He’d thought of everything.
“Thank god you dug through the trash, huh?” Lincoln joked.
“I didn’t dig through the trash,” Bishop mumbled. “It was sticking out.”
“And then you picked it up.”
“Because I thought it was Lennox’s!”
I laid my hand on my chest. “I love that you kept something you thought I peed on in your pocket. That’s so romantic, baby.”
Josie gagged. “Okay. This,” she said, pointing between Bishop and me, “is weird.”
“Well, you better get used to it,” Bishop said. His eyes found mine, the skin surrounding them crinkling along the edges. I’d come to love those wrinkles. They only came out when he smiled, and those moments were rare. “Cause I have no intention of stopping.”
epilogue
. . .
Bishop
“Come on,come on! Move your asses,” Cleo muttered as the people in front of us finally stepped out of our way.
“Slow down. We don’t need you making headlines for pushing people outta the way,” I said, shaking my head as she took the stadium stairs two at a time. She was rushing back to our seats as the music kicked up and the announcer began calling out the lineup for the evening.
“And last, but certainly not least, is Lennox Hayes on Strider! This duo is currently sitting at that hallowed first place spot, which isn’t much of a surprise to anyone familiar with them. They traveled all the way from Ashwood, Texas to be here tonight.”
“I’d expect nothing less from Doug Hayes’ daughter. He was a force to be reckoned with, and Lennox is stepping into his shoes with ease,” the other announcer commented.
I smiled as the crowd went wild for my girl, screaming until I barely heard anything over the thunderous applause. My ears were ringing by the time it died down, but my heart had never been happier.
I’d been to a lot of rodeos over the course of my life, butnone that quite matched this one. The Calgary Stampede was in a league of its own. I understood why the ten-day event was as celebrated as it was. People from all over the world came to see the best of the best battle it out on the rodeo grounds, and Lennox was one of them.
After the holidays were over, Lennox and I had spent a lot of time talking about our future and what it would look like. Nothing had changed with my job. The ranch was still in a transition period and needed me more than ever. With Doug finally embracing retirement, Lincoln and I were still figuring out how the ranch would be run.
He’d been cramming his schedule full of clinics and events across the country so that he could take time off once Josie had the baby. It didn’t leave a lot of time to help me run the day-to-day operations at the ranch. We’d built a good crew who could take care of most of their shit on their own, but I’d been the one struggling to keep up.
Letting go of the reins, even a little bit, was still something I was struggling with, but it was getting easier with time. Lennox and Lincoln were the only two people I felt comfortable enough with to ask for help. Even then, it was normally on a small scale, but they were both patient with me.
Doug and I had talked about it, too. Though he still gave me a hard time about it, he’d told me he understood how difficult it could be to lean on others. It was something that had taken him a long time, too, but he’d realized that nothing in this life could run smoothly with a single person running the show. Doesn’t matter how big or small the task was. Life was easier, better in every way, when you had someone to lean on.
I suspected his lessons were about much more than running the ranch, but he didn’t push it and neither did I.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been for Lennox, I wasn’t sure I could’ve done everything I needed to. She was always the first to jump in and sort out any issues that came up if I was out at acattle auction or in the middle of a pasture with a herd and no cell reception. We talked over a lot of decisions for the ranch as a team, even though we always ran them by Doug and Ruby afterward.
The pride that filled their eyes when listening to their daughter sparked more joy than I could’ve ever imagined. Not that they would ever admit this out loud, but I suspected they were worried about their youngest daughter and what role she would settle into at the ranch. Lennox had her barrel racing, and while she loved what she did and had ambitious goals to meet within the confines of the sport, I had a feeling it wasn’t what she wanted to do forever.
She’d taken on a lot of responsibilities over the past seven months. Josie had spent the first trimester of her pregnancy hunched over the toilet, so Lennox had stepped up alongside Ruby to take care of the office work. There’d been a bit of a learning curve, which meant Lennox often held her tongue while Josie criticized her attempt at file organization through the thin bathroom door, but they both made it through somehow.
In addition, Cleo had come to Lennox about starting up a kid’s camp over the summer. She said parents at school had asked if she knew of any in the area that involved horse riding and fundamentals, because they were having difficulty finding any. Lennox loved the idea, and the two of them had spent all their free time coming up with a presentation for Doug and Ruby to give the greenlight.
But all of that left little time for Lennox’s plans to return to barrel racing. The Women’s Professional Rodeo Association started calling in January, asking her if she was returning to the circuit. She’d given them some bullshit answer about being undecided, which would’ve been fine if her shoulders hadn’t slumped forward every time she hung up the phone.
When I tried talking to her about it, she used the ranch as anexcuse as to why she couldn’t go back. Josie and Ruby needed her in the office. I needed her on the back of a horse. Doug needed her to occasionally drive him to doctor’s appointments. Cleo needed help with the camp. The list she came up with never ended. The girl had an excuse for everything, but I saw right through her.
Lennox had a myriad of championships and trophies under her belt, but she’d talked about winning one more before hanging up her rodeo hat, and I’d been determined to make sure she had the chance to do it.
Was going to Doug and telling on her a low blow? Maybe, but it worked.
