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Present Day
The bull he’d gotten on the night before wasn’t just a rank bucker, he was mean as all get-out. There wasn’t anywhere on his body that Bullet didn’t hurt.
His ribs still ached from getting under one a few months ago, and if the weather was cold, it hurt to breathe. His twenty-five-year-old body felt more as though it was forty, or sixty.
It didn’t help that he was back in Oklahoma, or that he’d gotten drunk the night before simply because he didn’t want to face the shitstorm his life was becoming. Maybe that’s why his body hurt so badly; because it was being pulled in so many directions.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in Colorado, living his dream. Instead, he’d gotten another call from his mother-in-law, telling him to get “home” because his baby needed him. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the same message from her, and each time, he felt worse than the time before, because it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
They were supposed to be a family. Every few weeks, he and his wife would try to work things out between them. Each time, it ended worse than the previous.
The last one had been so bad he knew there wouldn’t be a next time. As he held his baby boy in his arms, the child’s mother had attacked him. And she’d done it in front of her entire family.
She was sick—bipolar disorder. If she’d just take her medicine, none of this would happen. But she refused. The slightest thing could set her off, and he never knew what, or when, it would be.
Last night, when he heard the local stock contractor was bucking bulls, he knew he had to get on one. Had to. Riding bulls was in his blood. He thought about it all the time, even dreamed about it.
His sister called it “adrenaline addiction,” but it wasn’t criticism. She was the only one in his family who understood. Even though Lyric had never tried to ride a bull, or a bronc, or even barrel raced, no one understood rodeo better.
She was the founder of RodeoChat, a social-media-based outlet for rodeo news. Lyric managed to keep her finger on the pulse of rodeo around the world. She knew the schedules, statistics, and habits of the cowboys and cowgirls who competed across the field in every event. Since its founding, Lyric had interviewed hundreds of them for her weekly Twitterviews and YouTube videos.
That’s why she understood. When he’d tried to explain how he felt to their parents, Lyric had backed him up. In fact, she’d compared it to their dad’s life.
“You know how it feels,” she’d told him, “to be on stage, in front of thousands of people. It’s the same thing for Bullet, just a different thing drivin’ it.”
As the lead singer of Satin, one of the most successful international heavy metal rock bands, Nate Simmons was no stranger to adrenaline addiction.
“Thousands of people aren’t threatening to kill me when I’m on stage, that’s the difference,” his dad had countered Lyric’s argument.
His father wasn’t wrong. Every time Bullet got on the back of a bull, he knew he could die. It was that simple. Eight seconds. That’s what it took. If he could stay on the back of the bull for eight seconds, he’d conquer both the beast and himself.
His mother shook her head, that day, and looked between him and his father. “Neither of you will ever grow up.”
“It’s why you love me so much, isn’t it, Guinevere?”
Bullet envied his parents’ relationship. It was as if they were still dating, even though they’d been married for over thirty years, a rarity in the music industry.
It hurt to roll over, but he needed to charge his phone and see how many messages his soon-to-be-ex-wife left him. It was early; maybe there wouldn’t be any yet this morning.
Oh, Jesus, it was worse than he thought. There were ten calls from his mother-in-law. What the hell? The woman was becoming a pain in his ass.
He checked his texts, without listening to her voice messages, and saw there were at least twice as many of those. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus enough to read, but his head was pounding like a damn jackhammer. How much had he drank last night?
He didn’t read through all of them; it wasn’t necessary. The last one she’d sent was the only one that mattered.
Callie in ICU at Mount Mercy GET HERE.
Bullet listened to the messages from his mother-in-law, but it was hard to get anything more out of them other than Callie was in the hospital, and he needed to get there right away.
It took him less than five minutes to throw his gear in a bag and get on the road. It was an hour’s drive to get to the hospital, which wasn’t far from where Callie’s pa
rents lived. Right now, though, all he could think about was where his son was. Callie’s mother didn’t mention Grey in her messages. He called his grandmother, the woman who raised him and his sister while their parents were on the road, with the band. She didn’t live far from Callie’s parents. Maybe she’d know.
“Hey, Gram—”
“Oh, Bullet, I’m so glad you called. Callie’s parents have been tryin’ to get in touch with you. Something awful’s happened—”
“I know. I’m on my way to the hospital right now.”
