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"Put this one on," I demanded, and then hurried back over. "J.D., you're using my rope," I told him.
"Little smaller," he realized. "Handle works both ways?"
"Yep," I promised.
Which was when Ty appeared to take the broken rope. Catching my eye over the chutes, he lifted up the severed end. Like this, one thing was very, very clear. Half of it had been cut. The line was just too clean to be a normal tear or fray.
"And someone didn't want you to make this ride," I told J.D.
He just cackled in that crazy way he had. "Yeah, well, fuck 'em," he promised.
So as soon as I got the tail of the rope, I used all that adrenaline to pull even harder. Monologue thrashed, but fuck if I was letting go. J.D. repeated the process of warming the rope, then the handle. When he was ready, I passed him the tail. As he wrapped that around his hand, I caught a little smile touch his lips, but I was already making my way back to the safe side.
Ty caught my arm, helping me down just as J.D. smacked his fingers closed. Then, in a single smooth motion, he dropped onto the bull's back, right up by his hand, and nodded. The gate swung open fast.
Monologue came out hard. The bull's front feet were almost over the chutes, and the rest of him followed. J.D. humped up, riding it like he was born there, but shifted when that much mass crashed back down to earth. He didn't seem to care. He just rode.
The bull spun to the left, which was out of J.D.'s hand, and for the first time I got to just watch. I was waiting for something else to go wrong, for my rope to give out, or for J.D. to not be able to hold on to something that tiny. He, however, didn't seem to care. The man just dragged his heels over Monologue's sides, working for bigger and then evenbiggerbucks.
"Damn," Ty breathed beside me.
I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. Like this, J.D. was a force of nature. It was as if gravity had no effect on him. The only problem was that his bull couldn't keep up. While J.D. drove that animal around the other way, taking complete control of the ride - and making it look like he was on a docile little pony instead of a one-ton animal - the bull was wearing out fast.
The rears were lower. The bucks got flatter. J.D. just kept pushing and pushing until the pyrotechnics at the back went off and the buzzer sounded. Then, he just opened his hand and my delicate little bull rope slipped right out. For one more buck, J.D. rode without even bothering to hold on, and then he hopped off the side.
Tanner rushed in. Isaac got the bull this time, turning it back. Jorge took over next, but J.D. was already skipping his way back to the chutes, completely unconcerned about the bull still out there. He was also grinning like a maniac.
"And that!" he told us, "Is how you get'er done!" But when he hopped up onto the chutes to climb back over, he paused to slap Ty's arm. "And grats. You outrode me, because that fucker needs a damned diet."
Sure enough, on the scoreboard J.D.'s score was listed as 88.50, only half a point higher than me, putting him down in third place.
Chapter21
In the end,Ty won for the night. Sitting with a healthy lead in first place, he had at least a point on the next rider down. I came out in fifth after J.D.'s ride, which wasn't too bad, in my opinion. J.D. was third. The strange thing was that when he saw what was left of his bull rope, he didn't seem to care. I would've. Shit, I would've been pissed.
J.D. simply agreed that someone must've cut it, promised he had at least a dozen more, and that it was fine. His eyes also scanned the bull riders around us as he said it. I had a feeling he knew more than he was saying. At the same time, this was J.D. If he didn't want to talk about it, I was pretty sure nothing I could say would make him.
But I was stripping out of my chaps when Tanner peeked his head into the locker room where J.D. had set us up. He ducked back out, then returned, almost as if he hadn't expected to see my ass pointed at him. Chuckling softly, Tanner sauntered the rest of the way in just to run his hand over my rump.
I sucked in a breath but didn't pull away. Nope, I kept working on the buckles holding these things to my legs until I could finally get them off. Then, tossing them onto the bench where my bag sat, I turned to face my official boyfriend.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He raked his eyes over me. "Damn, Cody. You look like a professional bull rider."
I playfully smacked his chest. "I am one."
"Yeah, and you need to stop in at sports medicine," he said, shifting closer. "Doc said tonight."
My brow wrinkled in confusion, but J.D. chuckled as if he knew exactly what Tanner was talking about. "Do it," he told me.
So I tossed my hands in the air. "Fine!"
"Also," Tanner added, "the guys are heading to this bar up the road. Guess everyone is? I thought I could ride with them since I feel like I'm blowing them off a bit."
"Go," J.D. told him. "I'll make sure she gets there."
"Or Ty," Kaleb said as he sauntered into the room. "I wouldn't let that asshole near my girl if I was you, Tanner."
