Page 3 of Maverick (The Bull Riders #3)

I’m not cash-rich, and I’m not being bankrolled by my parents.

I have some decent winnings, but I used them to get myself a little house, and I’m trying to pay my way to more events and pay to board my horse.

But still, playing poker seems like a normal thing to do, because I used to do it all the time with the guys, and Colt and Dallas to wind down after events.

I feel like it’s been on pause because of Colt.

I feel Maverick’s gaze on my face. I look up at him, and he tips his black hat. “See you tonight, Stella.”

He knows my name. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say it before. In fact, I’m sure that I haven’t. I mostly keep my interactions with him to a minimum. That’s called self-preservation.

Whatever the… Attraction that I have for him is, it’s not healthy. And I don’t need to encourage it. It’s one thing to look at him from across a crowded space, and it’s quite another to actually interact with him.

He doesn’t tip his hat or do any of the other gentlemanly-type things that Holt or Cade do when they walk away. He just looks at me, a little bit too long, and I feel my whole body shiver.

The truth is, even though he makes my imagination run wild, I don’t have any sexual experience. And he exudes sex. Danger and sex, and something about the combination just gets me.

I’m not sure what I did wrong to link the two.

This is the real problem. I was hanging out with two of the hottest guys on the circuit, and I didn’t want either of them.

I was open to it, I thought maybe… If it wouldn’t ruin the friendship, I could possibly get a little bit of sexual experience with one of them, because I trusted them.

Now Colt is injured, and Dallas is happily paired up with the love of his life, and…

I’m stuck here. One sad virgin.

It never bothered me until recently. I’m pissed off that Harmony’s engagement has compounded it, that it’s making me obsess over what I don’t have. But I guess it’s that feeling of treading water. Of realizing that I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I still haven’t achieved…

It’s silly, and I know that. I know that I have a lot of time, it just doesn’t feel like it.

My parents had me in equestrian sports from the time I learned to walk.

Achievement has been my entire life. Breaking off and doing the rodeo was me being angry.

I always intended to get back on the Olympic track.

I always intended to have a life. One that includes men and sex and relationships.

But I’m just sort of drowning in the passing years, and maybe it’s existential dread after watching one of my best friends practically get disemboweled in the arena. But whatever the reason, it feels a whole lot more intense than normal.

And I’m not a fan.

I’ve never been good at sitting still and feeling my feelings.

I like to do things. And sometimes I get heedless.

Reckless. Witness my entire side quest into barrel racing.

That followed one completely blistering fight with my parents after they scouted an amazing horse for my sister and sent her to Switzerland to train, while I was left to my own devices.

And there was no explanation for that, beyond the fact that they seem to believe in her talent more than they believe in mine.

Maybe it’s fair, maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s something about her skill that I can’t see. My own bias about my own abilities. I don’t know.

But none of us covered ourselves in glory after that last blow-up.

They said that it’s because I’m impulsive – they aren’t wrong. That my focus is only dialed in sometimes, not all the time, and that I switch up too often, and I know that’s true, too. That’s one of my problems. When something obsesses me, there’s nothing else.

Then when I get bored it’s hard for me to keep going, and for me, bored comes with being too good at something sometimes.

But I kept up with my dressage.

Of course, I threw myself into barrel racing with more intensity than I’d focused on my dressage in a long while, because it was new, and part of me wonders if my disillusionment with it now has to do with not having more external markers of improvement to make.

I have won a championship, after all.

I do speak to my parents.

I go home for the holidays, for birthdays. I visit during the off-season, but it has never been the same.

Not since I screamed about all the things that had been festering inside of me for all those years.

Not since I told them exactly how I feel.

Exactly .

Honesty can cut pretty deep sometimes. And I’m not even sure if it was entirely fair honesty. It was brutal.

And now I need to pull my head out of my rear and get ready for the ride tonight.

So I do. I do some trial runs around the arena.

I always try to strike a balance between being warmed up and being tired.

I definitely don’t want to wear out Cloud Dancing or myself.

And by the time the rodeo is about to begin for the night, I feel ready.

