Page 25 of May's Cowboy Roman
“Stay here.”
I didn't wait for her to reply. I was already moving, my boots eating dirt as I crossed back toward the pens. The noise built as I got closer. Metal rang, men shouted over each other. By the time I rounded the corner, I could see what happened. The sorrel had broken through the interior divider into the adjacent pen and both animals were panicked. The second horse, a quiet bay that had never given anyone trouble, was throwing itself against the far rail trying to escape.
Jace stood outside the fence with his hands up, keeping two younger handlers back. “He went through the panel. Just blew it apart.”
I vaulted the rail without thinking about it. The bay saw me first. Its eyes were white, flanks slick with sweat, and it pressed itself into the corner. The sorrel circled in the center, head low now, breathing hard, adrenaline still rolling through its body in visible waves.
I planted myself between the two animals and drew myself up tall. I didn't move, didn't speak. The sorrel's ears flicked toward me and held. I breathed. Counted. Let the silence work.
It took four minutes before the horse stopped circling. Six before its head came up to a neutral position. Eight before Jace could get a gate open on the far side and separate the bay.
By the time both animals were secured in individual pens, my shirt was soaked through and the light had shifted, morning burning toward afternoon. The grounds buzzed with voices analyzing what had happened, what it meant, whether the schedule would hold.
I leaned against the rail and pulled out my phone. Typed the text to Slade again.
Me: Pull. It. Now.
This time the reply took longer. Three minutes.
Slade: Done. Cutting it from the lineup.
I put my phone away and looked back toward the bleachers. Rachel was gone.
Good. That was good. That was what I wanted — her away from the pens, away from compromised horses, away from people who would notice her noticing things. Away from me and the wreckage I kept dragging her closer to.
I told myself I'd done the right thing. Drawn a line. Kept her out of it before it got worse. And I actually believed it for almost thirty seconds.
Then the quiet settled in, the kind that follows a thing you can't take back, and I stood there in the middle of the chaos I could manage — the horses, broken panels, ruined lineups — and felt the absence of the one person who'd looked at all of it and chosen not to look away.
I'd spent three years telling myself silence was safer. Now I knew what it cost.
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.
