He’s got his arm slung around me. With his fingertips he plays with the ends of my pigtails braided beneath my cowboy hat, the honeymoon one emblazoned with my new initials: LR.
Lila Rhodes.
Should I change it back to Lila Sherwood after we divorce?
I don’t want to. I don’t want any of it: a name change, or a divorce.
But I also don’t want to be in a marriage where I never see my husband. Where he’s never around and I’m alone all the time. I’ve been lonely inside the bonds of a relationship too many times in my life to choose that for myself.
Given my emotionally unavailable family, my former therapist would probably tell me it makes perfect sense I’d fall in love with a man who will never let himself be vulnerable.
Since Slade and I had our late night talk in bed, things have pretty much gone back to status quo for us, even as heartache simmers beneath the surface.
We’re acting like a normal newlywed couple. We have dinner together every night. Chat about our days. I ask Slade for his opinions as I slowly decorate the house.
Typical of newlywed life, I’d guess. As is the sex we’re having, and plenty of it.
Sometimes at the end of the day, when we’re watching TV, he starts kissing me and touching me and before I know it he’s kneeling in front of me with my legs spread and his mouth on my pussy.
Sometimes he takes me slow and sleep-hazy before he leaves to work on the ranch, sliding inside me from behind as he spoons me and I float back to sleep for a few more hours on a post-orgasmic cloud. Sometimes he drops by the office and brings me lunch and we end up having a hot, intense midday quickie on my desk or in his truck parked out back.
It’s heaven. And it’s hell. Because it’s just a bubble we’re living in, and it’s only a matter of time before that bubble pops.
But that’s heartbreak for another day. For now, my husband is holding me like he never wants to let go, and I’ll savor it while it lasts.
In the stands next to us Walker has Jonah on his knee, both of them leaning forward with identical expressions of focus. Jonah has his cowboy hat and chaps on, looking like a mini bull rider himself, and it might just be one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen, matched only by Sadie holding one twin on each hip, matching bandana hairbands in their hair.
Next to me on the other side, Cassidy is sitting very straight, her eyes on the chutes. On Tanner.
Beside her, her fiancé Derek is on his phone. He’s been on his phone since we got here. He was sure to let all of us know he’s involved in an extremely important case and it needs his full attention. He’s a tall and good-looking neurosurgeon—I can see what the appeal might have been for Cassidy—but he’s alsocold and insufferably arrogant and has ignored her since we got here.
I don’t like him. Judging by the tight way Cassidy keeps glancing at him, I’m honestly not sure she does either.
The announcer’s voice booms through the arena and the crowd surges to its feet.
“Ladies and gentlemen, next up in the chute, a three-time regional champion, riding out of Marble Falls, Montana. Tanner Rhodes!”
Jonah loses his mind, cheering loud and bouncing up and down with excitement.
I grab Slade’s arm.
Because there he is: Tanner, settling onto the back of a jet-black bull, rope wound around his hand. Even from here I can see him roll his shoulders. Breathe out. Go still and utterly focused in a way I’ve never seen from my brother-in-law.
I’ve seen the other Rhodes boys do it. Walker gets that look on stage. Rafe does when he’s one horseback. I can only assume Josie’s got the same thing as a nurse, that when the pressure ratchets up, that’s when she’s at her best.
And of course I’ve seen my husband do it: go into the zone. Except Slade is on the ice when it happens... or having sex with me.
I lean into Slade and watch the arena and absorb the electricity of a crowd that’s entirely, collectively invested in what’s about to happen. Around us are cowboy hats as far as the eye can see, kids on their fathers’ shoulders, couples sharing drinks. It’s loud and rowdy and unlike anything I grew up with.
I love all of it. The sawdust smell and the noise and the livestock and the fried food. The energy. The heritage. People have been following these traditions for hundreds of years and they’ll be following them for hundreds more. Once upon a time they came by covered wagons to the rodeos. We drove here in astate of the art pickup truck. Maybe our great-great grandkids will arrive by hovercraft.
What remains the same is the horses threading through barrels at a breakneck speed. The lassoes roped around steers by cowboys using their great-grandaddy’s same techniques. The raging bulls and the men who climb atop them just because they can.
The dirt gets older every year, but there’s always fresh blood.
The gate swings open and everything happens at once.
The bull comes out spinning left, hard and fast, and Tanner’s already moving with him, hips loose, free hand high, his whole body absorbing the animal’s rage in a way that looks almost lazy from up here and most definitely isn’t.
