The sun was just cracking the horizon when I pulled out of the parking lot, Wild Creek shrinking in my rearview mirror. The morning air was crisp through my open window. I felt lighter than I had in months. Refreshed. Like I'd finally shaken off the weight I'd been carrying and remembered what it felt like to just be me.
Last night reminded me of something important: I was allowed to be a woman with needs and desires and a life outside of everyone else's problems. I was allowed to want things and take them for myself. Even if that meant being reckless with a stranger.
I mean, it wasn't like I'd ever see Jack again. He knew what last night was. We both did. And it was something I'd look back on fondly when I'd inevitably need the reminder to put myself first again.
I cranked the radio and headed back home to Copper Creek, leaving last night in the past where it belonged.
2
Maggie
COPPER CREEK | BLACKWOOD FALL RODEO
The banner was crooked.
I'd hung the damn thing myself at six this morning, and somehow in the past four hours it had developed a tilt to the left that was going to drive me insane if I looked at it one more time.
"Don't even think about it," Ivy said, appearing at my elbow with two cups of coffee. "You've already re-hung that banner twice."
I frowned at my sister-in-law. “But it's crooked."
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. It's tilted. Banners don't tilt. Banners hang straight, or they mock everything I stand for.” Just looking at it made my skin crawl.
Ivy pressed a coffee cup into my hands with the patient expression of a woman who had learned to pick her battles. "Drink this. Step away from the banner. Go terrorize someone else for a while."
I took the coffee because I wasn't an idiot, but I also made a mental note to fix the banner the second Ivy's back was turned.
The Blackwood Fall Rodeo was in full swing, and I was in my element—which meant I was running on caffeine, grit, andthe kind of sheer willpower that had been holding this family together since I was old enough to realize someone other than my parents had to.
I'd been up since four. Checked the livestock pens by flashlight. Walked the grounds twice, looking for anything that could go wrong, so I could fix it before it did. Coordinated with the food vendors, the sound guy, the portable toilet company (glamorous work, truly), and approximately forty-seven volunteers who all had questions that somehow only I could answer.
Clay, naturally, was zero help with any of this.
My older brother had waltzed in around nine looking like he'd gotten a full eight hours and a hot breakfast—which he probably had, possibly served to him by whatever woman he'd charmed into his bed last night. He'd spent the morning "warming up" for the bronc riding competition, which apparently involved a lot of stretching, a lot of flirting with the barrel racers, and absolutely no assistance with the actual logistics of running this event.
He didn’t even need to practice, considering he was ranked number six in the world, and this was just a small town rodeo. It wasn’t like this was going on his PBR record.
"You look stressed, Mags," he'd said when I passed him near the chutes, grinning that golden-boy grin that had been getting him out of trouble since he was old enough to weaponize it.
"And you look useless. Go make yourself helpful."
He had the nerve to look offended and straightened off the railing. “I am helpful. I'm providing morale."
I rolled my eyes. "You're providing a headache."
He'd laughed and wandered off to sign autographs for a group of starry-eyed teenagers, because Clay Blackwood had never met a moment he couldn't turn into a performance. Rodeochampion, family charmer, and professional flirt—my brother had elevated not taking anything seriously into an art form.
I loved him. I also wanted to strangle him. Sensing a theme here. Funny how my two older brothers were the bigger nuisances, not the younger two.
Being the only girl sandwiched between four boys meant that I was basically mother number two when our own mother wasn’t around. It was holding down the fort and nursing egos and managing expectations. And apparently, everyone working the rodeo saw me that way, because I was constantly getting bombarded with questions.
Where do the extra chairs go, Maggie?
Is the announcer's booth supposed to be making that sound, Maggie?
One of the goats got loose, Maggie.
