Titus adjusted his gloves and kept his voice even.“Still just a horse.”
The grin he offered did not last.Deacon clapped him once more and moved on, already talking to someone else.Titus bent to the rail and checked the latch again, though it did not need it.
People pressed in around him.Neighbors.College teams.Old hands with coffee in one fist and opinions in the other.He stayed in motion, moving from one small task to the next.Check the fencing.Loop the water lines.Keep his head down.
Then she crossed his line of sight.
Kyla carried a blue cooler, arms tight around it, bent forward under the load.Her hair had come loose, curls escaping and catching the early light.His step faltered.Heat climbed along his neck.
His hands tingled as if blood had drained from them.Instinct pushed him forward.Step in.Take the weight.Say nothing and mean everything.
He stopped.He turned away instead, grabbed a length of hose, and forced his attention onto the coupling.His chest tightened.Air came harder than it should have.A kid from the co-op waved from a tractor.Titus nodded once, jaw set, and kept working.
Later, he saw her again at the prep table.A knife flashed through something green and crisp.She moved like the entire operation bent to her timing.Sweat marked the back of her neck.He did not look away soon enough.His heel dragged against the dirt as he shifted.The urge to step closer pressed harder than it had any right to.
He turned before it showed.He circled behind the announcer’s booth and let the noise swallow him.Rodeo hands traded stories.Laughter rolled through the space, loud and easy.He picked up a lead rope, ran it through his hands, focused on the rough fibers biting into his skin.Anything to keep from looking back.
The grounds filled in around him.Cowhands called for feed.A mother dragged her kid away from the snack stand.Cotton candy drifted through the air, fighting with manure and smoke.He mapped his movements without thinking, cutting paths that kept distance between him and the food tent.Every turn became a calculation.
Too close.
Their eyes caught once, quick and unplanned, as he lifted hay over the rail.Her lips parted, then she dropped her gaze.His chest tightened hard enough to slow his next breath.No one said anything.He moved again, faster this time, heart driving harder than the work required.
He ended up near the bull chutes, gloves tight against the rail, forcing his attention onto something solid.Twine.Knots.The pull of muscle and effort.Around him, the fair built toward something bigger.The tension did not ease.It settled deeper, harder to ignore with each pass across the grounds.
* * *
By Friday sundown,the fairgrounds shifted from loud to charged.Titus sat behind the main stock pen, legs stretched across packed dirt, gear bag at his boots.
Generator noise carried across the grounds, uneven and constant.Laughter cut through from a group of riders arguing over draw order and payouts.He bent over his rigging, fingers tracing the worn seams of leather, checking every inch for weak spots.
Rosin coated his palms, working into each callus as he rubbed it in.The friction steadied him.His wrists burned from practice earlier that week.He welcomed it.Pain stayed honest.Pain didn’t ask questions he couldn’t answer.
He focused on the glove, tightening the laces with slow pulls, making sure the fit stayed clean and secure.No slack.No chance for failure.Doubt didn’t belong here.Doubt cost more than anything he had left to give.
The rumors had started quiet.They never stayed that way.A loan.A deadline.Talk that moved from one voice to the next until it circled back louder than before.He kept his head down and worked his hands harder, refusing to let it take root.
Boots scraped against gravel outside the pen.“Titus?”
He didn’t look up right away.He finished the pull on the strap, then lifted his head.Jonah hovered a few steps away, apron gone, hair sticking up from a long shift.The kid looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.Titus gave a short nod and went back to the leather, keeping his focus there.
Jonah shifted his stance.Tried once.Failed.Tried again.“Hey, I—uh—just wanted to—” His voice caught, then pushed through anyway.“Is it true what folks are saying about the bank?”
Titus’s grip tightened on the strap.His fingers pressed harder than needed.He did not answer.His jaw locked, teeth set against anything that might come out wrong.Silence stretched long enough to say everything.
Jonah stepped back fast, already shaking his head.“Sorry.Didn’t mean—I heard—”
Titus stood.He moved with intent, every motion controlled, carved down to what he could manage without breaking something he couldn’t put back together.He grabbed the gear bag and slung it over his shoulder.Air moved through his chest in short pulls.He kept his eyes forward.
He walked for the chute alley.Noise surged back in around him.Boots hit dirt.Gates rattled.Voices rose and fell in bursts of bravado.None of it reached him clean.He moved through it like he had all week, locked into the one thing that still made sense.Keep moving.Keep working.Don’t stop long enough to think.
He did not look toward the catering tent.Not once.Not when he passed the line where it sat bright under floodlights.Not when laughter from that direction cut sharper than anything else on the grounds.The back of his neck burned anyway, as if someone tracked his steps without needing to call his name.
The competitor tent trapped heat and smell in equal measure.Leather.Sweat.Rosin.Men packed shoulder to shoulder along narrow benches, pulling on chaps, cursing stuck zippers, running through routines that kept nerves from getting the better of them.
Titus dropped onto a bench near the edge, vest across his lap.His hands already felt damp.He wiped them once against his jeans, then reached for the glove again, tightening the laces with steady pulls.The leather pressed against raw skin.He leaned into it, letting the pressure focus him.
Around him, voices overlapped.Jokes.Complaints.Quiet bets about who would ride clean and who would eat dirt before the buzzer.Someone kicked a gear bag under the bench.Another man laughed too loud, trying to shake off nerves that showed anyway.