I’ll be third tonight, and I feel extra antsy for some reason. Like there’s an electrical current under my skin.

I wait. And wait for my turn.

And when it finally comes, I’m ready. Though I feel a bit more edgy and reckless than usual.

And I can feel the same kind of energy radiating off of Cloud Dancing.

It’s the thing I love about equestrian sports.

You can be good, but you also have to be one with your horse.

You have to work together. You’re a pair.

You work together as a team. And I can feel that it’s not just me who isn’t totally ready tonight. I wish I knew why.

Maybe she is picking up on my issues. Which I really don’t like. I don’t want to be the cause of her jumpy behavior.

We move up to the open gate and wait.

I let out a long, slow breath, and then, I urge her forward.

We’re off like lightning. Fast. Turning sharply around the first barrel, I feel her hooves uncertain beneath her.

I try to regain my balance in time to go around the next barrel, but we’re still off-kilter, and that’s when her body clangs against the side of the barrel, and it falls over into the dust. I haven’t dropped a barrel in years.

My stomach sinks, and I feel ill.

I’m not going to win.

I’m not even going to be in the top five. The level of competition this year is wild. Far beyond other years, and I just messed up.

And I know it’s one of those things that just happens.

I know that sometimes it’s a combination of factors.

The way the dirt is, the way that you’re sitting on your horse, your horse’s footing.

And that it’s hard to even adjust at this stage, because it’s not usually a skill issue.

But I still feel like it is. And I have to finish out the round knowing that I’ve royally messed up.

The five-second penalty puts my ride at a time that I haven’t had since I was brand-new.

I grit my teeth in fury and frustration. I can’t bear to watch the rest of the event. I haven’t been able to watch the bull riders since Colt’s accident anyway. But usually I stay and watch the other events.

I consider blowing off the poker game. At this point, it feels reasonable. But…

I move over to the trailer, and retrieve my tack, before taking Cloud Dancing over to the stall that she’s going to sleep in tonight.

My plan has been to bunk in the trailer – it has sleeping quarters in it, something else that I bought for myself with my winnings.

Extravagant, but I do love to have it, because it keeps me from having to get a hotel every time I travel.

But it’s starting to get a little bit old. Everything is starting to feel a little bit old. My mood is sour.

No middle ground about it.

I lead Cloud Dancing over to the wash station, and there he is, leaning against the wall. I see the end of his cigarette lit up in the darkness.

“Are you trying to be the Marlboro Man, complete with lung cancer?”

He lifts his head, and I see a glint in his eyes. He takes a drag on the cigarette, and a cloud of smoke spirals through the air. “Anything can kill you. Pick your poison, I guess.”

“That’s grim,” I say.

“Life is grim.”

“Well, it also smells. So, there’s that.” I lead Cloud Dancing into the wash space and tether her to the peg. Then I grab my wash hose and start spraying her down.

“I am very concerned about what you think about me.” His voice is dry. Sardonic, and I’m quite certain he doesn’t care at all.

There’s something about him right then, all dark and rangy and mysterious, and I want to move closer to him, not run away.

Like a big cat in a zoo that you can’t look away from because you know it might eat you.

That reckless electricity under my skin feels dangerous tonight. I lost tonight, and that’s only making it worse. I need a hit of something, something new, a win.

Everything feels grim and dire and pointless.

Everything feels like I’ve done it before.

I’m sinking into the morass of my own sameness.

I hate it. This is the thing my parents called out directly.

The kind of thing that saw me trying to learn how to jump a horse on my own at seven (I didn’t die, even if I did fall off).

The kind of thing that saw me cutting up all my mom’s old photos without permission to make a (very bad) scrapbook.

The kind of thing that sent me off to the rodeo in a fury, and straight to a championship, and now I need something new. Something else.

Our eyes meet, and I feel a tug of desire in my stomach. I could kiss him.

I could just close the distance between us and taste the nicotine on his lips, even though I want his mouth and not the smoke – but I suspect with him, you don’t get to choose.

What would that be like? All that good, bad, and danger aimed fully at me. Hands on my hips, mouth against mine…