Chapter 3
Three
I’M HERE TO DANCE WITH THIS DEVIL.
WYATT
Most men pretend they aren’t afraid to dance with the devil. I grip tight, look him dead in the eye, and take my eight-second ride.
The deep bellow of bulls shifting in their steel cages, the metallic clang of chute gates, the distant roar of twenty thousand voices hungry for eight seconds of chaos pulses around me. I breathe it in like incense.
My phone rings and I glance down. Mom.
I can't answer right now. I silence it.
I pull my riding glove tight and flex my fingers, feeling the familiar bite against my palm. The leather is broken in just right—soft enough to grip, tough enough to hold when everything goes sideways.
Which it always does.
That's the point.
I run through my pre-ride checklist. Vest secure. Chaps buckled. Rope checked and rechecked. The weight of my gear settles on me. Thirty pounds of leather and protection that can't shield me from the voices that follow me everywhere else.
Out there, beyond the arena lights, I'm tied to a legacy that feels more like a noose with every passing year. Back here, I'm just another cowboy with something to prove and eight seconds to prove it.
Dirty Bucker snorts in chute three, a seventeen-hundred-pound mass of muscle and bad intentions that's sent more than one rider to the emergency room this season.
I drew him fair and square, and the matchup feels like destiny.
I close my eyes and visualize the ride: the gate flying open, the bull's first leap, the technique it’ll take to beat him. Eight seconds. That's all I need.
My mind jumps, and she appears. Blue eyes. Dark hair. A wild thing on the verge of disappearing that made something inside of me want to make her mine.
My eyes snap open, my concentration shattered. I don't think about women during competition. Shoot, I barely think about women after competition. That's part of the code I've built—keep it simple, keep it surface.
She looked at me like she could see past the swagger—and into the parts of me I’ve buried so deep I forgot where I put them. She didn’t see Wyatt Halloway the future king of a cattle empire and she wasn’t calculating my net worth or my buckle count.
"Halloway!" The chute boss's voice cuts through my thoughts. "You're three bulls out."
I shake my head, disgusted with myself. Focus is everything in this sport. A half-second of distraction can end a career, end a life. Whatever spell that blue-eyed woman has cast on me needs to stay in the stands where it belongs.
I grab my helmet and lean against the chute rail, letting the familiar rituals wash the outside world away.
Dirty Bucker snorts again in the chute, hooves shifting against steel, rattling the whole structure like he’s bored of waiting to destroy something.
Nobody’s made the eight on him this season. Not once.
Which is exactly why I want him.
I’m third in the world right now, gunning for Vegas, and a clean ride on Dirty Bucker could sling me into first.
Jake hops up next to me, his grin just wide enough to hide the nerves. "That bull looks like he eats egos for breakfast."
I hand him my phone.
The chute boss yells, “Chute three!” and everything else disappears. The crowd, the noise, even the heat bleeding through my vest.
Biting down on my mouth guard, I pull on my helmet and swing a leg over to settle in.
Dirty Bucker shifts, testing me already, jerking against the gate like he knows I’m not just here to survive him—I’m here to beat him.
He throws himself into the wall and then the gate and back at the wall, already trying to get me off.
Jake reaches down and slaps my helmet. “Go get ‘em, Wyatt!”
I lower my head and breathe in. My hand tightens in the rope, locked. I nod and the gate flies.
Dirty Bucker explodes out like a cannon, back legs kicking toward the sky. I ride forward, then back, every movement synced to his, not fighting, just adjusting. We spin hard left, then he fakes right and kicks again, a blur of hide and lightning beneath me.
Time bends.
My spurs hit the sweet spot behind his shoulder. Even the ghost of my father’s disappointment goes silent. I’m here to dance with this devil. There’s only the ride.
And I am good at it.
Dirty Bucker makes one final lurch, a high rear and hard twist, but I hold. I’m flying and grounded all at once.
The buzzer shrieks.
I release and kick free—almost. My hand is stuck in the rope.
I twist my wrist. Dirty Bucker bucks again, and I’m airborne, twisting sideways, slamming into the dirt shoulder-first. White-hot pain sears down my arm.
I don’t stay down. Not in front of twenty thousand people. Not ever. Hollaway’s are never beat.
I roll and try to scramble to my feet, but the ground sways and my left shoulder gives out and doesn't work like I want it to. I taste blood, copper and grit.
Bull fighters rush in, cutting off Dirty Bucker before he circles back. My shoulder’s not right. Might be a sprain. Maybe worse. Can’t tell. Doesn't matter.
