Page 22 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

I watched his face as he walked back to the pen, half pride, half the expectation that someone would find a flaw in what he’d done.

After the roping, Cordelia announced a break and suggested a “ladies’ room detour.” Wyatt and Levi peeled off for the beer tent. I trailed Cordelia at a respectable distance, following the crowd along the concession lanes. I was at the water line when I felt someone slide in beside me. Not touching, not even looking directly, just close enough to disrupt the field. I didn’t have to look to know.

“Long line,” Reid said. Quite a talker, that man.

I nodded. “I’m starting to think dehydration is underrated.”

He snorted, a small huff that made my skin prickle. We stood, side by side, staring at anything but each other. Nobody said anything for a full minute.

Then, softer, he said, “You surviving?”

I finally looked at him. “I’ll make it.”

He nodded. “Couldn’t find you in the crowd earlier.”

“Probably for the best,” I said.

He didn’t reply, but I felt his gaze. When we reached the front, he gestured for me to go first. I took the cup, filled it, and stepped aside. He did the same, then stood there, sipping, watching the people drift past, cataloguing each one.

“You come here every year?” I asked.

He smiled. “I haven’t missed since I could walk. My dad used to bring me to the first event, then leave me at the pens while he worked the horses. I always figured he’d forget and go home without me.”

“Did he?”

He shrugged. “Not once. But I spent half my childhood planning escape routes, just in case.”

I laughed because I knew that logic. I prepared for the worst, and if it never came, I called it luck. I'd been doing it for twenty years. It was basically my personality now.

We didn’t talk about yesterday morning. We didn’t talk about the kiss, or the way I’d thought about it every hour since. Instead, we watched the action, let the crowd push us slowly toward the fence. There was a current to it, people jostling, moving in and out, kids scaling the rails and falling off again. Nobody cared what anyone else was doing.

At the fence, we found a tiny patch of shade when a small group moved on.

“You competing?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m just here to wrangle the old men and keep the young ones from starting a fistfight.”

I looked out at the cowboy roping a cow. "That sounds like a full-time job."

He grinned, a real one this time. “You have no idea.”

We stood there for a while, letting the sun cook the top layer off the world. He watched the events, pointed out the runs that mattered, gave me the backstory on every horse worth a damn. It was the closest thing to peace I’d had since I left San Antonio, and I didn’t know how to process it. At some point, I stopped checking for the Colemans in the crowd.

He did, too.

When the barrel racing started, we drifted back toward the bleachers. The sun was overhead now, and the whole place shimmered with heat. We didn’t sit, just hovered at the edge, watching the riders as they kicked up dirt and cut corners so tight I felt the impact in my teeth.

There was a lull in the schedule, and we found a picnic table under the tented food area. The shade was a relief. I took the end of the table, he sat across, legs stretched under the plank. We ate corn dogs and drank more water. It felt absurdly normal, which made it terrifying.

“So,” he said, after a long silence. “Why did you come out here?”

I considered. “You mean today, or in general?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

I could have lied, but I was tired of it. “I needed a job. I needed space. And I was tired of people thinking they knew who I was.” That was vague enough but true. I bit off the end of the corn dog and chewed, finding myself wanting to say something more. “When I was twelve, my mom would leave me at home for days at a time, usually with a fridge full of cheese and a promise she’d be back before the power bill was due. I learned how to break into my own apartment before I learned algebra. I got good at fixing things, because if I didn’t, nobody else would.”

He watched me without blinking. “That’s how you got out, isn’t it?”