Chapter 10
ROMAN
The first bronc hit the dirt just after noon, and the grounds went from busy to roaring inside ten minutes.
Memorial Day weekend had turned the rodeo grounds into something unrecognizable from the quiet construction site I'd walked less than a week ago.
Trucks lined the access road a quarter mile deep.
Families poured through the gates with lawn chairs slung over shoulders and coolers making ruts in the gravel.
The announcer's booth crackled to life every few minutes with mic checks and the bleachers had been three-quarters full an hour before the first official event.
I moved through the back pens checking halters, water levels, gate latches. The methodical work kept my hands busy. Didn't do much for the rest of me.
Charcoal smoke drifted from the row of grills along the east fence where vendors had set up before dawn, the slow-burning sweetness mixing with the sharper hiss of propane burners under the larger cooktops.
There was brisket and pulled pork and something with brown sugar that made the whole back lot smell like a church picnic.
Dust hung in the air like gauze, kicked up by boots and hooves and the constant churn of bodies moving in every direction.
Slade had the front-of-house running tight. Whatever I thought about his decisions this week, the man could put on a show. The lineup had been reworked after pulling the sorrel, and on paper it looked solid. I'd checked every remaining animal myself. Twice.
None of that was the pressure building low in my chest. It had been three days. Three days since I'd told Rachel this wouldn’t work. Three days of her keeping her distance from me. I'd gotten exactly what I asked for: space, silence, and the uncomplicated solitude I'd built my life around.
Now that I had it, I hated it. Was this what I’d wanted? Really?
“Roman Maddox, you look like a man who hasn't slept since Tuesday.”
Ruby appeared next to me the way she always did with no warning, no buildup, just suddenly there with her silver hair pinned in a tight bun and her sparkly red frames catching the midday light.
She wore a denim jacket with rhinestone snaps and carried a paper cup of coffee that smelled better than anything the vendors were selling.
“Ruby.”
“Don't Ruby me like you're about to walk away. I have something for you.” She pulled a stack of folded pages from inside her jacket. “Rachel dropped this at the Merc yesterday. Asked me to look it over before she submitted her story.”
I stared at the pages, but didn't take them.
Ruby pushed them against my chest. “She didn't ask me to give it to you. But I'm the mayor's wife, and I do what I see fit.” Her eyes held mine over those red frames. “Read it, Roman. Then decide whether the hill you're standing on is the one you want to die on.”
She walked away without waiting for my reaction. Classic Ruby. Dropped the grenade and left the room.
I stood there in the narrow space between the stock pens and the equipment shed, with handlers and volunteers flowing past me in both directions and unfolded the pages.
The article was clean, the writing tight and professional, reminding me Rachel wasn't just some blogger with a grudge.
She was good at this. The kind of good that came from years of practice and a mind that organized information the way I organized a string of broncs.
The headline read: Heart of the Ride: How Mustang Mountain Built Its First Rodeo From the Ground Up.
I read it standing there with my back against the shed wall while the PA system announced barrel racing entries and somewhere a child cried because he’d dropped his ice cream cone.
She wrote about Slade's months of planning.
About Dawson's quiet logistics work. About the community volunteers who'd donated weekends to build fence panels and pour concrete for the announcer's booth.
She wrote about the town's economic decline after the lumber mill closed all those years ago, about the bet Mustang Mountain was placing on this event to bring people back, to give the place a future.
She quoted Ruby. She quoted Tanner Hollister.
She even quoted a few of the competitors talking about the quality of the stock.
She wrote about me. One paragraph. Roman Maddox, bronc handler, the man who worked the animals nobody else would touch. Who ensured every horse in the lineup was safe to ride. Who pulled three animals from the program himself because their welfare came first.
That was it. No mention of falsified records. No disconnected supplier phone numbers. No missing vet clearances or pattern of compromised stock moving through the circuit. Nothing about the paper trail she'd spent a week building, the evidence I'd handed her on a plate.
She had the story. The real one. The one that would've gotten picked up nationally, the one that would've made editors take notice and hand her the assignments that build careers.
And she'd written this instead.
I read the last paragraph twice. The rodeo isn't just an event for Mustang Mountain. It's a promise — that a town built on hard work and stubborn hope can still bet on itself and win.
I read it twice. Folded the pages carefully along their original creases and slid them into my back pocket.
I'd been telling myself I was protecting her. Protecting the town. Protecting some fragile equilibrium that would shatter if Rachel published what she knew. I'd convinced myself her relentlessness was the threat. That her curiosity would bring consequences none of us could control.
But Rachel had the whole picture. Had it for days.
And she'd made a choice. Not because I'd asked her to, not because I'd warned her off or kissed her quiet or told her this didn't work.
She'd made it because she understood what I'd been too stubborn to see — that the truth didn't have to be a weapon.
That holding it could be just as powerful as wielding it.
That protecting people and telling the truth weren't always in opposition.
She'd done what I couldn't. Held both things at once. How had I missed that? How had I shared her bed and still missed that? And I'd pushed her away for it.
The rock in my chest cracked. What came through the gap wasn't relief. It was clarity. The brutal, simple kind.
The risk wasn't her story going public. It was never her story going public.
The risk was standing here in the middle of a thousand people and being completely alone because I'd chosen fear over the one person who'd looked at everything I was. She’d seen the scars, the silence, and the ugly history, and still she’d stayed.
I pushed off the wall.
The grounds were a maze of bodies. I cut through the vendor row without seeing it, past the funnel cake stand and the leather goods booth, through the gap between the bleachers where teenagers congregated in clusters.
