He exhaled slow, steady, and turned.His boots ground into the dirt as he cut a wide arc away from the trailer.Not fast.Not slow.Just enough to keep moving before he gave himself time to change his mind.
The light from her window stayed at his back.
He did not look again.
He made the full loop around the lot, keeping his path wide, letting distance stretch until the trailer blended into the line of others.The grounds thinned further the deeper he went, noise falling away until only the scrape of his own steps remained.His shoulders dropped for a fraction of a second before he pulled them back into place.
Tomorrow would come whether he was ready or not.
So would she.
He walked into the darker stretch beyond the pens, letting the space open up in front of him.No voices.No distractions.Just the steady rhythm of his steps and the knowledge that the gap between them had not closed tonight.
Behind him, her light stayed on.Ahead, the fairgrounds waited.He kept walking.
Chapter 9
Three Days Later
Kyla gripped the railso hard she left sweat on the steel.The Big Timber lights flickered awake against a Montana dusk that pressed the world to a slow simmer.Her boots left square prints in grit the color of old bone.
Around her, a family debated fry bread, and somebody coughed in the general crush, but she focused on the tension in her own hands, the iron press of her knuckles, the heat crawling up her sleeves.
Wind tangled loose coils of hair at her neck.She blinked against it, mouth dry, tongue tracing a line of old lipstick she’d reapplied in the pickup on the way here, telling herself she was armored.
Out in the ring, the bronc circled slowly.Kyla measured its stride, the coil under patchy hide, the rank way it cocked its head like it knew something she didn’t.Chutes groaned and metal buckles rattled.
A pickup man’s voice rose over the commotion, pitching reassurance in a lazy drawl, but the cadence only made her jaw clench tighter.She shot a glance toward the arena, checking the side-gate for Titus’s hat.
The battered gray one, sweat-stained at the crown.She found him beside the chute, running one broad hand down the bronc’s neck, fingers spread, settling, claiming.A ritual she’d memorized the same way she’d learned to dice onions blind.
He swung up, one leg after another, boots hitting slats.A hush threaded through the stands, locals and weekenders alike, necks craning.
She tracked the rise and fall of his shoulders.A muscle feathered in his jaw.Kyla’s thumbnail pressed a gouge into her palm, grounding herself in the sharp, mean edge of waiting.
The announcer clicked on, static and nasal under the big-top lights.“Now up: Titus James Brooks, Big Timber.Riding—oh, folks, look out—Storm Warning.This horse’s got something to prove.”
