Page 34 of Josephine and Clay

The bull keeps coming, each move meaner than the last, twisting and kicking with the kind of spite that makes it feel personal. My hand burns around the rope. My lungs start working harder. Every part of me is locked into the motion, riding ahead where I can, chasing where I have to.

You don’t conquer a bull in this way. Anybody who says otherwise either hasn’t ridden enough or has been hit in the head one too many times. There’s no taming him and no winning in any lasting way. There’s only hanging on long enough to make the madness belong to you.

He drops his head and leaps again, back legs snapping up so high it pitches me forward hard. My free hand reaches out, searching for balance while my body fights to stay loose enough to move and tight enough to survive.

The crowd comes back to me in fragments. A roar. Somebody screaming my name. The announcer’s voice turned into a blur under all of it. I can hear it, but it sounds far off; it belongs to another life entirely. The bull spins again and this time I nearly lose my hand.

The rope slides hot and vicious through my glove, enough to send panic flashing bright and fast through my chest. My grip catches at the last second, fingers locking down tighter, pain slicing through my palm as punishment for getting sloppy. He twists under me, surging sideways, and I feel the whole ride tilt toward disaster.

For one brutal moment I’m nowhere near centered. I’m riding the outside of it, body dragged too far, one bad buck away from being flung into open dirt.

I force my weight back over him with everything I’ve got. My core tightens so hard it shakes. My boots dig. My shoulder screams. The bull kicks again, and the correction lands all at once. I slide back into place by inches.

The relief is so sharp it’s almost another hit.

No room to enjoy it, though.

He’s still trying to kill me.

The pressure builds in my legs, deep and hot. My lungs burn. Sweat slides down the side of my face and into my collar. Every second stretches out wider than it should, packed full of movement and danger and the kind of ugly focus that leaves no space for anything else.

Not Buckhorn or my brothers. Not the look on Mom’s face when I leave town again. Not the noise in my chest I can never quite outrun once the rides are done.

Just this.

The buzzer sounds, and I let go instantly, pushing off hard and hitting the dirt shoulder first before rolling through it. The world goes brown and rough around the edges, then clears as I come up to one knee with my hat half off and my heart punching so hard against my ribs it might split them.

The bull wheels back, pissed and still hunting for me, but the barrel man slides in and draws him off just in time. He tears away in a storm of muscle and dust, and just like that the danger belongs to somebody else.

I push to my feet.

The crowd hits me all at once then, loud enough to rattle the sky. A roar rolling over the arena in a wave of heat and sound that soaks straight into my skin. That kind of noise never gets old. Doesn’t matter how many towns I ride in, how many bars I stumble through afterward, how many buckles and bruises I stack up trying to fill whatever hole this life keeps opening in me.

That noise still reaches me.

I grab my hat properly, slap the dirt from it against my thigh, and set it back on my head before tipping the brim toward the stands. It’s half habit, half gratitude, and maybe a little bit of showing off too.

No shame in that.

I earned it.

Back behind the chutes, men clap my shoulders and shove a beer into my hand before I’m fully clear of the gate.

“Thought he had you there,” one of the stock guys says.

“He almost did,” I answer, still dragging air into my lungs.

“Hell of a save.”

I take a long pull from the bottle, cold burn sliding down easy while adrenaline still pounds through me. My hand aches. My shoulder might as well be shattered. My thighs are going to hate me tomorrow.

Worth it.

The scoreboard updates across the arena.

Ninety.

A whistle breaks out somewhere behind me, followed by laughter and a slap to the back hard enough to jolt me forward.