I adjust my posture one final time. Legs clamped against his sides, knees bent, core engaged. My free hand rises, ready tokeep balance, ready to stay away from his hide no matter how much my instincts yell to grab on. My rope hand is locked, wrist turned in, forearm already screaming.
This is it.
I lean forward slightly, signaling the gate operator.
“Let’s go.”
The gate swings open.
Brutus explodes.
There’s no other word for it. One moment he’s coiled power and contained fury, and the next he’s a black tornado of muscle and violence, launching out of the chute with enough force to snap my head back and steal the breath from my lungs.
The first buck is brutal. His back end kicks up, higher than should be possible, and I’m thrown forward, my face almost meeting his neck. I wrench myself back, overcorrect, nearly lose my balance in the opposite direction.
Brutus doesn’t give me time to recover.
He twists. A savage, corkscrewing motion that tries to throw me off-center, to spin me loose, to send me flying into the dirt. I feel my body rotating, feel my grip slipping, feel the rope burning through my glove.
I clamp down harder. Hold. Breathe. Lock.
The world becomes a blur of motion and sensation. Coarse black hide rough against my thighs. Heat rising off his body, almost burning. The rope biting into my hand. Dust filling my mouth, coating my tongue, making each breath a struggle.
Every muscle in his body is dedicated to one purpose: getting me off his back.
He bucks again, a massive vertical surge that lifts me clear off his spine before gravity slams me back down. My tailbone screams in protest. My teeth click together so hard I see stars.
I find a rhythm. For one glorious heartbeat, I think I’ve got him. My body moves with his, anticipating the next buck, rollingwith the motion instead of fighting it. This is what the good riders do. This is how you survive.
Brutus changes the pattern.
The drop and twist comes out of nowhere, a combination I’ve never felt from any bull in all my years of riding. He drops his front end, kicks his back end up and sideways simultaneously, and twists his entire body in a direction that defies physics.
I’m yanked forward. My rope hand nearly tears free. For one terrifying moment, I’m airborne, connected to Brutus by nothing but a fraying grip and pure stubbornness.
I hear the crowd gasp. A collective intake of breath from all the people who are watching me die.
I refuse.
Something deep inside me, some primal survival instinct, takes over. I re-grip the rope, ignoring the searing pain in my forearm. I throw my weight back, using the momentum of Brutus’s own twist to pull myself back to center. My free hand windmills for balance but never touches him.
The crowd’s gasp becomes a roar.
I’m still on.
But Brutus isn’t done. He never is. The old bastard has decades of experience throwing riders, and he’s not about to let some upstart cowboy break his streak.
He spins. A vicious rotation that creates centrifugal force strong enough to peel me off like a loose scab. I clamp my legs tighter, feel the burn spread through my thighs, feel muscles I didn’t know I had screaming for mercy.
How long has it been? Three seconds? Four? It feels like hours, as if my entire life has been compressed into this moment, this endless struggle against two thousand pounds of fury and pride.
I can hear June somewhere in the noise. Can’t make out the words, but her voice reaches me anyway, a distant anchor in the storm. She’s there. She’s watching. She believes I can do this.
Brutus bucks again, a massive, earth-shaking motion that rattles my bones and threatens to liquify my spine. I absorb it through my hips, let it roll through my body, and keep my upper half as stable as possible.
My free hand stays up. It has to. Looking confident is part of surviving Brutus, part of the scoring, part of the show.
Suddenly, he drops, plants his front hooves, and kicks his back end so high that for one heart-stopping moment, I’m looking straight down at the ground. I’m nearly vertical, clinging to a living cliff face, gravity trying to tear me loose.
