“I have a crock pot of chili at home if you’d rather go somewhere private?”
“Yeah, that’s good. Better. Sure. Text me your address. Say in an hour?”
I nearly toppled off the counter to find my cell lying on the other side of the register. Exchanging numbers. This was something big. Which scared me shitless even as we read our numbers to each other. There. Hoyt Knox. In my contacts. I shouldnothave been so thrilled over such a simple thing. I wassupposed to be avoiding manly types to be a hermit. Inviting Mr. Shy and Sexy over for chili was not very reclusive.
“See you in an hour!” I chirped even as my heart and my head began an argument my dick was not paying the least attention to. Typical for a dick. They rarely listened to logic.
Chapter 8
Hoyt
Things were upside down in my head.
My intentions for the future were all sorts of skewed in good and bad ways.
My thoughts swirled as I exited urgent care to walk to my truck.
The checkup at urgent care had been promising. If I was a good boy Imightbe able to lose the sling in another week. Of course, that was followed by therapy for who knew how long. Being older—forty was eyeballing me hard—the final steps of recovery might take months. Which set back my plans to return to the circuit by June. The doctor had been pretty adamant about me staying off the back of an agitated bull for several more months. Easy for him to say, he wasn’t the one with nothing but a piddly paycheck from his little brother to keep himself fed and in decent underwear. But I was living rent- and grocery-free so bitching about things seemed childish.
Then there was Aubrey. Aubrey with the bouncy smile, the bright brown eyes, and the soft hair that did its best to break out of any bun he tried to wrangle it into. Aubrey. The poetry lover who had gushed over my dinky little horse poem as if it weresomething magnificent. Aubrey. Sweet, kind, happy Aubrey. He made me feel things I’d not allowed myself to feel for any man ever. You didn’t dare have emotions for a man when you were trying your hardest to be straight. Even when you failed at keeping the real you hidden away a hookup was dicey and dangerous. That trucker BJ coming up here had been a stupid thing to allow. He could be out there right now telling the world Hoyt Knox let him suck his dick.
Not that it would matter. There were no sponsors left to horrify, no agents left to shame me into staying in the closet, no fans to disappoint. I’d already done that so why was I worried about someone giving me head and the world finding out? Returning to the circuit was a fucking pipe dream. I knew it deep down, in the dark pits of my soul I knew I was done with the rodeo, or at least riding bulls. But fuck me sideways, if I gave up on that dream what did I have left? I was nearly forty with no high school diploma, no home, no horse, and no skills outside of chucking hay bales and riding fence.
What did a man in my situation do and why was I now dreaming of a cheery bookseller in a damn ugly purple suit?
“Hoyt?”
I skidded to a stop just outside the Last Chance Lounge where I’d parked. “Hoyt Knox. Hey.” I stared hard at the deputy jogging at me. Shit. Had I parked in front of a fire hydrant or something.
“Officer, I can explain…” I had found over the years that opening up with any lawman with an explanation helped diffuse things.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” Good-looking guy, about my age, with very familiar eyes. “We were in school together. Used to have gym class at the same time. Sat around staring at Polly Perkins’s boobs when she was playing volleyball?”
“Oh shit, Simon Wainwright. You’re a cop?”
We shook. He nodded then hit me with an infectious smile. I’d had some dreams about his smile back in ninth grade. Of course those were never discussed. We’d talked about bouncing boobs instead.
“Deputy here in Chance. Man, I thought you were dead for the longest time. Then I saw your name on a poster for the rodeo.” His gaze drifted down to the gold belt buckle I wore with pride. “You did good for yourself.”
“Man, only one this gold buckle once. Then the bulls got pissed off and started making me their personal cha-cha dance rug.”
That made him snicker. “Yeah, I see that. You back home to stay now? You must be close to forty. I hit that milestone in January. My wife and kids gave me a fortieth birthday survival kit with reading glasses, denture cleaning tablets, a magnifying class, and a book of dad jokes.”
“Ouch, that probably hurt worse than a bull stepping on your clavicle.”
“You married yet?”
“No, no, not married. Too many buckle bunnies to tie myself down, although now I’m old and wrinkled the bunnies seem to be hopping to younger bucks.”
Simon laughed. I felt partially sick repeating the same lies I had spewed over and over again for my whole fucking life. “I have to run. Meeting a friend for dinner. Nice to see you.”
“You too. Maybe we can have a beer sometime before you head back to the bucking bulls and buckle bunnies?”
We shook once more. “Maybe. Sure, I’d like that.”
And I would. If only I didn’t have to use this tired-ass façade of straight cowboy. I ducked into my truck as Simon returned to his cruiser. I sat there, waved at him when he passed, and let my brow come to rest on the wheel. Honestly, this hiding was killingme inch by inch, day by day, lie by lie. No bull had caused me as much agony as maintaining this fallacy.
Sucking it up as men are supposed to do, I tapped in Aubrey’s address in my maps app, eager to leave some of the machismo bullshit behind. Chili with Aubrey. Talking poetry. That sounded nice. Part of me could emerge. Not all of me obviously. Just Jesse and Abel knew that part of Hoyt Knox. Still, even half of the real me coming out would be joyous.
