I stayed down.
Not because I wanted to.
Because she asked.
Then a voice I hadn't expected.
"I think you've done enough."
Denny Jennings. Somewhere behind Wyatt. His voice was different than at the ranch—flatter, stripped of the good-ol'-boy performance. Not angry, exactly. Just finished.
"Time to get gone, son."
"Aw, c'mon, Denny, I'm just?—"
"You heard him." John Calvin didn't look up from my side. Didn't turn. Just spoke toward the dirt like he was addressin' somethin' beneath his notice. "Go on now."
Hank shifted his toothpick. "Ain't no one needs a washed-up bull rider here anyhow."
No confrontation. No showdown. No dramatic reckoning where Wyatt Cole got to feel the weight of what he'd done. Just three men and a silence that gave him nothin'—no anger to feed on, no fear to leverage, no scene worth spinnin' into a story later.
He was bein' dismissed. The way you'd shoo a fly off your plate.
I couldn't see his face, but I felt the shift in the air—the one when a man who expected the room to bend around him realized it wasn't goin' to. A beat. Two. The crunch of a boot sole pivotin' on packed earth.
Then he walked away.
Not fast. Not slow. But the way a man did when he wanted you to think leavin' was his idea.
Calvin's hand was still in mine. Still rigid. I watched her face and saw none of it land. Her eyes stayed on me, focused with a precision that told me she'd registered every word, every voice, every second of what had just happened, and filed it somewhere she wouldn't open until she could afford to.
Right now, she couldn't afford to.
Right now, she was barely holdin' it together.
"Hey, viper."
Her jaw flexed. "What."
"I think Gerald the ceiling duck is gonna have to share his spot with a new water stain. Pretty sure I left a dent in this arena."
The sound she made wasn't a laugh. Wasn't a cry. Somethin' jammed right between the two, pressed through clenched teeth, her shoulders curlin' in like her body was tryna protect her from the inside out.
"He's concussed," Rhett said flatly.
"I am not con—" I tried to lift my head and the world did a real unfriendly barrel roll. "Okay. Maybe a little."
The paramedics arrived about thirty seconds later—a guy and a gal with a stretcher. They operated with calm efficiency. They'd seen worse, no doubt. They checked my neck, my spine, shone a light in my eyes that I could've done without, and asked me questions I apparently answered well enough because nobody said the wordsurgery, which I took as aW.
"Probable concussion," the gal said, wrappin' a brace around my neck that was approximately as comfortable as wearin' a toilet seat. Rhett shot me the sametold-ya-solook I'd been gettin' from him for over two decades. "Gonna want imaging on that shoulder. You're goin' to Bozeman."
"Can I ride with the sirens on?"
Rhett pinched the bridge of his nose.
Calvin had released my hand when the paramedics moved in—stepped back, gave them room, stood a few feet away with her arms crossed and her face wiped clean. Tears dried. Shakin' stopped. She watched the medics work with clinical detachment. She spent years around rodeo injuries and knew the difference between a body in crisis and one that was gonna hurt like hell but would be fine.
The walls were goin' back up. I could see it happenin' in real time—each brick settin' into place, mortar dryin' fast. She was disappearin' behind the armor, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it from a stretcher.
