We loaded into Brody's truck twenty minutes later. The drive to Wild Acre was quiet and easy, windows cracked, the morning air still cool enough to feel good before the August heat set in and turned everything into a slow roast.
Brody drove one-handed, his other resting on my thigh. His thumb traced lazy circles on the denim above my knee while he hummed something I didn't recognize, and the wisps of his golden brown hair flitted in the wind. He looked relaxed. Loose. Like last night had wrung out whatever tension he'd been carrying, too.
I was doing better. Genuinely. The noise in my head was quieter than it had been since that white dually pulled up in front of the main house. Brody had done that. He'd dragged me out of my own spiral and back into my body.
Back into this.
Back into us.
But quiet wasn't silent, and the part of me that had spent sixteen years reading rooms and planning exits didn't just shut off because a good man fucked me senseless.
She went on standby. Best I could offer.
We pulled up to Wild Acre and Brody cut the engine. The ranch was already humming. Slim and Tommy had the horses out, and I could see Rhett near the far paddock doing something with fence wire that was probably on my list—the one I shoulda started an hour ago, had I been on time this morning.
Brody came around to open my door because he was physically incapable of not doing it, and I let him because picking that battle every single time was exhausting.
"Hey, Lancaster!" Slim hollered from across the yard, trotting over with Tommy in tow. Both of them were grinning in a way that immediately made me suspicious. "You boys ready to get your asses handed to you on Saturday or what?"
Brody's face split into a smile. "Oh, you mean am I ready to take your money? Absolutely. Rhett and I've been ropin' together since we could walk. You two couldn't catch a fence post with a head start."
"Bullshit," Tommy shot back. "Slim's been heelin' like a damn machine. You're gonna be cryin' into your beer."
"Hundred bucks says otherwise," Brody said, puffing up his chest.
"Make it two hundred." Slim crossed his arms.
Brody hit me with a smirk that was begging for backup. "Viper, tell these boys they're about to lose their beer money."
I didn't answer.
My body had gone rigid from the inside out. Like someone had poured concrete into my veins and it was setting fast.
Saturday.
The rodeo.
Brody was roping in the rodeo.
Of course he is.
Team roping was as natural to these boys as breathing—something they'd done since they were kids, something that was as much a part of summer in Meagher County as the heat and the dust and the gossip from the old biddies. It wasn't a big deal to them.
But the rodeo was where Wyatt would be.
The rodeo was where Denny would be.
And now Brody would be there, too. In the arena. On their turf.
"Calvin?" Brody's smile had faded. He was reading me—those green eyes scanning my face the way they did when he could feel me pulling away. "Hey. What's wrong?"
Slim and Tommy had gone quiet, picking up on the shift.
"Nothing." I forced my shoulders down. Forced my expression into something neutral. "I just didn't know you were in the rodeo."
He blinked. Then understanding hit and his face fell.
"Ah, shit, viper. I wasn't thinkin'." He palmed the back of his neck. "With everything that happened yesterday, it just—we do it every year. It ain't no big thing. Just team ropin'. I'll be in and out." He glanced at Slim and Tommy. "Y'all go on. I'll catch up."
