Chapter 25 – Sunshine
TWENTY-FIVE
SUNSHINE
I should have been packing. I should have been calling clients. The partners. I should have been setting up meetings. I should have been systematically cauterizing every wound on my heart caused by Tag Durham.
Instead of doing all of that, I was going to the rodeo.
With my sisters.
“What’s wrong with you, Sunshine?” Harmony asked, looking over at me every three seconds from the driver’s side of her old truck. “You’re really quiet.”
“Just thinking,” I said, with a wan smile.
“Thinking about sushi,” Bliss said, from the backseat of the truck. “And a manicure. And a massage-”
“No,” I said, short and fast, because I would never again in my life have a massage without thinking about Tag. “Nope. I’m just a little sad to be leaving.”
“So stay,” Amity chimed in, pushing up between me and Harmony. “Can’t you work remotely, or something? Can’t you like…just do what you do, here?”
“Not a lot of billionaire investors in Last Hope Gulch to make pitches to,” I said .
“I don’t know,” Bliss said. “I’ve always thought those Strunk sisters had gold buried in their backyards.”
“Right?” Amity agreed, and they started talking about all the people in town they imagined might be secret billionaires. Harmony reached over and squeezed my hand. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Sure,” I said, with the best smile I could manufacture.
Of course, everything Tag had said had been true. I knew there was no future for me here. I did. I just hoped he didn’t think I was one of those clingy women who begged him for scraps when he’d already scraped me off.
“Okay, let me give you the run down on a few things you need to know.” Harmony said.
“About Seth and the events he’ll be competing in?”
“No. About Carter’s kids.” Carter’s minivan, ahead of us on the road, swerved, and something flew out the window.
“Uh oh,” I said, remembering what everyone had said about those kids. “I hear they are…rambunctious?”
“Is that a synonym for monsters?” Bliss asked.
“They can’t be that bad,” I said. “They’re kids.”
“They’re motherless kids,” Amity corrected me. “And because of that, Carter can’t say no to anything. So, you’ve got a bunch of kids who think they can guilt their dad into anything they want, and they pretty much do.”
“Ethan and Mac have tried the whole it takes a village approach, to help raise them. But Carter doesn’t get it, I think. He just believes it all comes down to him and him alone,” Bliss said.
“They need someone to give them boundaries. Structure. Say no when it’s appropriate,” Harmony said. It seemed to me she would know, too, she spent the most time with them .
“What about Mrs. Walker?” I asked.
“She’s retiring,” Harmony said. “She’s all but said as much.”
“What about… remarrying?” I asked.
There was a beat of silence, and then the three of them collectively made noises like I’d suggested the unthinkable.
“Carter will never remarry,” Amity said.
“Lilly was his one and only,” Bliss said. “Which is a real waste of a good-looking man, if you know what I mean.”
“What’s he going to do? He can’t run the operation and be a full-time dad,” I said.
“Apparently, he put an ad in a few places looking for a nanny.”
“There you go, that’s a start,” I said, proud of my half-brother for reaching out of his comfort zone.
“Yeah, except, not a whole lot of takers want to work on an isolated ranch with three half feral kids. Okay, here we go.”
I’d always known the arena was outside of town, and every summer and fall there’d be a rodeo every few weeks, or big livestock auctions and competitions.
But, I’d never come out here during one.
The place was packed. Lit up like Madison Square Gardens.
Cars parked in the grass. Tailgating. It looked… fun.
Beyond the cars, I could see lines of horse trailers up against the fences. On one side, there were metal bleachers that went up about twenty feet in the air. They were mostly full.
We parked next to Carter’s van, and I got out of Harmony’s truck just as the side minivan doors opened electronically and three children of varying ages burst out of the van like they’d been shot out of a cannon.
There was a little boy running around in shorts and cowboy boots, with no shirt.
An older girl, who was shouting at him not to go too far, and the smallest of the three with something large and stuffed tucked under her arm.
Carter hopped out of the driver’s seat and began chasing first the boy, then the little girl, all while the oldest was shaking her head like she was completely unconvinced her father could wrangle the two younger siblings.
“Should we help?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure if I stood a chance against them.
Tag’s truck pulled up beside us and Ethan burst out of the passenger seat and bee-lined for Harmony like he’d barely survived the fifteen minute drive out to the arena without her. But, there was only room for three of us, and I didn’t want to drive with Tag.
