," I said. "Whatever's on tap."
He poured it. I paid. I walked back to my seat carrying a plastic cup of something domestic and a mood that had soured by three degrees for no reason the evening deserved.
I settled back into the action. Bull riding was next—the main event, the one the crowd had really come for, the eight-second war between a man and two thousand pounds of muscle and spite that was the purest, most honest thing any sport had ever produced.
I watched the first three riders with the intensity of a man who'd done this himself and still felt the phantom grip of the rope in his palm.
The first one got tossed at five seconds—the bull, a brindle named Bad Medicine, had a spin that tightened halfway through and caught the rider leaning the wrong way.
The second made it to seven and change before the dismount went ugly and the bullfighters had to earn their pay.
The third went the full eight on a bull that was all power and no finesse, scoring a seventy-eight that the crowd loved and the rider seemed ambivalent about, probably because he knew the bull hadn't been his best draw.
I wanted to be down there.
The feeling arrived uninvited—a longing so specific and physical it caught in my throat.
I wanted to be behind those chutes, wrapping my hand, pounding the rosin into the rope, feeling the bull shift beneath me while the gate man waited for my nod.
I wanted the fear—the real kind, the kind that tasted like copper and adrenaline and the absolute certainty that the next eight seconds were going to be the most honest thing you'd done in months.
I wanted the buck. The spin. The buzzer.
The moment you hit the ground and the crowd hit you and you were alive in a way that nothing else on earth could make you.
I wanted my boots in the dirt.
I took a drink of beer that tasted like nothing and watched another rider climb into the chute and thought about all the years between this seat and the corral where my father had taught me to hold on.
Wishing.
It was during the next break—the arena crew raking the dirt, the announcer doing crowd work, the energy dipping into that natural lull between events—that I did what I always did in any space, any crowd, any environment.
I scanned.
Not consciously. Not tactically. The habit was too deep for that—it ran underneath everything, the constant, quiet sweep of my surroundings that my training had made as automatic as breathing. Entry points. Exit routes. Clusters. Anomalies.
The VIP boxes were elevated, set along the arena's west side, enclosed in glass that caught the arena lights and turned them into mirrors from most angles.
But my seat was different—slightly above, slightly offset—and from here the glass went transparent, the boxes opening up like dollhouses with the front wall removed.
I saw the boxes. Saw the people in them—corporate types, mostly, the kind who came to rodeos for the networking and left before the mud got on their shoes. A few families. A couple of empty ones.
And then—
Holy hell.
Third box from the left. Two women. One standing, drink in hand, looking out at the arena with the relaxed posture of someone who belonged wherever she was and knew it. Dark hair. Ring on her left hand. The woman from the farmers market—the one who'd been with her.
And beside her, seated, leaning forward with her elbows on the rail—
The bread woman.
Dark hair cascading over one shoulder. The flannel gone, replaced by something fitted and black that did things to her silhouette the flannel had only suggested.
She was watching the arena with the focused attention of someone who was actually interested in what was happening, not just performing interest for the social setting.
Her chin was resting on her hand. Her eyes were on the dirt.
She hadn't seen me. Thank God.
I started to look away. Started to execute the tactical withdrawal I'd been trained to perform in situations where maintaining visual contact created unacceptable risk.
This was, objectively, an unacceptable risk situation. I would look away. I would finish my beer. I would watch the rest of the bull riding from a different section. I would leave.
The other one saw me.
The one with the ring. She'd been scanning the crowd—casually, the way people in elevated positions did, enjoying the view—and her eyes had swept across my section and stopped.
On me.
I watched the recognition land. Watched her head tilt. Watched the smile spread across her face—slow, delighted, the smile of a woman who had just found something she wasn't looking for and was extremely pleased about the discovery.
She waved.
Not a casual wave. Not the ambiguous, maybe-I-know-you wave of someone uncertain. A direct, targeted, hand-up-fingers-moving wave accompanied by a smile so bright it was practically a weapon.
I thought about ignoring her. I could pretend I hadn't seen it, look away, vanish into the crowd the way I'd been trained to vanish into crowds in cities far more dangerous than this one. I thought about turning. I thought about leaving.
