“Frankie!” I yelled, getting to my feet. His feet stilled, and he looked over his shoulder. I swallowed hard, my eyes filled with unshed tears. “Don’t leave me.”
He gave me a sad smile and shook his head. “I don’t think I could even if I tried.” Then he made himself a liar, walking out the door and closing it with a soft click.
Frankie loved me. Like, love love. What the hell was I going to do with that?
I stared at the door for another hour before I realized Frankie wasn’t about to turn around and come back. We didn’t fight. Well not really, anyway. Sure, sometimes we disagreed about shit. I PMS’ed once a month like a normal woman and he breathed during that time, so there was bound to be fireworks every now and then. But mostly, we resolved it and we never, ever went to bed with bad feelings. It was a thing for me. Definitely some PTSD related neurosis from the accident that I probably needed therapy for, but Frankie had always understood it. Respected it.
When there was a knock at my door, I was on my feet and wrenching it open, uncaring what time of night it was.
“Frankie, I’m-” but it was Branch and not Frankie on the other side of the door.
Branch looked hot. He was in clean Wranglers and a dark button up shirt that was tailored just right. He had on his good boots, polished to a shine, and a gold buckle from a win last year. His black hat had a small turkey feather in the band and his face was clean shaven. I wanted to lick the sharp line of his jaw, if I wasn’t worried it would cut me like his sharp tongue.
“Sorry to disturb you, Nugget. My parents have been blowing up your phone all night, and got a little worried when you didn’t answer. They sent me over to make sure you weren’t bleeding to death in the shower or something.”
I realized belatedly that I was standing in the doorway to my hotel room in my underwear and a stained old shirt that belonged to Frankie. I motioned Branch into the room, and he looked it over. It looked a little like a tornado had hit it, because I hadn’t packed away my gear earlier, but screw him. He wasn’t housekeeping and I didn’t owe him my housewife best.
I went looking for my phone, searching in my suitcase for it. I hadn’t gotten it out after the day had finished, my leg too sore and my head too muddled from the ride and the sex with Beau.
Shit, remembering Beau, I stood straight. Then I realized I'd been bending over in nothing but my underwear and my face got hot.
I tugged at the hem of the shirt, and straightened. There were six missed calls from Mrs. Watson. One from Beau. None from Frankie.
I swallowed back the emotions. I’d cry when Branch left.
“Apologize to your mom and dad for me. I didn’t hear it ring in there.”
Branch stared at me, his eyes running over my face, seeing too much like they’d done when I was a kid. It was how he knew I was going to ride even though I’d just been meandering around the chutes like I always had back on that fateful day when I was seventeen.
“What's wrong?”
It was how he knew I wasn’t okay now.
“Nothing. My thigh just hurts.” Not a lie, technically.
His eyes dropped to the huge bruise on my thigh, then back to my face. “Looks like it hurts, but that's not it. Try again.”
His smug voice snapped the last ounce of my control. “Frankie busted me fucking Beau in the treatment room at the arena today, then he confessed he loved me and stormed out. Happy now, asshole?”
Then I burst into angry tears, which made me even fucking angrier, and that made me cry harder. For the second time in two weeks I was crying in front of Branch Watson and I wanted to scream. I kept this shit buttoned down, packed up in a neat little box for some psychiatrist to go through when I finally lose it. But something about Branch just picked at the edges of that box and I hated it.
I. Hated. It.
When he stepped toward me, his arms outstretched, I waved him away. He ground his jaw, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw rage. But his face softened when he looked at me.
“I’m going to kick his ass.”
“Who?” I hiccuped, rubbing my face on my shirt.
He clenched his hands. “Everyones.”
Then he turned and slammed out of the room, and for the second time tonight, I was alone and a little confused.
Frankie rolled into the hotel room about two am. I heard him shucking off his clothes and climbing beneath the covers behind me. He curled his body around mine, something we’d done hundreds of times on cold nights in shitty hotel rooms with bad heating, but now it was different.
The casual touches seemed less casual.
“Desculpa meu amor,” he murmured to the dark.
I sighed, not even pretending to be asleep. “I’m sorry too.”
Then I ran ride scenarios in my head until I fell asleep.
When I woke the next morning, Frankie was still asleep, snoring like a chainsaw and smelling like a brewery. He still hadn’t moved by the time midday had rolled around. I left him a note and told him I’d meet him back here and we’d head out to California in the morning. For the first time in three years, I didn’t want Frankie there because it would mess with my head. I needed to be focused before I climbed on top of today's ride. A distracted bull rider was a dead bull rider. I left him the keys to the truck and called a cab, my smile tight as I directed him where I wanted to go and then he left me blissfully to my thoughts.
We were sitting in peak hour traffic when it got too much for the cab driver. “I know you,” he said happily. “You’re the lady bull rider.”
I pasted on my smile and nodded, because in my experience these conversations went one of three ways. One, they cussed me out for ruining the greatest sport on earth. Two, they patronizingly tried to give me hints about how to ride or three, they told me that they thought it was amazing and they wished they had the gumption to ride a bull.
Needless to say, number three was pretty rare.
“My daughter hasn’t stopped talking about you since she turned on the television last week. She’s been watching your rides. She doesn’t want to be a bull rider, thank Jesus, err, no offense.”
I laughed. “None taken.”
“But she wants to do the second greatest sport on earth, NASCAR. She said everyone tells her it's just for boys, but she says that if you can ride bulls, then she can drive NASCAR, right?”
Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry. I chanted it to myself as my tight smile became a genuine wobbly one. “Absolutely. With people who believe in her and enough passion, she can do anything. Driving a car around in circles is the least of what she can do if she sets her mind to it.”
For the next twenty minutes he told me all about his daughter Tally. She was in her early teens and already begging for a car for her sixteenth. She sounded like a character and I was pretty sure my driver was going to be completely grey by the time she reached twenty-one.
When we pulled up to the front entrance of the arena, I climbed out. I hesitated, scrounging in my purse for a pen and one of my old competitor numbers from the front pocket of my suitcase. I used a sharpie to sign it. I didn’t know if Tally would want it or not, but her story had settled my nerves, and reaffirmed things for me.
I handed it and a fifty to my driver. “Keep the change. Put it toward Tally’s first car.”