Chapter Twelve
The assault trucks had knocked three of her corral posts clean out of the ground, and Teagan took it personally.
She stood in the morning sun surveying the damage—posts tilted at drunk angles, rails hanging loose, the tie line she'd strung between them sagging in the dirt.
One of the trucks had clipped the corner stall during the chaos, and the impact had cracked a two-by-six rail and sheared a carriage bolt clean through.
Three days of work. Wrecked in thirty seconds by men who didn't know or care what they'd driven through.
"I need the post-hole digger," she said.
Striker was already carrying it across the yard, along with a bucket of quick-set concrete, a socket set, and a bag of carriage bolts he'd pulled from the garage. He set the supplies by the damaged stall and looked at the tilted posts.
"I can have prospects do this."
"You can have prospects hold my tools." She grabbed the post-hole digger and drove it into the packed gravel beside the first broken footing. "This is my corral. I built it. I fix it."
He didn't argue. He picked up a pry bar and started pulling the cracked rail off the posts.
They worked in silence for the first hour.
The sun climbed and the heat built and the compound moved around them in its Sunday rhythm—brothers working on bikes in the garage bays, the smell of coffee drifting from the mess hall, the distant sound of someone running a grinder.
Teagan dug out the old footings, widened the holes, reset the posts plumb.
Striker stripped the damaged rails and cut replacements from the salvage lumber Diesel had left stacked behind the garage.
It was good work. Honest work. The kind that let your hands stay busy while your mind went somewhere else.
"The officer," Striker said, driving a bolt through a rail with three hits of the socket wrench. "The one I hit. I told you about it the other night, but I left out the part that matters."
Teagan paused, post-hole digger mid-swing. She waited.
"His name was Captain Hewitt. West Point grad, six months in-country, thought he knew how to run a patrol because he'd read about it in a classroom.
" Striker's voice was flat, but his hands had gone still on the wrench.
"He ordered us into a market district that intel had flagged as a kill zone.
IEDs on the main road, shooters on three rooftops.
Four of my guys would've walked straight into it. "
"And you told him no."
"I told him the intel was clear. He said intel was wrong. I told him again. He pulled rank." Striker's jaw worked. "So I broke his jaw. And four men came home alive because their commanding officer was in a field hospital getting his face wired shut instead of marching them into an ambush."
"And the Army punished you for it."
"The Army did what the Army does. The order was wrong, and everybody from the Colonel down knew it.
But you can't have enlisted men hitting officers, even when the officers are idiots.
" He picked up the wrench again, drove another bolt home.
"Honorable discharge. Full benefits. A handshake and a letter that said thank you for your service in a font that meant please leave quietly. "
Teagan shoveled concrete mix around the reset post, packing it tight. "You said the discharge saved your career from becoming your cage."
He looked at her. Surprised, maybe, that she remembered the exact words.
"If I'd stayed in, I'd have spent the next twenty years following orders from men like Hewitt.
Getting better at swallowing the ones that were wrong.
Learning to shut up when shutting up got people killed.
" He held the rail steady while she drove a bolt through from the other side.
"The club doesn't work like that. Tornado listens.
Church votes. And when violence is the answer, nobody pretends it isn't."
"So breaking an officer's jaw was the best thing that ever happened to you."
"Second best." His eyes caught hers over the rail. Held.
Teagan felt the heat crawl up her neck and turned back to the concrete. She mixed another batch in the wheelbarrow, working the water in with a hoe until the consistency was right. Striker held the next post plumb while she poured the footing.
"My daddy's last rodeo," she said. The words came out before she'd decided to say them. "I was twelve. Saddle bronc event at a jackpot in Cisco. He showed up drunk—not falling-down drunk, just the steady, all-day kind that he'd gotten so good at nobody noticed anymore."
Striker didn't say anything. He kept holding the post, steady and still, giving her the same total attention he'd given her in his room.
"He drew a horse called Sidewinder. Big dun gelding, rank as they come, the kind of bronc that made grown men rethink their entry fees.
