Chapter 8 Jennie
I'd been at the ranch two weeks and still didn't know if I was more guest or hostage. I could argue for either, and both had perks, the eggs were always perfect, and the surveillance was predictable. I sat with my mug, waiting for the opportunity to escape when Cordelia cleared her throat. “I do hope you’ll join us at the rodeo today, Jennie.” She dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “It’s the social event of the season out here. The whole town attends. It would be a shame for you to miss it, seeing as you’re part of our household.
For now.” She said it smoothly, calculation running beneath her words.
A public Fourth of July celebration, a big crowd, a place where every move was watched by fifty pairs of eyes.
If I refused, it would be a snub. If I went, I’d be another ornament on the Coleman float.
Plus, they probably all planned to go and didn’t want to leave me here alone.
I recognized the order wrapped in the suggestion, but smiled and said, “I’d love that. Thank you.”
Levi snorted into his coffee, a slow-motion spill that earned him a napkin thrown from the other end of the table. “She’d love that,” he echoed in a mocking voice, and wiped his mouth.
Cordelia ignored him, turning her attention to her phone, thumb moving in a series of crisp, deliberate taps.
“We’ll leave at noon. Dress appropriately.
It’s already eighty-seven degrees and the bleachers are not air-conditioned.
” She said it like I hadn’t grown up in Texas and attended a rodeo more times than I could count.
I finished my eggs and went to get dressed. Rodeo wear wasn’t exactly riding the range wear. I chose a sleeveless cotton shirt I’d thrifted in Austin, and dark jeans that would mask the inevitable stains. My boots were already stained, but whatever. Only rhinestone cowboys wore pristine boots.
By 11:59, the Coleman trucks were idling in the drive, already loaded with coolers, sunscreen, and a bag of promotional hats. Wyatt sat at the wheel of the lead truck, his jaw set and eyes covered by a pair of mirrored aviators that failed to hide his distaste.
We arrived at the fairgrounds fifteen minutes after the posted start, which put us right on schedule to snag the best seats.
The place was a living diorama of rural Texas, dirt lot packed with trucks and livestock trailers, an outer perimeter of food stalls slinging funnel cakes and tacos, a kids’ area strung with faded bunting and sun-wilted prizes.
The air was a cocktail of corn dogs, manure, and sunblock.
The Colemans moved through it, everyone nodding or at least pretending not to stare.
Cordelia kept a two-finger wave going the whole time, a queen's acknowledgment of her subjects, while Levi shadowed the group with his hands in his pockets, scanning the horizon for anything that might pass for excitement.
The bleachers were already filling up. Bill Hargrove was there, leaning against the arena fence.
He wore the same battered hat I’d seen him in at the post office, and he clocked every person who stepped within thirty feet.
He nodded at the Colemans, but when he got to me, something sharpened, then moved on.
I was, technically, working. This was all fieldwork. The corn dog I was already eyeing was a professional necessity.
We claimed our seats, Cordelia, then Wyatt, then Levi, with me at the end of the row.
I didn’t mind. I wanted to be able to slip out.
Plus, from here, I had a clear view of the whole ring, the livestock chutes, and the clots of people orbiting the main event.
The first round was mutton busting, kids in helmets clutching terrified sheep as they careered down a lane of churned earth and applause.
It was in the lull between events that I spotted the Maddox group.
They weren’t in the stands, but at the edge of the staging area near the practice pens, an arrangement that said they came to every rodeo.
I recognized three of the hands from the general store, the kid with the uneven tan, and the big guy with the broken nose.
At the center was Calder Maddox, hat pushed low and arms crossed, flanked by a younger man, Eli, if I remembered correctly.
If the family resemblance wasn’t enough, the posture was, even from a distance, I could see they shared the same take-no-shit silhouette.
The older Maddox hand was there, too, the one I'd seen at the feed store.
He wore a shirt painfully bright, and a belt buckle the size of a hamburger patty.
He moved with a limp, but carried himself with the ease of a man who knew who he was.
I watched as he tipped his hat to every kid who walked by, then immediately turned and pretended to spit for distance, aiming for a line only he could see.
I scanned the group, feeling a vague itch at the back of my neck, and there he was.
Reid, sitting on the top rail of the practice pen, hands hooked over the bar.
He was talking to one of the hands, but I watched his eyes dart back to the bleachers every few minutes, never long enough to be obvious, but enough that I caught it twice.
I’d told myself I wouldn’t look for him.
I’d told myself this was work, or at least reconnaissance, and that anything else was just residual curiosity.
But the memory of yesterday morning’s kiss had a way of interrupting every thought.
I could still feel the heat of his hand on my shoulder, the way his his lips had felt against mine.
I had planned to ignore him for the day.
He was not ignoring me.
The announcer called for the tie-down roping, and the crowd surged in, all elbows and sunburned knees.
The Maddox hands moved as a unit to the fence, Eli at the front.
Cordelia leaned in and said, “They let the children compete here,” and I heard the sneer behind the words.
Wyatt, on his phone, didn’t look up. She was talking about Eli.
He had to be in his early twenties. Hardly a child. Cordelia was just a bitch.
I watched the prep. The calf bucked and jerked at the end of the rope, eyes white with fear.
Eli mounted up, swung the lasso twice, and waited for the starter’s flag.
At the signal, he bolted. The rope caught on the first try.
He was off the horse and had the calf down, legs knotted, and the rope thrown in a blur.
The time was a second off the leader, but it was still a clean run.
I watched his face as he walked back to the pen, half pride, half the expectation that someone would find a flaw in what he’d done.
After the roping, Cordelia announced a break and suggested a “ladies’ room detour.
” Wyatt and Levi peeled off for the beer tent.
