Chapter One
Beau
‘No fucking way.’
Jett Alvarez stares me down with those cool, grey eyes, the intensity of his gaze clearly meant to throw me off balance as much as the rankest bull on the circuit could, but I don’t flinch. Not with something like this.
‘It’s already locked and loaded, kid.’
‘Kid?’ I smother the derision in my voice with an easy, natural-seeming smile, faking the emotion everyone expects to see in me. At twenty-eight, I’m getting close to being a veteran on the tour. The guys coming up behind me are in their early twenties, as green as I was at their age.
He shrugs his broad shoulders, eyes not leaving my face.
‘The sponsors want it.’
A long, exasperated breath escapes me. The sponsors have a godlike power at times – after all, their money greases the wheels of these events. Jett’s playing a trump card right in my face. He also knows that money is one of the reasons I’m here. Not the only reason. You can’t explain away the love I feel for this sport, the clutching fear I have when I think about getting beyond the point of being able to ride like this.
There’s also the fact that this, well, this is my thing. The only thing I’ve ever really been good at, and winning the championship is one surefire way to prove myself to everyone. But the money’s nice too, and it’s something we still need for the ranch, despite the social media following Beth’s managed to build for it, and the paid product placement that goes hand in hand with that. Seems like every second video she posts goes viral these days.
‘There must be a million guys who’d be better.’ I stalk to the corner of Jett’s office. I’ve been in here enough times over the years to know my way around. ‘Mind if I grab a soda?’
‘Help yourself,’ he invites. In the same way I can read a bull, I can read people, and I can tell he thinks he’s got something over me now. That I’m gonna concede. Reaching into the fridge, I pull out a can and pop the top with a satisfying fizz.
‘I’m old news. Nah, I’m just plain old.’
‘Yeah, too old for this shit,’ he agrees.
I grin at him, more genuinely now. ‘So that’s what they want to write about? Why some geriatric like me came back for more?’
‘I don’t know.’ He lifts his shoulders again, before pulling open the top drawer of his desk and lifting out a pile of newspapers. He flicks through the top one then tosses it toward me. Aquick glance confirms I’ve already seen it. As if anyone in our family WhatsApp chat would let me live down that picture and headline. ‘Comeback King!’ it screams, with a photo of me punching the air after jumping off a bastard of a bull.
My family hates the fact I’m riding again. They hate it with a passion. But they love and support me, so even my oldest brother Cole’s stopped grunting whenever I talk about the tour.
‘I imagine the fact you’re in contention for the championship on only your second year back from serious injury might have something to do with it.’
I close my eyes, immediately shutting out his statement. When I go out in the arena, I don’t think about the prize. I don’t think about the time on the clock. I don’t think about the points, the money. I don’t think about anything but the bull – the way he moves, his strength, his mood. If I focus on anything else, if I get in my own head, I can’t ride for shit. This sport is as much about concentration as it is balance.
‘Sorry,’ he says, grabbing a slim, metallic case out of his breast pocket, removing a cigarette and tapping the tip against his desk. He knows better than to jinx it. ‘Look, I didn’t call you in here to ask your opinion. This is a done deal.’
I clamp my lips together, biting back the curse that springs to mind. The idea of having some nosy-ass guy follow me around for ‘a few weeks’ to write an ‘in-depth’ profile sets my teeth on edge. ‘There’s gotta be something you can do.’
‘What’s the matter?’ His grin is pure mockery. ‘You scared?’
I drain my soda. ‘I’m bored just thinking about it.’ With Jett, I can be brutally honest. ‘And I reckon there’s a dozen kids who’d make a better story, who’ve got bigger careers ahead of them.You and I both know this is gonna be one of my last years—if not my last.’
Just saying it makes me feel like I’ve swallowed a whole fish worth of bones and they’re all stuck in my throat. I don’t ever want to stop riding. I hate the fact that the decision’s going to be taken out of my hands by a body that refuses to play ball. ’Cause Jett’s right. I’m killing it this season, but I canfeelwhat that’s doing to me—this sport is damn near close to killing me in return. Every part of me aches, in a way it never used to. It takes me longer to pull up after an event nowadays. No matter how I feel about riding, it has its own timeline, one you can’t argue with.
Something like resentment fizzes in my gut. I immediately tamp it down. I wasted three years away from this, three of my prime bull-riding years, because my family guilt-tripped me into giving it up, and I couldn’t live with putting them through the ringer again. Not when I saw what my accident did to them.
‘So why not enjoy the spotlight for a while?’
We both laugh—his a deep, gravelled sound—before he strikes the lighter and inhales a puff of his cigarette.
‘What would you do, in my boots?’
He exhales slowly. ‘Run like hell.’ His eyes crease at the corners. ‘But that ain’t an option for you. The journalist’s flying in this afternoon—I’ve said you’ll meet them at the airport. Show off some good old-fashioned rodeo manners.’ He laughs again, but I’m too pissed to even pretend to share his amusement.
I really, really don’t want to show some goddamn journalist around. ‘You’re fucking kidding me?’