It would feel too much like a formal date we were never going to have.
Tag slammed the driver’s side door behind him and I did everything in my power not to look at him. Not to feel him in the air that touched my skin. Not to taste him in the air I breathed.
But, it was impossible.
“Hey, Sun,” he said quietly.
All I could do was smile and nod with a lame-ass half salute. After all, we were two adults and could be civil in this…separation.
Taking strength from my sisters, I wrapped my arms around Harmony and Bliss’s waists and headed towards the bright lights of the arena.
“You all right?” Bliss asked, looking over our shoulders, probably at Tag.
If I didn’t start acting more like myself, this whole night was going to turn into the Tag and Sunshine Break Up Show. My brothers would feel compelled to do something stupid, and my sisters would want to know the whole story, and there was no story.
Because there was no Tag and Sunshine.
It had just been…a fling.
“Good,” I said with a bright smile, pretending as hard as I could. “I am so good.”
All I had to do was avoid him. In a crowd of a couple thousand people, how hard could that be?
Of course, we ended up sitting right next to each other. It was like everyone conspired to put us together and there was nothing I could do to fight it without making a scene.
My butt was planted on the aluminum bleacher, I had a hotdog in one hand, a bucket of popcorn in the other, and a cold beer at my feet. None of which I could stomach. I was working hard to keep our legs from touching. Our shoulders. My body was already sore from how tense I was.
“Will you relax?” Tag breathed. “Last time I checked, my skin wasn’t poison. You’re gonna give yourself a cramp.”
I offered a teeth-forward smile and took a deep breath. Our shoulders touched.
Fuck the hotdog. I needed my beer.
“Eat this.” I gave him the hotdog so I could pick up my beer and down half of it in one long chug.
I heard his chuckle and wanted to punch him in the face. How dare he find me cute or amusing?
“I’m sorry, Sun,” he said quietly, for my ears only. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
No. Nope. Not happening. Luckily, Mac was sitting on my other side and I turned to him.
“Tell me what I’m looking at, Mac,” I said .
“Seth,” he said, pointing to where Seth stood just outside the ring, getting ready for his next event. He was tall and lean, wearing a flack jacket and very impressive chaps.
“Let’s go, Sethie!” Mac shouted.
Our whole section started clapping and whooping after that.
“This is a timed event,” Mac explained. “But style points also count.”
“Style points?” I asked, confused. “He’s going to sit on a bull who is going to attempt to buck him off. What is stylish about that?”
“It’s about how much control he has while the bull is bucking him off.”
“None,” I said. “He has no control. It’s a bull.”
Mac scowled at me. “Just watch some of the other riders so you can compare.”
It was a big production getting the first rider on the bull. But, when the gate finally opened and the bull came charging out, heaving and bucking, the crowd went crazy. The rider was thrown off in three seconds and the whole arena let out an audible sigh of disappointment.
“Did you know that in all of professional sports, bull riding is considered one of the most dangerous?” I repeated some of what I learned when I looked up what Seth would be competing in tonight. “Statistically speaking, there are nearly twenty serious injuries for every one thousand rides.”
Mac was ignoring me, his eyes, I could tell, were fixed on Amity, who was currently walking down the bleachers to go talk to one of the riders.
“Don’t ever tell Seth or his brothers those odds,” Tag said, clearly eavesdropping on my conversation.
Finally, it was Seth’s turn. Everyone in our section got to their feet. I wanted to cover Carter’s youngest daughter’s eyes, but she was jumping up and down with her stuffed elephant, as excited as everyone else to see her uncle ride.
I had no idea how it happened, but one second I was covering my own eyes, sick with dread that Seth might get hurt, and the next I was shouting encouragement to a brother I never knew I had.
The bull was doing its best to heave Seth off his back, but Seth was like water on that bull.
Nothing but fluid grace. He was holding on for dear life with one hand, while his other flung up in the air, fist raised, like a tool he was using as a counter weight.
In less than ten seconds, it was over, and rather than being thrown from the bull, Seth was actually able to jump and roll until he was on his feet.
The rest of the crowd leapt to their feet cheering, all of us witnessing something that none of the other cowboys had done.
“Whoohoo! Way to go, Seth!” I was shouting, along with everyone else. My heart in my throat the whole time.
As the clowns rushed in to distract the bull, Seth gave a big wave in our direction.
“Can he see us?” I asked. There were thousands of people packed in here.