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Chelsea always picked that I was bullheaded for other reasons, but I always told her I was just headstrong and knew what I wanted… and what I wanted was her.
The truth was if the rodeo ever became too much and she asked me to quit, I would’ve in a heartbeat. I loved that woman more than I ever did the rodeo, and if there ever came a point where I was hurt, or her nerves were fried, I’d stop just so she’d be alright. Having her in the stands was what kept me on that bull… it gave me the confidence I needed to keep going, even when every joint in my hand was being ripped from its place. And when she left, it was like I lost my grip. My practice ride times got shorter and shorter, and pretty soon bulls were dropping down and bucking me off their backs in two seconds flat.
I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t grip, and I couldn’t ride.
Not after she left.
So, I stopped. I never signed up for another rodeo and reporters tracked me down for weeks trying to figure out why I wasn’t riding. Rumors flew that I’d been hurt in a practice run, and from there, stories about me having concussions and mental issues and losing fingers flew in the local tabloids. But, I kept to myself and helped take in the rough stock being retired from the rodeo, and those rough stock began to breed and have calves. Pretty soon, I had me a fresh batch of rough stock the rodeo was interested in, and when I officially established my ranch, young men soon began tracking me down and asked me if I trained riders.
I shrugged and said, “sure, why not?” And from there my rodeo business was born.
But that’s when I realized something. Yesterday was the first time since my college days that I’d stayed on the back of a bull for the entire eight seconds. I couldn’t begin to explain why I decided yesterday was the day to ride. But something in my gut told me it was time to get back in the saddle.
And Chelsea had been sitting in the stands watching.
“Shit,” I breathed before I ran my hands over my face. That woman really was my good luck charm. Sitting in the stands and cheering me on to the full eight seconds without me even knowing she’s there.
What the hell was I supposed to do? Her smell permeated my fucking trailer, and it threatened to swallow me whole while my mind sprang back to the memory of what it felt like to have her entire body on my face. How good it felt to feel the meats of her thighs against my cheeks.
I refused to let that woman take me down the way she did five years ago. I refused to lose myself in my anger and my sadness. I refused to continue to ask myself why the hell she never stayed, or what the hell I could’ve done better so she would have stayed. I was a damn good man with a damn good business, and any woman would’ve considered herself lucky to be by my side.
Every woman except the one I wanted, apparently.
Well, no more. No fucking more. I had work to do back at the ranch, and I was already late for my day. I strode over to the bathroom, threw the small door open, and squeezed myself into the shower. The first order of business was getting her tainted smell of my body, and then I needed to pull my clothes on and get on back to my animals. I had training sessions scheduled throughout the day and a pregnant heifer I was watching for a friend who was out of town for another rodeo clear across state lines.
I’d built a good life for myself, and if she didn’t want any of it, then she didn’t have to have it.
I let the hot water flow over my body and wash the remnants of her away as I ran my schedule for the day through my head.
Chapter 6: Chelsea
I had forgotten how crisp country mornings were, and the skin on my legs and arms puckered with every step I took towards my house. It was a hell of a walk, over five miles to be exact, but I’d hitched a ride to the rodeo yesterday, and I didn’t have any other way of getting back. The wind blew and kicked up the fabric of my dress, and I ran my fingers quickly through my hair in a desperate attempt to make myself look presentable. My stomach felt physically nauseous when I woke up and realized I’d overslept because I knew if my parents realized I didn’t come home last night they’d send the police force out looking for me.
But I knew I was doing to Flynn what I did all those years ago, and I didn’t know what to do.
I’d pulled my dress on over my body as silently as I could, and I went into the bathroom and wet down a washcloth before slathering some cheap soap on it. I could smell him as the crust of our juices crinkled on my leg, and I needed to clean myself up before I made the five-mile walk of shame back to my house.
Was I really ashamed?
No.
Never of Flynn.
But it was a small town, and people had a tendency to talk, and I knew rumors would start to fly, and my walk of shame would somehow wind up with me being pregnant and Flynn asking me to have a shotgun wedding just before he went to ride his bull off into the sunset. And while the idea of having children with Flynn wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to have them in Paris. He was a country boy through and through, and they didn’t need ranchers in a city like Paris.
By the time the sun began to break through the tree line, my house finally came into sight. The sprawling plantation rose above the flowers my mother kept meticulously cultivated in our front yard, and the massive trees that stood on either side of the house shaded the driveway as I tiptoed up the cement. The white house with the towering columns loomed over the town, like the beacon of a lighthouse over the treacherous shores of the sea.
My parents raised horses and bred them for the derby’s, and when they weren’t tending to breed some of the strongest race horses together, they were running summer camps for children and teenagers. When I was growing up, people came from other states to enroll their children in the camp my parents ran, but when my dad got sick, the doctor told him he had to slow down some. He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and promptly had a pacemaker put in, but he couldn’t keep up the schedule he was used to. My mother and I tried to pick up the slack as much as we could, and even Flynn jumped in for a time while we were in college to help during the summers. But the three of us couldn’t pull the weight my dad used to, and the camps had to close themselves down around the time I graduated.
My mother kept breeding and raising the horses, and my father helped her with the feed and repaired the stalls when they needed repairing, but his health was slowly deteriorating, and with that deterioration came less and less he could do. Last summer they sold the back half of their ranch to help pay the bills. Twenty-eight acres of land sold back to the city so they could cultivate more living areas for the growing community college. Granted, they still had twenty-eight acres of land between them and that construction going on, but it was the hardest decision my father ever made.
And to this day I think my mother regretted it.
I stood in the shade of the porch longer than I should have, and it wasn’t until the sun began to shine around the column that I realized I’d probably waited too late to walk in. But, I figured my parents would just now be stirring, and if I could get up the steps before they actually came out of their room downstairs, I’d still be home free and could dodge all the questions they might have. Sure, they knew I was going to the rodeo, and I’m a big girl who can stay out all night if I wanted to, but it wouldn't take them long to put two and two together once they realized Flynn “Bullheaded” Rawlings was being featured during the bull riding event.
And I wasn’t ready for the questions they were going to throw my way.
I dug out the spare key from underneath the mat and slowly slipped it into the lock. I opened the front door, and it dumped me into a high-ceiling foyer, and when I turned t
