"It is," I told him.
He nodded once. "And our scores aren't fair. So, what I'm hearing is I just spent a whole fucking lot of money to do this, and it's some kind of damned popularity contest?"
"No," I said, glancing at Ty in the hopes he'd keep his fucking mouth shut for a second. "Not popularity like you're thinking. It's more like a reality show right now. The management wants to stop bleeding money, so they're making our sport more extreme. In the last few years, the riders have gotten better. We're staying on harder bulls. We're scoring higher and higher. We're breaking records, but the viewers don't know shit about bull riding. They know blood. They know broken bones. They know wrecks, and they know 'real' men. What they're paying for is seeing us risk our lives, and maybe fail."
"Like Casey," Wes said.
"Mhm," I agreed. "Because to the current management, we are just a resource. If one of us dies, another rookie will rank up and fill the gap. More injuries? More new guys. That meansmore accidents, because you don't have the experience with bulls at this level, and it all keeps spiraling until our wrecks are paying their bills."
"Fuck that!" Sonny said, slapping the table hard. "I'm out."
I turned my drink slowly on the table before me as the room erupted. Sonny might be the loudest, but he wasn't the only one. The guys who'd been on this tour for a while weren't as ready to quit, but likely that was because of how much we'd already invested in this dream. The new rookies? They had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
It was too late in the season for them to have a chance to win Rookie of the Year. Most likely, they wouldn't even qualify for finals at the rate we were going. Instead, they'd be lucky to make enough to pay for the gas to get to the next show, then the one after.
"What good does that do?" I finally asked when a few too many sounded like they were going to scratch tomorrow.
"Keeps me alive," Sonny said.
Which made Wes ask, "And the rookie who takes your place? You gonna warn him about this mess?"
One more time, the room fell quiet. Slowly, Sonny sat back down. I watched as his shoulders slumped and he turned to look at me again.
"So, since you seem to have all the answers, what the fuck do we do?"
All I could do was shake my head. "I don't know. All I know is I've been watching this sport I love get warped and twisted for a while now. And before anyone says it, this started long before Tulsa."
"It did?" Ty asked.
"What was in Tulsa?" Randy Lynch wanted to know.
"Cody showed up in Tulsa," Ty said without looking away from me. "What happened before her, Jake?"
"Without Ado." I shrugged. "That bull shouldn't be allowed to come back. Not after what he did to how many riders now?"
"Who?" one of the new guys asked, clearly lost.
"A bull," Renato told him. "A nasty one, and the reason J.D. Adkins is currently sidelined. The reason he's still alive? Because the wolf pack was working that night."
"And," I said, "that same bull sits in first place right now. There's a few others willing to put the hurt on a rider, but we all made a fuss about Without Ado, and no one listened. I mean, Disco Breakout and Pumpkin Spice aren't great, but they're rideable. What about the rankings this year? Is J.D. really that much better than us? How high have his scores been?"
"And mine were shooting up for a bit there," Ty said. "Not because I was doing better either. It was because I was noticed by the fans."
"Mine went down when I got serious with Hannah," Renato pointed out. "Lost my sex appeal? No fucking clue. I thought I'd just been a little distracted with the baby."
"Because," I said, taking control of this conversation, "the PBR is trying to manipulate things so the fans notice our sport again. They want to sell seats, subscriptions to their streaming service, and get more sponsors on the walls. They want money, and the worse it gets for them, the worse it's getting for us, but I bet the stands are fucking full tomorrow. Death has that effect here."
"Fuck that," Ty said. "I'm done playing their game."
"And that won't stop any of it," I reminded him.
But he smiled in a way that reminded me a little too much of J.D. "You sure? Because not playing their game isn't the same as going home, Jake. If they want to sell blood and pain? Well, I remember Bodacious."
I fucking rocked in my chair at his words. Bodacious, one of the most famous bulls in the sport, had become dangerouslyunrideable. It was bull riding history, and I'd used the same trick on Without Ado back in Des Moines. The only way to survive drawing him had been to simply not ride - not to scratch, because that would've put him back into the pool of available bulls.
Instead, I'd sent him out with just a rope and no rider. I'd let him buck it out alone. I'd stayed safely behind the chutes, because the no score was safer for me than getting injured. But while that worked fine for one bull, it wouldn't work against a broken system...
Unless all of us could work together.