I pull my legs under me and stand up. My left arm hangs heavy, useless, but I nod to the crowd like nothing’s wrong.
Applause rolls like thunder. The score flashes on the screen—88.5.
I wave my good arm. The crowd's losing their minds, but I’m only watching one face.
Kinsley’s standing stiff near the rail, lips parted, eyes wide, and drinking me in.
The primal pride that surges through me is wicked.
I feel like I just baptized a rodeo virgin with dust and sweat and eight seconds of glory.
She’s leaving here a Wyatt Halloway fan.
The arena director meets me at the gate, concern etched deep. "You’re seeing the doc. Non-negotiable."
I nod, not because I agree, but because I’m too dizzy to argue.
I’ve seen the inside of enough rodeo med tents to know how this works. There’s always a cooler full of warm sports drinks nobody wants, a pile of crumpled gauze that never quite makes it into the trash, and an exam table that looks like it’s held more pain than a church pew.
Doc Mackey doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. “Well,” he mutters as I duck inside. “If it isn’t my favorite repeat offender.”
“Doc,” I say in greeting, biting back the grimace as I lower myself onto the table. “Miss me?” He’s patched me up in four states.
“You know you’re allowed to show up without bleeding,” he says, cutting my shirt away.
Dang it. I liked this shirt. “Where’s the fun in that?”
His fingers prod along my shoulder, hitting every nerve like they owe him money. I suck in a breath through my nose and grit my teeth. Pain like this has a color. Bright, white-hot.
“Thought so,” he says, frowning. “Pulled a ligament, right where the clavicle meets the shoulder joint.”
I close my eyes. “But it’s not torn.”
“No,” he says slowly. “Not yet.”
He knows what I’m going to say. I know what he’s about to recommend. We go through this dance every few months.
“You might be able to finish this week,” he says, “but if you don’t take two weeks off to heal, it will tear. You’ll be in surgery before summer ends.”
“I just need to finish Cheyenne.”
“Of course you do.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a small white bottle. “Muscle relaxers laced with pain meds. You’re taking them.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Wyatt—”
“You know I don’t do pills.”
He meets my eyes, steady and calm. “And you know I wouldn’t offer it if you didn’t need them. This isn’t about ego. This is about finishing this week.”
I stare at the bottle. I don’t mess with anything that muddies the line between pain and performance. Pain tells me where the edge is.
“I’ll take ‘em,” I mutter. “But they’re going in my pocket. Not my stomach.”
“Fine,” he says, and hands them over.
I tuck the bottle into my back pocket.
“Come on, Doc. I can't keep the ladies waiting.”
He reaches for the tape, muttering something about stubborn cowboys. As he wraps me tight, I stare at the canvas ceiling.
“You’re not made of iron, you know,” Doc says quietly.
“No,” I say. “But I’m made of something close enough.”
He finishes and steps back. “Come back tomorrow before your ride and I’ll give you some movement. You’ve got maybe two rides left in that shoulder before it gives.”
“That's all I need. Thanks.” I hop off the table, ignoring the way the floor wobbles under my boots.
Outside, somebody else is chasing their eight seconds now.
And somewhere out there, Kinsley is still watching.
I don't want to stop thinking about her now. She’s a darn good distraction.
The night’s cooled some, but sweat still clings to the back of my neck, soaked into the collar of what’s left of my shirt.
Jake finds me standing there and trying to decide if I’m going back to the hotel or if I should find something to eat.
“You look like someone chewed you up and forgot to swallow,” he says, voice casual, as he takes in my taped shoulder and bruised jaw.
“Doc clear you, or just pray over it?” He hands me back my phone and I tuck it in my back pocket.
“Both,” I mutter. He holds out a paper bag. “Take a whiskey, man. You’re as tense as a fence line in flood season.”
I look at the bag. Jake means well—this is cowboy first aid, plain and simple. But I shake my head. “I’m good.”
He leans against the fence rail near the tent. “You should work that shoulder for some sympathy from a pretty young thing in painted on jeans.”
“My grandpa always says, ‘never sleep with a woman you don’t want raising your babies’.”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Want to know what my grandpa told me?”
I can’t even imagine.
“The heart wants what the heart wants and sometimes it just wants a weekend.”
I shake my head and grin as I let out a breath and look away, past the trailers and food trucks, scanning faces I know I won’t find. My attention catches on a brunette near the vendor tents, but it’s not her.
“Look, I know you don’t talk about your family and crap, but you don’t have to do this whole lone-wolf act forever.”