Chapter 29 #2
Two rows ahead, River was still talking, his hands moving through the air in a pattern that probably made sense if you knew what he was explaining. Logan glanced over his shoulder once, saw Greta and Bear, and nodded before turning back.
The arena filled with the sound of hooves on packed dirt, someone moving stock from one pen to another. The announcer’s voice cut through the noise. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a great lineup for you tonight. First up in the bareback bronc, we’ve got Tyler Hutchins on Little Miss Sunshine…”
Greta leaned back against the bleacher behind her and let the noise wash over her.
The crowd was loud — talking, laughing, the low buzz of people waiting for something to start.
She could smell popcorn from somewhere behind them, and beer, and the faint smoke-tang of someone grilling meat in the vendor row.
The lights over the arena made everything below them look sharp and too-bright, shadows falling hard across the dirt.
Bear shifted beside her, his arm coming to rest along the back of the bleacher behind her shoulders. Not touching her. Just there. She leaned into it without deciding to.
The first few rides were fine. Competent. Got polite applause, but didn’t make anyone stand up.
Greta glanced two rows down to check on Logan.
He wasn’t there.
She sat up straighter and scanned the bleachers. River was still in his seat, leaning back now with his hat tipped over his eyes between rides. Logan’s spot beside him was empty.
“Bear.”
“I see him.”
She followed his line of sight down past the bleachers to the chain-link fence that ran along the back of the concession area.
Logan was leaning against it with one shoulder, his ball cap pulled low, talking to two girls Greta didn’t recognize.
One of them was laughing at something he’d just said.
The other was looking up at him through her lashes in a way that even Greta—who had not been fifteen in a long time—could read from a hundred yards out.
“He’s flirting,” Bear said. It came out flat.
“He’s fifteen. He’s allowed to flirt.”
Bear grumbled.
She looked at him. His jaw had set. His arm had come down off the bleacher behind her, and his hands were braced on his knees. He glowered at the blonde girl on Logan’s left, and she thwacked his arm.
“Stop it. Why are you glaring daggers at that poor girl?”
“That’s Sadie Goodwin.”
It took her a second to place the name. Then she had it—the pale blonde hair, the way the girl tilted her head—and she could see Hank in her, around the eyes.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Hank Goodwin’s daughter is flirting with my son.”
“Bear.”
“Hank Goodwin, who tried to bury all of Naomi’s cases. Hank Goodwin, who put Jax in a holding cell. Hank Goodwin, who is brothers with that fucker Daniel—”
“I know who he is, Bear.”
He shifted in his seat like he was about to stand up, the slow gather of a very large, very protective man preparing to remove his son from a perceived threat in the middle of a crowded rodeo. She put her hand on his thigh.
“Don’t.”
“Greta—”
“Don’t. Bear. Dane,” she said when he didn’t seem to be paying attention. “Look at him. Look at your son.”
Finally, he turned his gaze from the girl to his son.
Logan was talking now, hands out of his pockets, gesturing with one of them while he made some point. He looked easy. Loose-shouldered. Confident. He wasn’t awkward, wasn’t bracing for rejection, just standing there talking to two girls as if he belonged there.
“He’s good,” Greta said. “Look at him. He’s doing fine.”
Bear’s jaw worked.
“She’s not her father,” Greta said quietly. “She’s a fifteen-year-old girl at the county fair. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy at the county fair. They’re not running a corruption ring, Bear. They’re flirting at a fence.”
“You don’t know what she’s heard about us. About Valor Ridge. What Hank’s said over the dinner table for the last decade.”
“No. I don’t. But Logan’s not stupid. And if she’s anything like her father, he’ll figure it out, and he’ll come home. And if she’s not—if she’s a kid trying to be a person separate from her dad—then maybe that’s something he gets to figure out for himself.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t like it.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I’m allowed to not like it.”
“You are.”
Below them, Sadie said something that made all three of them laugh.
Logan ducked his head, ball cap going lower, and reached up to scrub the back of his neck—a gesture Greta recognized because Bear did it, too.
The girl on the right pulled out a phone, and they leaned in, all three of them, looking at something on the screen.
“He’s going to come back up here in a minute,” Greta said. “He’s not stupid. He’s not going to miss X’s ride. Let him have this.”
Bear exhaled slowly, and the muscle in his jaw stopped jumping.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
His arm came back up around her shoulders, slower than before. She felt the tension in it. He wasn’t relaxed. He was overruling himself.
She squeezed his thigh where her hand still rested, then moved it. “You’re a good dad, you know that?”
Two minutes later, Logan came up the bleachers two at a time and dropped back into his seat beside River.
The announcer’s voice cut through. “And now we’ve got a crowd favorite, folks. Xavier Vega on Widow Maker. Let’s give him a hand.”
Logan sat forward.
Bear’s arm went still behind Greta’s shoulders.
Ahead of them, River stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled something that got lost in the general roar of the crowd. Logan stayed seated, but his posture had changed—spine straight, hands gripping the bleacher edge, attention locked on the chutes.
Greta sat forward, too.
Chute four banged open, and the gray roan came out already twisting, all four hooves off the ground before X had his second hand free.
The horse hit the dirt and immediately launched sideways, back arched, head down between its front legs, doing everything in its power to remove the human from its back.
X rode it like he’d been born for it. His free hand was up, his body rolling with the motion instead of fighting it, and every time the horse bucked, he absorbed it and came back centered. The roan spun left, then right, then went straight up and came down stiff-legged, and X stayed on.
The crowd was on its feet. Greta was on her feet and didn’t remember standing, one hand gripping the bleacher railing in front of her, her breath caught somewhere in her chest. The horse bucked again, a full-body snap that should have launched X into the dirt, and he leaned back into it and held on.
The buzzer sounded.
X dropped clean into the dirt and rolled, coming up in a crouch, then standing.
His hat had come off at some point, and he bent to scoop it up, brushing dirt off the brim.
He was grinning—full-face, the kind of grin only a man who knew exactly how good that had been could wear—and he turned in a slow circle, taking in the crowd.
Then he stopped, facing the grandstand, and his gaze tracked up.
Greta followed the line of it and found Mariah three sections over, standing near the railing with her arms crossed and her face set.
X swept his hat off and gave her a bow. Full theatrical, one arm extended, the other behind his back. Then he straightened, put the hat back on, and walked toward the gate, still grinning.
Greta sat down and leaned in when Bear draped an arm around her.
“Six weeks,” she said.
Bear’s arm tightened around her.
“Six weeks,” he repeated. “You’re watching that man bow to her like a court jester, and you think six weeks.”
“I’m watching that woman pretend she’s not smiling.” Greta tilted her chin toward Mariah’s section. “That’s not a woman who’s going to hold out six months.”