" Teagan tamped the concrete with the handle of the post-hole digger, packing it around the base.
"Daddy climbed on like he'd done a thousand times. Got his grip, nodded for the gate."
She could still see it. The chute swinging open. The horse exploding into the arena. Her father's body—loose where it should have been tight, his timing half a beat off, the alcohol stealing the precision that used to make him beautiful to watch.
"He lasted four seconds. Sidewinder threw him into the fence, and he hit the rail shoulder-first. Broke his collarbone in two places.
" She moved to the next post hole. "The stock contractor had to pull the horse off him.
Daddy was lying in the dirt trying to get up, couldn't figure out why his arm wouldn't work. "
"And you saw all of it."
"Front row. My mama was working and couldn't come, so I'd ridden with a neighbor family." Teagan drove the post-hole digger into the ground. Hard. "I sat there in the stands and watched my father get carried out of the arena on a stretcher because he was too proud to quit and too drunk to ride."
The gravel gave way under the digger. She widened the hole, set the post, held it while Striker mixed the concrete.
"The drive home was the worst part. The neighbor's wife drove us, and Daddy sat in the back seat with his arm in a sling, telling me it wasn't that bad. Telling me Sidewinder was a dirty bucker. Telling me the next event would be different."
"But there wasn't a next event."
"There was. Two weeks later, his collarbone still pinned together with screws, he entered a rodeo in Stamford.
" Teagan's hands tightened on the post. "He didn't make it to the arena.
Mama found him passed out in the horse trailer before the first event and drove him home. That was the last time he competed."
She let go of the post and stood. Her arms ached from the digging.
Her palms were blistered under the calluses.
She looked at the corral taking shape again—fresh concrete, straight posts, solid rails—and felt the old anger settle into the place it always lived.
Right next to the grief. Right next to the drive.
"The ride home from Cisco," she said. "That's when I made the promise.
Sitting in the back seat of a stranger's truck, listening to my father make excuses for a ride he should never have taken.
" She met Striker's eyes. "I swore I'd never let anyone else's weakness ruin my shot.
Not his drinking. Not Pollard's crew. Not anyone. "
Striker held her gaze. No pity—she'd have walked away from pity. Something else. The same thing she'd seen in his eyes when he talked about the four men who came home alive.
Recognition.
They finished the corral in three hours.
Six posts reset in fresh concrete, rails bolted tight, tie line restrung between the corner posts.
Teagan walked the perimeter, checking every joint, testing every rail with her weight.
Solid. Stronger than before, maybe—the new concrete footings were deeper, the bolts heavier gauge.
She leaned on the top rail and looked across the compound yard.
The oil drum barrel pattern was still set up from her practice runs.
The garage bays were open, bikes and tools and the organized chaos of men who worked with their hands.
Beyond the fence, the Panhandle stretched flat and endless under a sky so big it made everything beneath it feel possible.
"I want to qualify from here," she said.
Striker was wiping concrete dust off his hands with a rag. He stopped.
"From the compound. I want to train here, haul out for the qualifiers, and come back here between events.
" She turned to face him. "This is the first place I've stabled Ginger in three years that wasn't borrowed or temporary.
I built this corral. I set these posts. I want to ride out of here and I want to come back to here. "
Striker tossed the rag onto the wheelbarrow and walked to the fence. He stood beside her, close enough that his shoulder pressed against hers, and looked at the yard she'd been looking at.
"You make the finals," he said, "and I'll build you a proper arena. Regulation dimensions. Sand footing. Real barrels, not oil drums."
Teagan stared at him. "You're serious."
"I've got thirty brothers with strong backs and nothing better to do between now and Las Vegas." The corner of his mouth curved—not the sharp grin, not the dangerous one. Something quieter. "You give me a reason to build it, and I'll build it."
Teagan looked at the yard. At the oil drums. At the man beside her who'd killed for her horse and promised to build for her future in the same week.
"Deal," she said.
And for the first time since she'd started chasing nationals, the road ahead didn't feel like something she was running alone.