Page 6 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

WILD FIELDS

If you’re ready to take your adventure past Bravetown’s borders, why not visit our charming neighbors in Wild Fields? Take a walk around the lush town square with its historic gazebo, and dip into the surrounding cafés and restaurants for a refreshing taste of modern American small-town living.

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“Bart’s Mart doesn’t take cards?”

“By George, she’s got it.” Adriana grinned and pushed her sunglasses up to her head.

They did little to keep her wild blonde mane at bay.

“There’s an ATM around the corner. Casey’s Supermarket does take cards, but for some reason there’s never any bathroom stuff.

There are shelves for toothpaste and shampoo and all that, all right, it’s just never in stock. ”

She had parked the car on a corner of Wild Fields’ town square, from where we had a perfect view of both supermarkets. They each occupied a corner of the square, and I couldn’t help but imagine a diagonally opposed turf war that cost them their credit card readers and toothpaste stock .

“ATM and Bart’s it is,” I said. “I do need toothpaste.”

Adriana led the way. Her long skirt flowed in the breeze, creating a perfect carefree image paired with her cream crochet top and dozens of necklaces and rings.

She pointed out the side of the square where three restaurants and two cafés lined up, and called it the food mile, even though it was definitely not a mile.

Everything in Wild Fields looked shrunk.

All the buildings were close to the ground.

The tallest ones we walked past were three stories high.

And with everything built so low, there was just So.

Much. Sky. Everywhere. No matter where I turned, I could see the horizon and, above it, miles and miles of emptiness.

I kept staring at all that blue and the streaks of cloud.

Driving across country and having all that sky above the road and the rolling hills in the distance was one thing, but this whole town was topped by azure.

Adriana had to grab my elbow and pull me in the right direction, or I would have walked right past Bart’s Mart.

I’d only taken fifty bucks out of my account, because there wasn’t much more in there in the first place, but walking the aisles with Adriana soured my stomach.

Those fifty would be a tight stretch across two weeks.

Who knew that cereal was this expensive?

God, I’d have to use the rest of my Moroccanoil shampoo in droplets for the rest of the summer if I considered that cost.

“You look a little pale,” Adriana mumbled through a mouthful of M&Ms while we were checking out and the number on the cash register kept climbing and climbing.

“I’m going to sound dumb, but I’ve never bought my own groceries,” I replied, and tried to smile at the lady behind the register who silently raised her brows at me. She’d started scowling the second Adriana had stepped up to pay and hadn’t stopped since.

“Awww, I popped your cherry,” Adriana laughed and made the cashier’s frown deepen.

“You could have bought me dinner first, you know?”

“Gosh, you’re high-maintenance.” She playfully rolled her eyes at me. “Back in my day, it was a beer on the front porch and then you hopped in the car together.”

The cashier cleared her throat.

“To go grocery shopping together for the first time,” Adriana clarified with a grin that betrayed her blatant lie.

I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. At least having her here made it easier to stomach the $43.68 I had to put down for a bagful of bare necessities. And that was with the 5 per cent staff discount I got for wearing my Bravetown employee polo shirt.

“You weren’t kidding about nobody liking you, huh?” I asked as I buckled my precious groceries into her backseat.

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “But it’s fine. I still like Wild Fields and everyone who lives here. They’ll fall back in love with me sooner or later. I just have to get them all drunk first.”

She’d told me that she’d left when she was nineteen and only returned a few months ago, but I hadn’t gotten the story last night, and it didn’t look like I was getting it now. “Where did you learn how to bartend?”

“Nashville.”

“You don’t like talking about yourself, do you?”

“Nope.”

We fell back into her car, and Adriana drove down a few streets branching off the town square, where she pointed out City Hall, the local dive bar, a books-and-plants-and-gifts shop, and a hair salon to avoid at all costs unless I wanted to walk out bleach-blonde.

“Okay, tell me about Bravetown,” I said when we were done with the Wild Fields tour after all of ten minutes. “I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to Sinan’s stories over the last four years.”

“We can talk about you if you want.”

“Nope.” I chuckled as I threw her response back at her.

I didn’t think she’d be the kind of person to throw shade at me, but I’d gotten plenty last night and didn’t care to repeat that.

I was just going to ignore Noah Young’s presence.

He no longer existed in my world. I was manifesting a blissfully dreamy summer where opinionated, controlling, gossiping assholes had no air to breathe.

“Fine,” she smirked. “The most important thing for you to remember about Bravetown is that it belongs to Wild Fields. There’s no big corporation or random gazillionaire behind it.

If you don’t work in the park yourself, you have a relative who does.

Farming isn’t as lucrative as it once was, and the alternative would be commuting into the city every day.

But the tourism around Bravetown brings in enough money to keep the whole town afloat.

