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t of the trailer, so I planted my feet on the floor and walked the small span of the encasement. I checked the bathroom to see if she was cleaning up, and I even peeked around into the kitchen to see if she was eating a bowl of cereal on the couch, and when I realized she was actually gone, all I could do was rear my foot back and kick the table.
I was an idiot to think she had sought me out to reconcile. With her big doe eyes and her wispy blonde hair, my body was fucking weak to her. When she sat on my couch and started crying, I thought she wanted to fix things. To try again and see if we couldn’t figure something out. It was obvious she had been nervous and distraught… but was all that just an act? If it was, why the hell did she come here in the first place!? Just for some sex!? Chelsea was beautiful, she could get that shit anywhere.
And anyway, she wasn’t that kind of girl… and even though it had been five years since college, I refused to think she’d turned into that kind of girl. Whatever she’d been doing and wherever she’d been doing it, I wasn’t about to think she’d just put on an act to get it in with someone.
Chelsea August was the love of my life, and when I ripped that trailer door open yesterday, I realized I’d never stopped loving her. Seeing her standing there in that pale-yellow dress with her beautiful honey hair wrapping around her neck, my heart fluttered the same way it did when I first laid eyes on her on that college courtyard. And she had been so supportive of my bull riding. Yeah, sure, she worried over whether or not I’d get hurt, but what woman doesn’t? Her worry didn’t keep her from sitting in the stands and watching, and every single time she was in the stands I stayed on the entire eight seconds.
Every rodeo. Every bull, practice run or professional run, if she was there, I stayed on. It was like she was my good luck charm; the magnet that kept my ass attached to that damn saddle. It was incredible, and everyone around me thought so. They called me unbeatable and told me it took a bull to ride a bull. Soon, the nickname stuck, and I was being called Flynn “Bullheaded” Rawlings.
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.
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.
