I thread my fingers into her hair and kiss her, claiming her. She pours all her emotions into this kiss, and I swallow every whimper, every cry.
When she pulls back, her eyes are wild, and her lips are swollen. “What now?”
I smirk. “First, you’d better get off of my lap before I break my last promise.”
“Oh.”
She moves off me, slowly sliding her core over my painful erection.
“Mean,” I hiss.
She giggles.
“Second,” I continue after I recover, “we enjoy the rest of the summer. And come August, you have to go back to school, and I have to get back on the road. But I can come through Colorado every chance I get. And you can join me on breaks and holidays. It’s a year, and it’ll be a busy one, but we can make it work. Then, hopefully, you’ll be joining the PBR staff. We’ll travel the world together. Then we can build that fence.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Almost,” I say. “We have two obstacles.”
“Two?”
“Yeah. We have to tell Cabe. And you’ll have to put up with Royce traveling the world with us too.”
“How are we gonna tell him?”
“I’ll talk to him first. Take the brunt of it.”
She shakes her head. “He’s my best friend.”
“I know, baby. But he’s my little brother. I need to talk to him, man to man. I owe him that.”
“Okay.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t have to share a bathroom with Royce, do I?”
I burst out laughing. “No, ma’am, you do not.”
Jovie
Iswear, every group of students that comes through the academy gets a little crazier than the last.
By Friday morning, I’m running almost entirely on caffeine and sheer will.
The clinic has been absolute chaos all week.
As the summer progresses, the incoming riders seem determined to test the limits of both common sense and human anatomy. We’ve treated everything from dislocated shoulders and ankle sprains to mild concussions and knocked-out teeth. Not just on students either. Several instructors have ended up on exam tables this week too.
Dr. Seth keeps joking that we should install revolving doors.
The marketing team certainly isn’t complaining.
They showed up again this week after the first round of promotional videos went viral online. Every time someone gets launched off a bull or crashes spectacularly into a fence panel, somebody with a camera magically appears.
Apparently, near-death experiences make excellent advertising to potential cowboys and cowgirls.
Who knew?
Between patients, paperwork, filming, and late-night video calls with Axle, I’ve barely had time to think.