It’s beloved because it kinda belongs to everyone a little bit. ”

“I’m sorry, who went ‘we hate commuting, so let’s build a theme park’?”

“It’s a whole thing. I’ll send you a video.”

I’d treated myself to exactly one thing at Bart’s Mart– my favorite Reese’s (the mini cups)– and crawled into bed with my strictly rationed portion of three of them at the end of the day.

This wasn’t half bad. I had the best chocolate and a nice, firm mattress.

Sure, my room was nothing but a shoe box with a twin bed, a sturdy chest of drawers that creaked every time you opened it, and a tiny desk that currently functioned as my laundry hamper, but I’d spent quite a few nights sleeping in my car on the way here. This was already an upgrade.

After Adriana took me back to the staff housing complex, my last day off had passed in a blur, sorting away my groceries and unloading everything that I had stuffed into my car.

I wasn’t on full duty yet. I had two weeks to learn the ropes before the big summer-season opening weekend. Not ropes. Reins. They’d put me on a horse. I really should look up this whole Annie Lou showdown thing.

Opening the link Adriana had sent, I propped the phone up against my pillow and let the video play. It was an old news report on Bravetown’s first anniversary. The colors were too bright and too dull all at once in that 2002 way reserved for old sitcoms.

The video showed a reporter in a crisp white shirt paired with a bolo tie standing beneath Bravetown’s wooden arch, the cowboy statue right behind him.

“I’m standing at the entrance to what may look like a Clint Eastwood movie but is actually the gate to the thrilling adventure that’s Bravetown, an Old West theme park, just an hour and a half outside Nashville.

The history of this park is quite unique,” the reporter said, big microphone up to his nose, “because it starts with a last wish. With us here, to share this inspiring story, is Bravetown’s park director, George Barlow. ”

The camera zoomed out to show the man standing next to the reporter.

George Barlow was an old white man in a suit.

He wasn’t distinctive beyond the bright-red cowboy hat on his head and the tiny round glasses on his nose, the lenses the size of a dollar.

Doing some mental math, I figured he had to be Renee’s father or uncle, or something along those lines.

“Thank you,” he said, holding his own microphone low enough for his voice to crackle.

“We are so proud to celebrate one year of brave guests at the park, and it’s all thanks to a man called Bob Horton.

There are some people who leave a lasting impression in your life, and Bob was one of those.

He had a big heart. He was like Wild Fields’ honorary uncle.

He was at all the birthdays, all the graduations, all the weddings.

He had no family of his own, but everyone knew him.

Everyone loved him. You saw his bright-red hat from a mile away.

” George tapped the brim of his own hat.

“His passing left a hole in all of our lives. Little did we know that he had big plans for our small town. You see, he had all this farmland that he left to the city, along with more money than any one person could spend. None of us knew that he’d won the lottery in the eighties.

Bob was the type of man who wore the same shoes until they came apart at the seams.”

The video showed some grainy pictures of a brightly smiling man in a red cowboy hat and a variety of denim shirts.

“And he left his estate to the town of Wild Fields with a stipulation, didn’t he?” the reporter asked, clearly guiding the park director to his point.

“He did, indeed. Bob’s will stated that we had to use his money and his land to create a place where people would gather and have fun.

He wanted to bring people together. When we cleared out his house, we found hundreds upon hundreds of these old pulp Western novels, and that’s how the idea for Bravetown was born.

A place that honors Bob and his last wish. ”

“Let’s take a look at what the brave people of Wild Fields have created in his honor,” the reporter said, and the camera swiveled over to the Rattlesnake Saloon.

Now Adriana’s words made sense. Bravetown belonged to Wild Fields. It had started with one person who loved the town and its people enough for them to build a whole theme park in his honor.

I was going to skim the comments for some gossip on that backstory but one of the suggested videos caught my eye. Ace Ryder vs. Kit Holliday– The Showdown. Dated one year ago. I clicked on it and threw another peanut butter cup in my mouth.

The video started with a shot of the Bravetown entry sign, then cut to two men in some sort of duel.

One of them was the guy I’d met on my first day in the parking lot.

Same exact costume. White hat to white shoes.

The other appeared to be the bad guy, dressed in a black hat, black leather coat and a dark bandana drawn over his nose.

The clips were edited to a fast-paced country-rock song, cutting back and forth between the two.

It was over in less than a minute before the next video started on auto-play.

That one was all about Ace Ryder, the lawless cowboy.

The guy dressed in black. It showed clips of him in the park from all sorts of angles, all grainy, clearly filmed with phone cameras that weren’t meant to be zoomed in that much.

It also showed him riding after a girl in a familiar blue dress and whisking her on to the horse mid-gallop.

I was so not up for that. No matter how hot a villain was doing the whisking.