The announcer called the first bull rider's name and the crowd roared, but the sound barely registered.
I scanned the bleachers. The press area near the announcer's booth.
The roped-off section where media credentials granted access to the chutes.
Nothing. I circled back toward the main gates, checking the food trucks and the picnic tables set up under the cottonwoods at the east edge of the grounds.
One of the brisket guys flicked a bone underhand toward the wheels of his trailer.
Hades caught it midair and trotted off into the trees, tail up, like he had somewhere to be.
Finally, I found her by the far fence. She stood with her back to the arena, her journal open on the wide rail in front of her, a pen between her fingers.
She wasn’t writing, but just standing there with her face tilted toward the mountains like she was memorizing the way the peaks cut against that blue sky.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders just the way I liked it.
She wore a fitted purple top that matched the lupine along the fence line and jeans tucked into dusty boots.
I slowed down when I was still ten feet away and psyched myself up the way I gathered my nerve before stepping into a pen with an animal that had every reason to mistrust me.
Rachel heard me before I spoke. She turned, and whatever she'd been about to say died on her lips when she saw my face.
“I read it.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Ruby gave it to you.”
“Yeah.”
She closed the journal and set the pen down on the rail beside it. She didn't move toward me, didn't soften her posture, didn't give me anything I hadn't earned.
“You killed the story.”
“I didn't kill anything.” Her voice was level. “I wrote the piece that was true. That rodeo piece is real, Roman. The community, the work, the people… that's the story I wanted to tell.”
“And the rest of it?”
“It still exists and it still matters. And it needs to come out eventually.” She crossed her arms, holding her ground the way she always did. “But not like that. Not as a bomb dropped on opening day to make my career at everyone else's expense.”
I stepped closer. She didn’t move.
“I was wrong.”
Rachel's chin lifted a fraction. “About which part?”
“All of it. Pushing you away. Telling you this didn't work.” I stopped within arm's reach, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the faint sunburn across her nose from days spent walking these grounds.
“I told myself I was protecting you. Protecting the town. But I was protecting myself from trusting someone enough to let them make their own choices.”
She didn't respond immediately. Just let the silence sit between us the way I'd let silence sit with her so many times before.
“You don't get to hand me information and then punish me for having it.” Her voice was quiet but unyielding. “You don't get to show me who you are at midnight and pretend it didn't happen in daylight.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because three days ago you stood right over there and told me we were a mistake.”
“I was wrong about that too.”
Rachel uncrossed her arms. Not in surrender, but in release. The tension in her shoulders shifted, redistributing into something more aware than guarded.
“The supplier network,” I said. “The mismatched records.
The pattern across five events. When you're ready to write that story — the real one — I'll help you. I’ll give you whatever documentation I have. Whatever I know from three years ago. Whoever I can connect you to.” I held her gaze without wavering.
“And when it comes out, I'll stand next to you. Not behind you. Not in your way. Next to you.”
Something moved behind her eyes. It wasn’t surprise. She'd already known I had this in me, probably before I did. It looked more like recognition with a side of respect.
“You're sure.”
“I've never been less confused about anything in my life.”
Rachel's mouth curved. Not a full smile. Something quieter, something that lived in the corners of it. She stepped forward and closed the last of the distance I'd been too careful to cross.
“Then we do this together,” she said. “All of it. Not just the parts that feel safe.”
Her hand came up and settled against my chest, her fingers spread over my sternum, the warmth of her palm bleeding through my shirt. I covered her hand with mine and held it there.
“Yes,” I said. “The story. The fallout. Whatever comes after.”
Her eyes searched mine, softer now but not backing down. “And us?”
The question hit hard, but not because I didn’t know the answer. I did. I’d figured it out that first night when I stopped to help her, and I’d known for sure the first time she touched my scar like it was just another part of me.
“Especially us.”
Her breath caught.
For one second, all the noise of the rodeo seemed to fall back behind her, leaving only her face and the mountain light and the truth I’d spent most of my life avoiding.
“I love you, Rachel.”
The words came out rough and uneven, but they were mine. And they didn’t break me open the way I thought they would. They settled something in me instead. Filled a place I’d spent years pretending didn’t exist.
Her fingers tightened in my shirt, and her eyes went bright. “I love you too.”
I bent my forehead to hers and let myself believe it. Let myself have it.
Then she rose on her toes and I met her halfway. I was about to kiss her when I caught sight of a huge butterfly. It fluttered around Rachel’s head then landed on my shoulder for a second before taking off again.
She gazed up at me, her eyes so bright that they rivaled the sun. “Someone recently told me that when a butterfly lands on you, it means change is coming.”
“What kind of change?” I asked.
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “The kind you don’t see coming.”
“I didn’t see you coming, sugar.” And thank fuck for that. Because if I had, I might have shut her down and shut her out before we ever stood a chance.
“Kiss me, Roman.”
“Anytime.” I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers. The kiss was unhurried, grounded… nothing like the first one I'd used to shut her down. This one was a question and an answer. A beginning and a commitment.
Behind us, the crowd erupted as the announcer’s voice crackled across the grounds.
A cowboy had just gone eight seconds on one of the rank bulls, earning the highest score of the day.
The energy rolled through the air like thunder, and when Rachel pulled back with her eyes bright, the rodeo swelled around us in every direction.
Dust and noise and the full weight of a town betting on its future.
I kept her hand against my chest and felt my own heartbeat steady underneath her fingers.
Whatever came next — the story, the suppliers, the fallout — we'd walk into it with our eyes open. Both of us. Together.
That was the only truth that mattered.