Page 18 of Saving the Rain (Crimson Ridge #4)

A nother ten minutes and we’ll be arriving at today’s competition venue. This is part of our home rodeo circuit, and provides one of the best opportunities for the likes of Chaos and myself to enter and not have to spend a crap load of time or money on travel.

No one tells you when you first get into rodeo that some of your biggest lessons will come in the form of boring shit like budgeting.

Learning how to manage your expenses, particularly in the early days—what gear to borrow rather than buy outright, what essentials you need to invest in owning yourself—and how to balance entering events with the goal of winning prize money while still working.

It’s all well and good for those who break into the top of the top.

When you’re finally breathing the rarified air of arenas where life-changing cash waits on the table every time you exit the bucking chute.

But the reality for cowboys like us is that we’re laying everything on the line during an eight-second ride, all while doing our best to stack events back to back where possible.

A simple, but effective way to avoid the inevitable red line of expenses creeping higher.

That’s why Chaos and I will share a vehicle, split fuel, and buddy up as much as possible.

It makes doing this financially viable, whereas if you’re doing it alone, you’ve gotta have deep pockets to line that path .

Guys like me certainly don’t have that at our disposal.

That’s probably one reason why it stung even deeper when I first got started and knew that Raine was in the position where we could have done this together. We were competing at the same events, entering at the same time, traveling to and from the same location.

Yet, the asshole didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

My knee bounces as Chaos drums his fingers on the wheel.

We know each other’s routines inside out and upside down these days.

Once we get close to the arena like this, our focus starts to dial in.

Minute by minute, the belt cinches tighter on our thoughts and words, and even though we might have spent several hours talking shit while driving—this is where it gets serious.

We might be friends, but we also know the competition is fierce. Ultimately, one of us is going to walk away today a winner, while the other won’t get so lucky.

It pushes the two of us. Professional athletes say it time and time again, that they’re only as successful as their opposition drives them to be during their careers.

The greats are made that way by the fires they go through in order to climb to the top.

I’m thankful to have him by my side, forcing me to be better at every turn.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and I flip it over, expecting to see a message from Brad or the competition organizers. Instead, this particular text is the last fucking thing I need right now.

Not at this moment. Goddamn it. Could she not hold her shit together for one lousy day?

Mom:

Kayce, I’m begging. Darling, please, just this last time.

I’ve tried everything to get hold of you.

My blood runs cold as those words pop up.

I should have blocked her number years ago, but if I don’t pick up her messages, who the fuck will?

Can I walk away from the woman who is legally my parent?

My blood? Even if, at this point in life, I’m the one who always feels the pressure of bearing sole responsibility for taking care of her?

She’s a teen mom who never grew up. Stuck in a time loop. Someone who never matured past being a pregnant seventeen-year-old.

As much as it makes my jaw clench and thumb itch to delete her messages immediately, could I live with myself if I found out the worst had happened to her... again?

I raise my chin to watch the world fly by out the window, not wanting to disturb Chaos from getting into his zone for the event. He doesn’t need me unloading decades of childhood misery where my mother and her addiction is concerned.

Maybe it’s because everything feels so freshly reopened, like a wound that has been picked at and left bleeding freely, with all that has been going on lately, but my head starts spinning.

All the shitty decisions I’ve had to make, some out of desperate necessity, and some out of just being a drunk asshole which only exacerbated the problem.

Either way, reality slams into me like a brutal, icy front: My mom has gotten herself into deep shit.

Once more, she’s relying on me to solve her problems for her.

I knew it the moment all those missed calls and messages started popping up.

Deny it as I might, it had already crawled into my awareness on spindly legs.

The grim truth was right there, and yet I tried to ignore it, because thinking back on the last time I bailed her out dredges up a whole shipwreck of the worst kinds of memories.

Ones that I’d gladly leave trashed at the bottom of the ocean rather than have to revisit all over again.

