"That thing where you stare at the crowd like you're a lion at the watering hole."
I grinned, knowing he got that off a brochure at a doctor’s office or somewhere. Things like that didn’t come to him. “Beautiful metaphor, Weston. Truly.”
"Savannah's. She texted from the stands that you look—and I'm quoting—'like a predator at a buffet.'"
I laughed. "Tell your wife I'm flattered."
"I'm not telling my wife that." He leaned against the rail beside me. "Big draw tonight. Hellfire's in the rotation. Two thousand, one hundred pounds. Threw Danvers in three flat last month."
"Danvers rides like he's got somewhere else to be."
Weston shook his head, smiling. "You're something else, Blackwood."
"I'm the best, Tate. There's a difference."
He didn't argue. Couldn't. We both knew it was true—not because I was arrogant, though I freely admitted to that, but because I'd put in the work. Every early morning training with Weston multiple times a week, every bruised rib, every ride that went sideways. I'd earned this. Tonight's championship buckle was already mine in every way that mattered.
"Sav's got her family across the other side," Weston said. "But yours are out in force. Whole damn Blackwood army."
That landed warm. Championship night meant mandatory attendance—Momma's rules, not mine. She'd have everyone there. Dad, Wyatt, Ivy, Hunter, Liam, Stephanie, and Sophia. Maggie and Jack had made the drive up from the ranch.
"They look disgusting together. All the eye contact and the hand-holding. Stephanie cried at Sunday dinner last week because Jack tucked Maggie's hair behind her ear."
Weston laughed. "Just you wait, brother. Your turn's coming."
My face scrunched with something close to disgust. "My turn for what? Voluntary imprisonment? I'll pass."
He shook his head while checking my rope. "Sure you will."
He said it the way he always said it—like he knew something I didn't. Which was annoying, because Weston had been saying it for two years and I'd yet to prove him right.
Wasn't planning to start tonight.
I clapped his shoulder. "I'm going to check on the bulls. Keep the faith, old man."
"I'm thirty-three."
"Retired at thirty-three. Basically elderly."
He flipped me off with the hand that wore his wedding ring, which only made me grin harder.
I dropped down and cut through the back area toward the stock pens. The noise was different here—less crowd, more animal. Low rumble of bulls shifting in their pens, clang of metal gates, sharp whistles from stock hands. I knew this world the way I knew my own heartbeat.
I was halfway to the pens when I heard it.
Crying.
Small. Scared. The kind of crying that came from real fear.
She was standing near the stock pen fence, half hidden behind a concrete barrier. Tiny. Four of five, or maybe an overgrown three. I never really knew how to gauge the ages of children. Blonde ringlets in full rebellion against whatever hair tie had been tasked with containing them. Pink cowboy boots and a denim dress, and a stuffed horse clutched to her chest like it was the last solid thing in her universe.
Her face was red. Her eyes were enormous. And she was completely alone.
Something in my chest dropped straight to my boots.
I looked around. No frantic parent scanning the crowd. No security guard heading her way. Just a lost little girl in a sea of fifteen thousand people, and the stock pens—with two thousandpounds of unpredictable animal behind a fence—about ten feet away.
I crouched down slowly—the way I'd approach a spooked filly. No sudden moves, no looming. Just making myself small enough that she didn't have to look up to see me. "Hey there. You okay, sweetheart?"
