There’s a bottle of wine sitting on the little table between them.
I walk over and plop down onto the swing between Shelby and Charli, making the whole thing sway.
Charli steadies the wine bottle before it tips over. “Careful, hellion.”
Shelby hands me a glass.
I take it and lean back against the cushions, stretching my legs out in front of me. My entire body feels like it ran a marathon today.
Which, honestly, it kind of did.
The whole thing was chaos in the best possible way.
Matty lifts her glass. “To surviving the biggest damn day this place has ever seen.”
We all clink glasses.
“To the rodeo academy,” Shelby adds.
“To the Storm girls,” Charli says.
We drink.
For a minute, none of us talk. We just sit there, listening to the crickets and the distant sound of someone firing up a truck down the road.
It feels … good.
Peaceful.
Matty sighs softly and leans back in her chair, staring out over the backyard.
“What a day,” she murmurs.
“No kidding,” Shelby says. “I don’t think I’ve ever shaken that many hands in my life.”
Charli snorts. “You didn’t even shake half of them. Imagine how Bryce and Matty feel.”
Matty watches the dark fields for another moment before she speaks again. “I wish Mom could’ve seen it,” she says quietly.
The words hang in the air.
None of us answer right away.
Because we’re all thinking the same thing.
Matty swallows and lifts her glass again, turning it slowly between her fingers. “She’d be so proud,” she says. Her voice softens. “I swear … I could feel her today.”
Shelby nods slowly. “Me too.”
Matty glances at her. “Yeah?”
Shelby smiles faintly. “When I was doing the demonstration.”
Shelby was a rock star in the arena today, running barrels in front of the crowd while explaining techniques to the kids in the academy.
“I could hear her voice in my head,” Shelby says. “Clear as day.” She chuckles quietly. “Don’t lean too far forward, Shelby. Sit your butt in that saddle and ride the horse; don’t let the horse ride you.”
Matty laughs through the shine of tears in her eyes. “That sounds exactly like her.”
