"Jesus."
"She wants us to stay put."
"Stay put." He says it like the words taste foreign. "She's about to arrest the man who killed Grant, and she wants us to sit in the stands."
"She wants us to not interfere with a federal operation."
"Feels the same."
"It's not. And you know it." I put my hand on his chest. His heart kicks hard under my palm. "It's happening, Colt. After everything, it's happening tonight."
His jaw works. Then his hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his sternum, the heat of his palm over my knuckles, the thud of his heartbeat under my fingers.
Even now, with Merrick in the VIP section above us and Torres's team on the way, my body registers his proximity the way it always does. The low-grade awareness that never fully powers down no matter what else is happening.
"Then we wait," he says.
The arena holds a few thousand, and tonight it's running close to capacity.
Colt has to ride. His draw is early in the bull riding section, and scratching would raise questions neither of us can answer right now. He goes back to the chutes and I find a spot on the railing with a clear view of the VIP section and the arena floor, splitting my attention between the man I need to watch fall and the man I need to watch survive.
Merrick is in the VIP section with a bourbon in his hand and the camera-ready smile he's been wearing for decades. The circuit commissioner. The sponsor magnet. The man who shook hands with governors and posed with championship buckles at every banquet from El Paso to Reno.
The man who ordered a bull drugged before my brother Grant rode him because Grant was getting too close to the truth.
I watch him laugh at something an aide says. Watch him lift a glass of bourbon. Watch him scan the arena with the satisfied expression of a man surveying a kingdom he believes is secure.
The first bull riders are loading into the chutes. Colt's name is third on the list, and I can see him on the platform, settling his rope, checking his wrap.
My phone buzzes. Colt, from behind the chutes.
You breathing?
I type back.
Barely.
Breathe. I've got this.
Three words and the tension between my shoulders eases. I hate that he can do that from across an arena through a phone screen.
The chute gate swings open, and the bull comes out hard, spinning right. I grab the railing. Before he suspected anything, did Grant ever wonder if the bulls were clean? If the stock had been tampered with? If the ride he was about to make was rigged before he ever climbed the chute panel?
Colt matches the spin, his body moving with the animal's pattern, his free arm high, his hips rolling with each kick. The bull reverses, drops its head, throws a move that would have put a lesser rider in the dirt; Colt adjusts mid-air like the laws of physics owe him a personal favor.
For eight seconds, the arrest and the investigation and Merrick and Torres and all of it ceases to exist. There is only Colt on a bull, doing the thing he was built to do.
The buzzer sounds. He dismounts clean, landing on his feet with the casual authority of a man who just won an argument with an animal that outweighs him ten to one. Ninety-one points.
He tips his hat toward where I'm standing, and even from across the arena, the look he gives me carries enough heat to make the wait bearable.
More riders load into the chutes. Above it all, Merrick orders another bourbon and waves off an aide with the casual dismissal of someone who has never considered the possibility that his authority might end.
Colt finds me at the railing. He’s still carrying dust from the arena floor and the energy of a man who just rode a bull and won. His shoulder presses against mine, and the tension running through his body bleeds into mine through the point of contact. Standing next to him when he's like this is like standing next to a loaded weapon with the safety off.
The next rider is loading into the chute when Colt's hand settles on the back of my neck, his thumb moving slow circles against the skin below my hairline. The touch is absent, possessive, and makes it very difficult to concentrate on the corridor below the VIP section.
"Breathe, Kenna."
