Page 128 of The Wildest Ride

Fortunately, he had a room to himself and a free afternoon ahead of him. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but there was relief in his future.

He’d planted the last seed with Lil. Now to wait and see if it sprouted.

36

While a woman dressed in all black rubbed Vaseline on her teeth, Lil wondered how she’d come to this place in her life.

She’d slept like garbage the night before but was dressed in her finest—the clothes she would wear for the finale. She’d braided her hair with immaculate precision that morning and it showed. A single thick braid began at her hairline and trailed along the central line of her skull and down her neck and back like an exposed spine. She’d freshened her undercut, shaving in a double lightning bolt on either side, in the process.

There were dark circles under her eyes, but they weren’t puffy anymore. She hadn’t cried last night, awake or in her sleep. AJ’s kiss had had her tossing and turning for other reasons, but she’d taken that gratefully over the alternative—especially the night before press day.

The Vaseline forced her smile wider and she turned on cue as the team shot her from multiple angles.

“Such delicate bones!” a woman with a white-blond pixie cut exclaimed.

“You’d never guess she was a rodeo star,” a bombshell redhead with shoulder-length hair said.

Everyone in the room wore black. The production team sported various combinations of boatneck tops, ballet flats, plain T-shirts, and jeans—all in black. Lil did too, but made it look Western, wearing black boots, Wranglers, and a button-up beneath her granddad’s vest.

They’d lost their minds when they’d seen it.

“This is definitely going to be the theme!”

“The whole thing! All around this!”

“Grab my blue pallet, Kelly!”

“Seriously, fabulous!”

Lil’d stammered thank-yousin reply, tried to get it out there that it was her gran’s work, and then followed the instructions they began shouting out at her.

“What fascinating eyes you have,” a woman with a sharp short black bob said as she powdered her face.

Lil grimaced, knowing now they were her father’s eyes, but mumbled, “Thank you,” by reflex.

Another woman shouted, “Keep your mouth open, please!” though, so she stopped trying to respond at all.

Which left her alone in her mind to dwell on AJ. The same thing she’d had far too much time to do recently.

She’d arrived in Vegas a sweating mess, questioning her instincts in ways she never had.

Her entire life was evidence of the truth: cowboys disappeared. Even if they said they loved you. Both things could be true.

Her body told a different story. One she knew better than to pay any attention to. His kiss sure knew how to linger. It was the thought that her mind most wanted to jump to whenever she stopped being vigilant.

Her body was tricky. It would sneak into it, creating brand-new pathways with each guerrilla attack. It might start as a phantom tingle across her lips and the memory of the pressure of his against hers. The next time it would be her breath catching, nipples hardening while her chest went heavy and sensitive at the memory of the way he’d stepped into her space. Once she’d wrangled it again, it’d return as something different yet again, a flavor on her tongue, a memory of the times before the kiss, times they’d gone further and he’d set her on fire from the inside out.

But she knew what happened to women who listened to their bodies. They died, abandoned in roadside motels, with only their mothers to identify them. And those men raised other children.

So she wouldn’t bend. Not when everything was at stake.

Following makeup, the day passed in a blur of videos, photo shoots, and the sponsor’s dinner.

Lil avoided both AJ and Hank wherever possible, allowing herself to be corralled with the two of them only for obligatorytop threephotos. She smiled until her face hurt, sad the Vaseline was no longer there to force a smile for her.

At the end of the day, she hung her clothes up to wear again for the real deal the next day, and crawled into bed feeling painted on and sucked dry.

She woke up once, blamed it on AJ and forced herself back into a fitful sleep for the rest of the night.