He pins me with a concerned frown. “You can’t stand out here all night.” Sliding his hat from his head, it swings in his hand. I stare at it. That one symbolic item everyone knows represents a cowboy. A rough, riskier way of life. Something that wasn’t supposed to be part of my life.
“Maggie.” Knox wraps his hand around my wrist, and I numbly follow.
When we are finally behind the chutes, he hands me over to Levi. “Get her to Willow, she’s out of it,” he mumbles, walking away.
Brady appears and my eyes narrow, heart rate picking up pace as if I know what he’s going to say already.
“You should be in there with him.” Brady takes his hat from his head.
It’s all I can do to nod.
He gives me one of those smiles people have to force when shit gets bad. Back in the infirmary, paramedics are loading Hadley onto a gurney. He’s filthy, covered in dirt. His sponsorship shirt is torn and splattered with blood.
His helmet, sitting on his strapped-down legs, has a sizable dent.
I move to his side, trying my best to hold it together. He’s unconscious still. My chin wobbles. The overwhelming need to flee rises and burns. But unlike last time, I wait until he’s loaded into the back of the ambulance.
The unit drives away with my heart strapped into the back of its maw. Brady went with, and this time Spencer helps megather Hadley’s gear bag. Spence is quiet as we bundle the bulky equipment back into Betsy.
“He’ll be okay,” he finally says. “Always is. Even after last time.”
“A sprained knee is hardly the same as tonight.”
“No, not talkin’ about that. Last time he got smashed up.”
“What?” The word is a ghost of a syllable.
“He didn’t tell you?”
I don’t respond, and he sighs, sitting on the side step of Betsy. He pats the space to his right and I drop down, gaze never leaving him.
“What happened, Spence?”
“He rode this bull nobody’d ridden successfully before.”
“He’s done that this year,” I add softly.
Spencer nods. “This one time, the bull was meant for Knox. But like the spoiled rodeo team brat he is, he opted out for a redraw. Hadley wasn’t fazed, he just took it, you know?”
I know how he is.
Maybe that’s what scares me. He’s dedicated. He’s driven to protect his ranch and mostly his family. At any price.
“The bull was a firecracker. He made the eight. But in true Hadley style, the dismount and escape were not great. He got tossed around like alegitrag doll. Broke more bones than most of us put together. He was in a bad, bad way, Maggie. Took him eighteen months to ride again.”
At any price.
At the price of his health, his life...
I can’t be part of that price tag. I can’t.
“So, you see. Our boy will be back and raring to go in no time. If Hells Bells can’t keep him down, nothing can.” Spencer is smiling.
I hate it.
Rodeo almost had me.
It almost made me . . .