But I was in a rodeo. And in a rodeo—in this temple to the people and the animals and the traditions that had built the only version of myself I'd ever fully respected—rudeness wasn't an option.
There was a code here, the same way there was a code in the bar in Texas, and the code said you didn't ignore a friendly wave from a woman who meant no harm.
I waved back.
Short. Controlled. The wave of a man acknowledging a greeting and hoping it ended there.
It did not end there.
She beckoned.
A full, unmistakable come-here gesture. Her hand curling toward her body, her smile widening, the confidence of a woman who had made a decision and had no intention of allowing the decision to be declined.
Shit.
What was I supposed to do? I was sitting in a plastic seat holding a beer I didn't want, watching a rodeo I'd come to for the specific purpose of feeling something simple and uncomplicated, and now this.
I was at a loss. Sixteen years old again, the high school version of myself who'd retreated into stubbornness because feelings didn't come with instructions and nobody had taught me the words for what was happening inside my chest when something caught me off guard.
Fuck it.
I held up one finger. The universal gesture for be right there. The woman's smile went incandescent.
I stood. Left my beer on the floor next to my seat—somebody would kick it over, and I couldn't bring myself to care. I moved through the crowd.
I found the VIP level. The stairs. The hallway that led to the boxes, carpeted and quieter than the arena, the crowd noise muffled to a roar behind glass.
She was waiting at the entrance to the box.
Up close, she was even more striking than she'd been at the market—the bone structure, the warm eyes, the self-assurance that came from knowing exactly who you were and being comfortable with the answer.
She was standing next to a security guard who looked like he'd been told to keep people out and was confused about why this woman kept inviting them in.
"He's with me," she said to the guard, who stepped aside without question. She had that kind of authority.
She took my arm. Her grip was light but deliberate—the touch of a woman who was used to steering situations toward the outcome she preferred.
Then she leaned in. Her mouth near my ear. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I want you to be a surprise."
Before I could process what that meant—before I could ask who she was, what the surprise was, why she'd singled me out of thirteen thousand people like a sniper acquiring a target—she was pulling me forward, into the box, past the glass partition, into the warm, enclosed space that smelled like bourbon and leather seats and the faint floral perfume of a woman who was not the woman currently dragging me by the arm.
The box was small—six seats, a counter with drinks, a view of the arena that would've made my middle-section seat weep with inadequacy. The glass muted the crowd noise to a dull, exciting hum.
And there she was.
Seated at the rail. Bourbon in hand—neat, no ice, which my brain noted and filed without permission. She was leaning forward, chin on her hand, watching a bull rider settle into the chute.
I thought about bolting. I thought about pulling my arm free, mumbling an excuse, backing out of the box, and not stopping until I was in the parking lot and inside a car and on a highway pointed toward anywhere that wasn't here.
But the woman had my arm and she was not to be deterred. She moved forward with the cheerful inevitability of someone who had decided this was happening.
"Lou," she said. "Look who I found."
The woman turned.
She was smiling—the easy, social smile of someone interrupted during a good time, the smile that said what? and hi and I'm having fun, join me.
Then the recognition hit.
I watched it happen in real time. The smile didn't fall—it froze. Her eyes widened. The brown of them went from warm to sharp in the space of a heartbeat.
The smile faded into a recalibration, the face of a woman who had been surprised by something she'd been thinking about and wasn't ready to see in person.
Oh, shit, I thought.
And I was lucky—the woman holding my arm had loosened her grip, distracted by the moment she'd created, admiring her own handiwork.
I used the opening.
"I should go," I mumbled. The words came out rough, half-formed, the verbal equivalent of a man backing toward a door he couldn't find. "I didn't mean to—I should go."
I pulled free. Stepped back. Didn't look at the woman in the chair—Lou, the other one had called her, Lou—because looking at her meant staying, and staying meant feeling, and feeling meant Rachel, and Rachel meant the wall going up and the door slamming shut and the lesson playing on repeat in the part of my brain that kept the scar tissue fresh.
I turned and walked out of the box.
Fucking Rachel. Fucking Rachel. Fucking Rachel.