Page 75 of The Wildest Ride

He laughed. “Are we making a wager?”

“Absolutely not.”

“If I win...” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“You know you can’t win. It’s in my blood.”

The most decorated rodeo champion in the world laughed. “On both sides, it sounds like.”

She paused as if she really hadn’t thought of it that way.

“You really don’t daydream about your cowboy daddy?” he asked, the surprise in his voice genuine.

Looking away with a shrug, Lil projected forced nonchalance. “Only in the same way you think about what happens after you die. I gave up thinking I might find the answer one day. There are a lot of cowboys out there in the world. It gets exhausting searching faces and wondering.” Her voice was weary but not sad when she finished, and she had turned back to him, smiling with a new determination in her expression. “Now you know more of my dirty laundry. It’s time for you to do a little airin’ yourself. Tell me about your people.”

AJ shrugged with a grin, keeping it simple. “I grew up in Houston. Joined CityBoyz when I was twelve and have been chasing rodeo ever since. That’s all there is to it.”

“There’s more to the story than that.”

“Not really. It’s been a pretty straightforward path for me.” He kept his grin in place, but behind it, he fought the rising urge to actually tell her his life story, as if genuinely opening up was something he did with other people.

Some of it slipped out anyway, the words leaving his mouth without his permission. “My mom still lives in Houston, but I bought her a house in Piney Point.” He heard the boast for what it was, but it was something he’d never not be proud of. Buying his mom a house was making it, as far as he was concerned.

“You’ve made a lot in prize money?” she asked.

“I have. Made even more through investments.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave him a look that said she’d seen his kind before. “So why didn’t you just fund the program, then? Sounds like you could have carried it.”

“The Old Man wouldn’t take my money.”

She snorted. “Make it an anonymous donation.”

AJ scoffed. Did she think he’d been born yesterday? Or that The Old Man had been for that matter? “He’d know.”

“So instead this was your plan?”

“He can’t refuse his own money.”

Lil laughed and the sound skipped through his system.

In the dancing firelight, the skin of her face and neck was buttery smooth. It glowed from a light from within, as if a small personal sun powered her core. The way she was willing to take anything and everything on, he half believed one did.

She could ride and she knew her way around a nonprofit. She really would have been a great asset to CityBoyz. His instincts hadn’t failed him on that point. That they aberrantly continued to egg him on, pressing him to pursue her despite the fact that their lives were going in different directions, stood out only more for its contrast.

“We should turn in,” he said. “We’ve got an early morning and a long day ahead of us.” He stood as he spoke, scanning for the most even patch of ground around the fire. Beside him, Lil nodded and came to her feet as well, but he waved her away. Surprisingly, she accepted his brush-off with ease, wandered off on her own, probably to pee, with only a faint stiffness to her step.

The Closed Circuit had packed them both three-season rectangular sleeping bags that rolled up into the size of a small pillow.

Rather than lay them side by side, though, he unrolled and unzipped them and then zipped them together to make one large sleeping bag. She wasn’t going to like it, but staying toasty warm through the night was the only way her body was going to have the resources to make up for their lost time tomorrow.

21

“We’re not sleeping like that.” Lil was proud of how steady and no-nonsense her voice came out. It certainly didn’t match anything going on inside.

The fool had gone and zipped their sleeping bags together.

She stood beside him, staring down at the bags.