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“I don’t want to do that anymore, to be clear.” She looks away like she’s embarrassed. “I’m too old to start something like that. A lot of these women who are already elite at barrel racing are in their teens.”

“What if you didn’t need prize money to make it worthwhile? What if you could just do it because you loved it?”

“That’s not a thing in my world. It has to have a point and a purpose to it, it has to earn something or I can’t do it.”

But not our games. She doesn’t say that, but I feel the weight of it then. For a few hours she gets to just be. She doesn’t need to be productive. She doesn’t need to make a difference or earn money or justify her existence.

She’s just mine.

I suddenly feel like I want that to be more. To go deeper. Farther.

I think she does the thing that everybody wants her to do because she doesn’t want to let her dad down. Because she’s scared of what will happen if she doesn’t show up and do exactly what’s expected of her.

I want to know everything about her. I want to break her open and get inside her. It’s the oddest fucking impulse. I want more than we have. I want more than I’ve ever had from anybody.

“What would you be if you could be anything?” she asks me.

“A cowboy. That’s kind of what I’m gearing up to do.”

“Really?”

“I’m stepping down. As the CEO of my company. I’m going to remain a majority shareholder, but I’m not going to be part of the day-to-day running anymore. I don’t want to do it. I don’t care about it. It made me a fuckton of money, but it doesn’t make me happy.”

“What will make you happy?”

Well, didn’t she drill down right into the heart of all my issues.

“I don’t know if anything will. But this is close.” I pause. “If you didn’t have to worry about anything, what would you do?”

She looks up toward the sky. “I guess I would travel a little bit. See some of the rest of this planet. I don’t know, I think back when I had dreams the thing that appealed to me about that was experiencing things I hadn’t before.”

“And the rodeo?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I would, why not? If we’re just dreaming, let’s throw that on there too.”

But she can’t. She can’t because she feels like she has to keep everything going. She can’t because she feels like she has to earn everybody’s love and affection. Already lost her mom’s.

“You dumping your boyfriend was the best thing you’ve done, you know?”

She looks at me, scrunching her nose up. “Is it?”

“You did it for yourself. You didn’t worry about preserving his feelings. Or keeping him with you.”

She laughs. “I guess that says a lot about what I think about him. Because usually, I can’t do that. You’re right.”

“You’ve never been shy about letting me know what you think either. You know, I think the night that you came to set my barn on fire was maybe the most real you’ve ever been.”

It’s true. She was just following her own feelings. Her own passion. And I think I want more of that.

I want to get her there. Where she’s not just trying to please everyone else. She needs to be pushed. I know that.

And I’m in the perfect position to do it.

“Stay with me again tonight,” I say.

“Oh I don’t… I shouldn’t do that. Eventually I need to go home.”

“Why?”