I waved back.
Short. Controlled. The wave of a man acknowledging a greeting and hoping it ended there.
It did not end there.
She beckoned.
A full, unmistakable come-here gesture. Her hand curling toward her body, her smile widening, the confidence of a woman who had made a decision and had no intention of allowing the decision to be declined.
Shit.
What was I supposed to do? I was sitting in a plastic seat holding a beer I didn't want, watching a rodeo I'd come to for the specific purpose of feeling something simple and uncomplicated, and now this.
I was at a loss. Sixteen years old again, the high school version of myself who'd retreated into stubbornness because feelings didn't come with instructions and nobody had taught me the words for what was happening inside my chest when something caught me off guard.
Fuck it.
I held up one finger. The universal gesture forbe right there.The woman's smile went incandescent.
I stood. Left my beer on the floor next to my seat—somebody would kick it over, and I couldn't bring myself to care. I moved through the crowd.
I found the VIP level. The stairs. The hallway that led to the boxes, carpeted and quieter than the arena, the crowd noise muffled to a roar behind glass.
She was waiting at the entrance to the box. Up close, she was even more striking than she'd been at the market—the bone structure, the warm eyes, the self-assurance that came fromknowing exactly who you were and being comfortable with the answer. She was standing next to a security guard who looked like he'd been told to keep people out and was confused about why this woman kept inviting them in.
"He's with me," she said to the guard, who stepped aside without question. She had that kind of authority.
She took my arm. Her grip was light but deliberate—the touch of a woman who was used to steering situations toward the outcome she preferred.
Then she leaned in. Her mouth near my ear. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I want you to be a surprise."
Before I could process what that meant—before I could ask who she was, what the surprise was, why she'd singled me out of thirteen thousand people like a sniper acquiring a target—she was pulling me forward, into the box, past the glass partition, into the warm, enclosed space that smelled like bourbon and leather seats and the faint floral perfume of a woman who was not the woman currently dragging me by the arm.
The box was small—six seats, a counter with drinks, a view of the arena that would've made my middle-section seat weep with inadequacy. The glass muted the crowd noise to a dull, exciting hum.
And there she was.
Seated at the rail. Bourbon in hand—neat, no ice, which my brain noted and filed without permission. She was leaning forward, chin on her hand, watching a bull rider settle into the chute.
I thought about bolting. I thought about pulling my arm free, mumbling an excuse, backing out of the box, and not stopping until I was in the parking lot and inside a car and on a highway pointed toward anywhere that wasn't here.
But the woman had my arm and she was not to be deterred. She moved forward with the cheerful inevitability of someone who had decided this was happening.
"Lou," she said. "Look who I found."
The woman turned.
She was smiling—the easy, social smile of someone interrupted during a good time, the smile that saidwhat?andhiandI'm having fun, join me.
Then the recognition hit.
I watched it happen in real time. The smile didn't fall—it froze. Her eyes widened. The brown of them went from warm to sharp in the space of a heartbeat.
The smile faded into a recalibration, the face of a woman who had been surprised by something she'd been thinking about and wasn't ready to see in person.
Oh, shit,I thought.