One particular memory is so visceral, it bursts in as soon as I open the door a crack. I’m back there in a flash, hearing the asshole’s voice down the phone—rough and thick with the type of menace men like him live and breathe.

“She owes us money,” he drawls.

“Yeah, well, my mom has never been responsible. So why lend her anything in the first place?” I swallow heavily.

How they got my number is the least of my concerns right now.

I’ve got the kind of man who you don’t want to ever be receiving a phone call from currently on the other end of the line, telling me that my mom has racked up debts she can’t pay off.

“We don’t care much for what folks can, or can’t, afford.”

Yeah, that much I already assumed without him spelling it out for me .

“How long does she have... how long to get the money to you?” In my head, I’m busy calculating how many days it will take me to get my ass back to the Midwest. It seemed like the best decision to move out, and keep away from her drama.

Yet, here I am, with the bill for her addiction now coming due.

A terse conversation that most certainly isn’t a social call or friendly chit-chat.

“Put it this way, kid...” He sucks air through his teeth and makes a wet, smacking noise with his mouth. “Your mother is already far beyond any leniency period we might consider extending.”

Fuck. I slam my eyes closed. Heart leaping into the back of my throat.

“That’s a nice-looking ride you’ve got parked up on main,” he drags out the words.

This asshole thinks he can threaten me? Presumably, with the intent of sending guys to jump me as I make my way back to my piece of shit car?

He obviously wants me well aware that he knows how to get to me, just as easily as my mom.

I don’t care about taking a beating. My body has been through hell in rodeo, but what I can’t bear is the thought of walking into her shitty apartment and finding her with a black eye, or worse.

Even if it is from her own terrible choices; her constant refusal to get help.

“How much?” I grunt.

“Five large.”

My stomach drops straight to my boots. There’s no way in hell I can find that kind of money in the kind of timeframe he’s demanding.

Even with what I’ve got saved, and competing at the next run of events I’m due to ride in.

I could take out top placing in each rodeo back-to-back, and I’d still be scraping to pull together that much cash.

“I’ll have it for you. Promise. Just... leave her the fuck alone, man.”

“You’re a good boy, Kayce Wilder.” He chuckles into the phone. “Don’t make me eat my words.” With that, the line goes dead.

Inside my chest, my heart is damn well pounding, remembering how slimy his voice was.

A faceless, nameless prick. The lies I had to tell to get hold of that money overnight left me numb, doubled over, hugging the toilet bowl.

Scrambling to put a loan with a finance company in my ex’s name, just to get enough desperate cash at short notice will go down as one of the worst days of my life.

I went out that night and got trashed as soon as the debt had been paid off. Pretty sure I wasn’t sober for weeks on end. A spiral of self-destruction that caused more damage than just being a loser to my ex-girlfriend. It cost me every sponsor. I lost my spot on the tour to boot.

As we pull into the parking lot, I would ordinarily be hyper focused.

My brain should be dialed in, lasered in preparations for the event.

All that is supposed to occupy my mind’s eye are the visualizations I’ve spent so much time running over in the build-up to this exact moment.

Everything I’m meant to be walking through to get my head on straight after our most recent training day, and a ride that felt so goddamn good I could taste the victory.

My upcoming win. Tuned the fuck into my preparations. That’s how immersed and centered every cell needs to be right this second. The feeling I’m counting on to be staunchly set in my damn bones.

Instead, I’m drowning in harrowing memories.

The yelling. Her wailing. Shouting down the phone at my mom with a half-empty bottle of vodka in one hand.

Telling her to sort herself out, and that if she doesn’t, I’ll goddamn well inform Colton Wilder of everything she’s done as a willfully neglectful parent to ruin my life.

Heat stings the back of my eyes, and I can hear echoes of her pathetic sobbing. I’m sorry honey, I wasn’t in my right mind. I don’t remember doing that. Followed by the denial. You’re a foul little shit, making up lies about your own momma.