I trailed Cordelia at a respectable distance, following the crowd along the concession lanes.
I was at the water line when I felt someone slide in beside me.
Not touching, not even looking directly, just close enough to disrupt the field. I didn’t have to look to know.
“Long line,” Reid said. Quite a talker, that man.
I nodded. “I’m starting to think dehydration is underrated.”
He snorted, a small huff that made my skin prickle. We stood, side by side, staring at anything but each other. Nobody said anything for a full minute.
Then, softer, he said, “You surviving?”
I finally looked at him. “I’ll make it.”
He nodded. “Couldn’t find you in the crowd earlier.”
“Probably for the best,” I said.
He didn’t reply, but I felt his gaze. When we reached the front, he gestured for me to go first. I took the cup, filled it, and stepped aside. He did the same, then stood there, sipping, watching the people drift past, cataloguing each one.
“You come here every year?” I asked.
He smiled. “I haven’t missed since I could walk. My dad used to bring me to the first event, then leave me at the pens while he worked the horses. I always figured he’d forget and go home without me.”
“Did he?”
He shrugged. “Not once. But I spent half my childhood planning escape routes, just in case.”
I laughed because I knew that logic. I prepared for the worst, and if it never came, I called it luck. I'd been doing it for twenty years. It was basically my personality now.
We didn’t talk about yesterday morning. We didn’t talk about the kiss, or the way I’d thought about it every hour since.
Instead, we watched the action, let the crowd push us slowly toward the fence.
There was a current to it, people jostling, moving in and out, kids scaling the rails and falling off again.
Nobody cared what anyone else was doing.
At the fence, we found a tiny patch of shade when a small group moved on.
“You competing?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m just here to wrangle the old men and keep the young ones from starting a fistfight.”
I looked out at the cowboy roping a cow. "That sounds like a full-time job."
He grinned, a real one this time. “You have no idea.”
We stood there for a while, letting the sun cook the top layer off the world.
He watched the events, pointed out the runs that mattered, gave me the backstory on every horse worth a damn.
It was the closest thing to peace I’d had since I left San Antonio, and I didn’t know how to process it.
At some point, I stopped checking for the Colemans in the crowd.
He did, too.
When the barrel racing started, we drifted back toward the bleachers. The sun was overhead now, and the whole place shimmered with heat. We didn’t sit, just hovered at the edge, watching the riders as they kicked up dirt and cut corners so tight I felt the impact in my teeth.
There was a lull in the schedule, and we found a picnic table under the tented food area. The shade was a relief. I took the end of the table, he sat across, legs stretched under the plank. We ate corn dogs and drank more water. It felt absurdly normal, which made it terrifying.
“So,” he said, after a long silence. “Why did you come out here?”
I considered. “You mean today, or in general?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
I could have lied, but I was tired of it.
“I needed a job. I needed space. And I was tired of people thinking they knew who I was.” That was vague enough but true.
I bit off the end of the corn dog and chewed, finding myself wanting to say something more.
“When I was twelve, my mom would leave me at home for days at a time, usually with a fridge full of cheese and a promise she’d be back before the power bill was due.
I learned how to break into my own apartment before I learned algebra.
I got good at fixing things, because if I didn’t, nobody else would. ”
He watched me without blinking. “That’s how you got out, isn’t it?”
“Out of Houston, or out of the mess?”
He looked down and ran his thumb along the seam of the table. “Either.”
I finished my water and watched as a kid launched a snow cone at his brother across the next row of tables. “You don’t really get out,” I said. “You just learn to call it something else.”
He nodded, and for a while, we watched the world together. The crowd noise ebbed and flowed. “Want to walk?” he asked.
We did. We looped the perimeter, passing livestock pens and the makeshift stage where a teenage band was butchering Tom Petty covers for a crowd of three. We ended up at the edge of the parking lot, where the cars shimmered in the heat, and the sky pressed down so hard it made my head throb.
He leaned against the tailgate of an old Chevy. “You want to get out of here?”
Oh boy, did I. But should I go? It took me a second to answer.
He saw the hesitation and said, “Just for a bit. There’s a creek half a mile down the road. It’s cold, and nobody’s there this time of day.”
I weighed the options, how it would look to the town, to the Colemans, to myself. I said, “You always take girls to the creek on the first date?”
He shook his head. “Only the ones I can’t stop thinking about.”
It wasn’t a line. Reid wasn’t the kind of man to deliver lines.
The creek was more of a trickle, but the water was clear, and the banks shaded by low, gnarled trees. He found a flat rock, sat, and motioned for me to join him. I did. We took our boots off and dangled our feet in the water.
“Best way to cool down,” he said.
He didn’t reach for me, didn’t move closer, he just sat and watched the water.
I watched the way the light caught on his arms, the way the sweat beaded and ran in tiny rivers. I wanted to touch him but didn’t, because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. “Did you always know you’d stay here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I used to think I’d leave and never come back. Thought there was something better, somewhere else.” He shrugged. “Turns out, there’s not.”
Sitting out here, feet in the water, listening to the rustle of some small animal, I believed him. We sat there until the heat started to fade, until the sounds of the rodeo came back on the wind, a distant echo of a world we’d both temporarily left.
When he drove me to the Colemans’, we didn’t talk. At the entrance, he stopped the truck, hands loose on the wheel. I just got out and shut the door behind me. I watched as he drove off, his taillights fading toward the gate.
Inside, the air was cool. The Colemans were in the living room, watching the local news, faces neutral. Cordelia noted my return, then went back to her knitting.
Nobody said a word about where I’d been. Nobody needed to. It was none of their damn business anyway. I went up to my room, peeled off my shirt, and stood in front of the fan. I could still feel the press of his hand against mine, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world.