Page 41 of Sunday's Best

My fingers tease the fine hair on his forearm, and for a second, I just look at him. Take in his chocolate brown stubble and the faint freckles on his cheeks. There’s turbidity in his ocean eyes, something restless and yearning. I wish I could know exactly what he’s thinking.

He kisses me then, as if he’s been suffocating and I’m a much-needed breath of fresh air. It’s loaded with unspoken promises and confirming what I already know—Holden Kearney is the best. My best.

Holden pulls back a centimeter, panting and smiling against my kiss-plump lips, before we kiss like that again. Another and another.

“What the fuck?”

I pull back so fast, the world spins. Holden’s hands lift instinctively as he puts space between us.

Logan.

He’s standing a few yards away, eyes locked on us. He lets out a sharp laugh of disbelief, and I can feel the heat of his glare burning me from the inside out. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Logan, I—” I start to explain, but he throws his hand up to cut me off.

Admittedly, I’m grateful. What explanation could I possibly give him that would feel like enough?

“Don’t,” Logan snaps. “I don’t want to hear it. Fuck both of you.”

Holden shoves his hands in his front pockets. “We didn’t plan for this to happen.”

“Like fuck—you’ve been jealous and pissed off at me since I asked her out,” Logan sneers. Then he points a trembling finger at me and spits fire-laced words. “And you’re a fucking cunt.”

“Hey!” Holden immediately jumps to my defense, angling himself so he’s between his brother and me.

“And you?” Logan glares at his brother and lets out a harsh laugh, shaking his head. “You’re dead to me.”

Before either of us can react, he pivots and drills the heel of his boot into the side of Holden’s pickup truck. The metal caves in with a sickening crunch, and I flinch instinctively. Holden’s horse backs away, rocking the entire horse trailer.

Logan cuts through us with one last blazing look before storming away, lost in a cloud of dust and the crackling sound of arena speakers.

Holden scrubs his palm over his face, exhaling harshly. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I breathe out. “We fucked up, Holden. I shouldn’t have come here. He’s your brother. He’s right… I’m a fucking cunt.”

I shouldn’t have shown up here today. I knew that, and I still did it. At the end of the day, I’m no better than Logan. Even worse, possibly, because I found him kissing another girl and, rather than confronting him like a reasonable adult, I fucked his brother. And now I’ve destroyed the only familial relationship either of them still had.

“Don’t say that shit. We didn’t plan this, and he’s allowed to be pissed at me, but not you. If he didn’t treat you like shit, you wouldn’t have even glanced in my direction. If he wanted to keep you, he wouldn’t have put you in a situation where you’d need someone else to lean on.”

“Fuck,” I mouth. My eyes sting, my nose burns. I sniff. “I should go… I gotta get my stuff out of Logan’s house.”

He stares off at the rodeo grandstands. “I should ride over to the arena and see if he’s there. I know he’s pissed about this, but he’s also the most competitive guy I know. Would take a lot more than seeing me kissing you to make him drop out of an event.”

I huff a laugh and watch as Holden finishes getting his horse ready. He slips the toe of his boot into one of the stirrups and pops himself up on top of the horse.

“Wait for me,” he says. “I’ll help you get your stuff from his place after I’m done, in case he shows up there wanting to confront you.”

“I don’t have much there.” A depressingly small number of belongings, honestly. “It won’t take long. I’ll be fine.”

Halfway through the fairgrounds, somewhere between the poutine food truck and a grilled corn stand, I stopped in my tracks and spun on a dime to make my way here.

If I never watch another rodeo, smell the thick scent of horse sweat, or feel the grit of arena sand in my socks ever again, I won’t be heartbroken. There’s something rare in the moments when Holden and Logan rope together, though. And unbeknownst to everyone but the three of us, this might be their final run. Someone needs to bear witness to that.

So I ease my way back through the crowd and find a sliver of space between two older cowboys posted up along the fence rails. I lean against the warm metal of the fence and watch the far end of the arena. As Holden suspected, Logan’s here. His head hangs low, hat shadowing his face, as he runs his rope through his hands in a devotion of sorts. Finally looking up, Logan pulls himself from the trance in time to back his horse into the far corner of the roping box and steadies his eyes on the steer waiting in the chute.

Holden’s seated atop his own horse, already in the other box. The brothers don’t share so much as a sideways glance. The magic is already gone. I should’ve known this wouldn’t be anything like the other hundreds of runs they’ve shared.

The steer bolts out ahead of them, and Logan’s horse lurches forward, closing the distance with the speed and accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. It’s all slow motion, somehow. The spiritless motion in Logan’s upper body, the looped rope landing in a pillow of dust, the sharp stop of Holden’s horse, the silence of the crowd.