"He'd have said the coffee is too weak and the view is wasted on a man who can't sit still."
"He'd have been right about the coffee." She leans her shoulder against mine. "He'd have been wrong about the rest."
I put my arm around her and pull her closer than the chair arms want to allow, my hand settling on her bare thigh where the flannel has ridden up. She settles against me with the automatic ease of a woman who knows exactly where she fits, and the heat of her skin under my palm makes me consider skipping the Finals entirely.
The velvet box presses against my awareness from inside the gear bag hanging on the porch rail. Tonight, in the dirt, in front of the whole circuit, I'm going to ask the question.
But that's tonight. Right now is the porch and the coffee and the woman, and Grant's voice in my memory sayingLook after my sister. Don't let her do anything stupid.
I'm trying. She doesn't make it easy.
The drive to Las Vegas takes most of the day. Kenna rides with me, her laptop open, her feet on the dash, her boots kicked off somewhere on the floorboard. She edits chapters while I drive, reading paragraphs aloud and asking my opinion, which she then ignores with a confidence I've stopped finding offensive and started finding attractive.
The Finals carry a different energy than any other event on the circuit. The Thomas & Mack hums with it, a low-frequency vibration that starts in the parking lot and builds through the concourse and hits full volume behind the chutes. This is where seasons end and careers are defined, and the men and women who made it here carry themselves with the specific tension of people who know tonight counts more than any night before it.
I'm behind the chutes with rosin on my hands and a draw slip that reads like a gift, a Coalson bull named Freight Train with a left-spinning high kick that rewards commitment and punishes hesitation.
I've been riding like this all season, focused and technical, competing the way I competed before Grant died, when the point of getting on a bull was to get off it standing instead of proving I deserved to be under it.
The standings show me at the top by a comfortable margin. The championship is mine if I ride tonight. The math doesn't matter as much as what I plan to do after the ride, but the math is nice.
Kenna is in the stands, not in the press section she used to hide in. She dropped the fake credentials and the cover story and the last of the lies months ago. She's a few rows behind thechutes, wearing a black hat and the grin she saves for when she thinks I'm not looking.
A notebook sits in her lap because old habits don't die. She's taking notes on the circuit's new governance structure for the book she's writing, the one that started as an investigation and turned into a chronicle of what happens when people who love a sport decide to tear it apart to save it.
She catches me looking and raises one eyebrow. The expression saysfocus on the bullandI'll be here when you're doneand something filthier that she'll deny later.
I touch the brim of my hat. She rolls her eyes. The whole exchange takes seconds and resets my entire nervous system.
Earlier in the program, I watched Dax Corbin ride in the bareback round. He drew a rank horse and matched it with the coiled, reckless energy of someone who rides like he's got nothing left to protect. He transferred to the Southwest Circuit with a chip on his shoulder and a score to settle that goes deeper than the standings.
He's good, better than good. He rides with raw fury, treats every eight seconds like a personal war, and the other bareback riders have already learned to give him space behind the chutes.
The small velvet box in my gear bag presses against my awareness like a second heartbeat.
Now the announcer's voice cuts through the noise, calling the bull riding round, and the crowd responds with the roar that belongs to the Finals, bigger and louder than anywhere else on the circuit. I climb the chute panel and settle onto Freight Train's back, and the bull shifts beneath me, close to a ton of animal that wants one thing: me on the ground.
I wrap the rope and pull it tight. The familiar compression of my hand inside the braid settles against my palm, rosin gripping, flat of the rope seated where it belongs. The bull's muscles bunch and roll under my thighs, heat radiating throughmy jeans, the animal's breath sawing loud enough to drown out the crowd.
Months ago, I climbed into chutes with a death wish. Tonight I climb in with a ring in my bag and a woman in the stands and the kind of purpose that makes a bull feel like a manageable problem.
I nod.
The gate swings open, and Freight Train comes out spinning left with enough force to snap my neck if I'm not ready. His back end kicks high enough to clear the panel tops, and the arena tilts, sky and dirt trading places in my peripheral vision. The opening seconds are the test, the moment the bull establishes his pattern and the rider matches it or eats dirt.
I match it. My hips roll with the spin, my free arm counters the torque, and my spurs find the rhythm of his shoulders. Sweat runs down my spine. The impact travels through my tailbone, up my vertebrae, rattles my teeth. The bull drops his head and reverses direction, and I stay with him, adjusting mid-turn, my core absorbing the snap like a whip crack I catch in my ribs.
The count climbs. Four seconds. Five. Each one a small war. The bull bucks straight into the air at the end, and I lean back and let the rope do the work, trusting the physics of a system I've refined over half my life. My shoulder screams. My grip holds.
The buzzer sounds. I release the rope, dismount clean, and hit the dirt on my feet. Dust in my lungs. Blood thumping in my ears. The bullfighters move between me and Freight Train, and the bull trots toward the exit chute with the satisfied energy of an animal who gave everything he had.
The score lights up, high enough for the championship.
The crowd goes off. I tip my hat toward the stands, and my eyes find Kenna. She's on her feet, her face lit with the ferocity of a woman who refuses to let the people she loves fight alone.
The championship is mine, but so is the moment after it, and the moment after it is hers. I shove my gear bag at the nearest bullfighter and tell him to hold it. I wave her down. She shakes her head, confused, pointing at herself. I wave again.
She climbs over the railing. A security guard starts toward her, and I catch his eye and shake my head.
