Page 1 of Wild and Unruly (Three Rivers Trevors Ranch #3)

Bonnie

six years earlier

Tension was something that I had come to expect after being at horse shows for the last few years.

My first year, my coach was sweet and kind, gently guiding a nervous teenager during her first show after falling in love with horses and wanting to do more with them.

My brother was the first to join, and I quickly followed suit, unsure of where this particular route would take me but eager to be a part of it.

There was joy then, joy whenever I saw my horse, joy when I showed, joy when my brother and I were getting ready, when we would spend every waking minute we could on the back of a horse, loving life and enjoying the freedom that came from it.

But our dad saw potential in our riding. Or more specifically, in my brother’s, and decided the best thing for us was to move to trainers that could take us further .

Now it was business.

It was no longer fun and games.

I bit my lip as I watched my brother’s gaze focus on his horse. He was still obsessed, still loved showing his horse, even in our new environment. But there was something serious there now, something that replaced the joy that used to take hold when he was about to show.

I glanced to my side and noticed Tommy Smith, our horse trainer and coach’s son, looking over at me. He winked, and I turned back to my brother. Tommy was an interesting sort, one that I usually tried to avoid based on the mere fact that he freaked me out.

Not that it mattered.

The one time I brought that up to my dad, he told me to just focus and ignore it. No concern for what the guy wanted or why he was overtly flirty with me.

It gave me this new pebble of resentment toward my father that I didn’t want to have.

Yet, it started a small pile.

Then, he told me that I was going to be showing a different horse, and mine would no longer be coming to shows with me.

Another pebble.

His focus shifted to Mason, my brother, and that was okay, except it left him with no time for his daughter at all.

Pebble.

One by one, the pebbles started to get so high that they started to fall down all around me, and the relationship I once had with my father was not the one I had when I was younger.

I didn’t want to have resentment toward anyone, let alone my own family. Yet, there it was.

I retrained my gaze to my brother’s stance where he’d stopped his horse in the middle of the arena, thirty or so other riders riding around him, kicking up dust.

The show arena was through a tunnel where other contestants were showing before Mason’s turn came.

He was showing for the championships in cow horse, and I knew by the tiny puddle of sweat that wore through the back of his button-down shirt and the way he wiped at his sweating head under his hat that he was nervous.

Mason was normally very calm when it came to showing.

He held in his nerves well, unlike me, who worried about it constantly and didn’t know how to compartmentalize.

But today, I could see his nerves were getting the best of him.

I could tell he and his horse weren’t doing their best, and that worried me because I knew how much winning this meant to not just him but our coach and our father.

He moved his horse over to the exit gate, and I made myself move around Tommy to go stand where he was headed, clutching the water bottle he would need and the rag to wipe down before he went in.

“How ya feeling?” I threw the question out and handed him his things while reaching into the bag over my shoulder to grab another rag to wipe down his horse, giving the horse a rub on the head while I was at it. “Dusty seems calm.”

Mason frowned and looked down the neck of his horse, uncapping the water and draining a good portion of it before handing it back to me. “Yeah. Almost off kind of calm.”

I looked over the horse, looking for anything unusual, when Richard, our coach, came up to Mason to talk to him.

They started talking about the run, and Mason nodded as he listened, smiling softly when Richard made a joke about him becoming a big deal after he won this show .

I kept my focus on Dusty, his horse, wondering if he was feeling all right. Normally, he was a little restless, ready to get in there and do the sport he loved so much. But right then, he seemed like he was ready to sleep.

“All right, you’re up, champ.” Richard patted Dusty on the butt and walked away, and I gave Mason one last smile.

“You ready?” The question was stupid, really. He was born for this job.

“As I’ll ever be,” was his reply before he nodded at me and replaced his hat, pulling at the brim and situating himself on the horse before making his way into the arena.

I felt on edge and uneasy as I made my way to the gate. My parents were in the stands watching, but when Mason showed, I wanted to be right there in the action, at the gate for when he came out of this a champion so I could be there if he needed anything.

“Bonnie!” I turned just in time to see Daphne, Mason’s longtime girlfriend, running down the tunnel to catch up to me, being mindful of the other horses.

In her heels and skirt, she looked out of place. But when she looked at my brother, everything clicked for the two of them.

I sighed, wishing that I would have someone like that come to watch me like that.

“You made it,” I replied quietly as we stepped up to the outside of the arena, watching Mason move his horse toward the other side of the arena.

“Barely,” she said, her eyes completely homed in on my brother.

My brother was given a cow through the opposite gate and started to push him to one side. The cow darted, and he moved Dusty to keep up with him. Dusty was a pro and anticipated this, lunging after the cow and cutting it off.

They did this several times, cutting the cow quickly and efficiently, the precision at which they moved unmatched by anyone I’d seen today.

Mason made his move toward the long wall, and that cow darted down the opening. Dusty moved like a bullet after the cow, and just as he was about to cut him off, Dusty tripped.

A gasp flew out of me as I watched my brother flip over the horse’s right shoulder, and Dusty came down right on top of him, flipped sideways and pinning Mason to the ground.

The stadium was silent save for Daphne screaming Mason’s name.

And I was frozen. I watched with impatience, my heart in my throat as I looked at my brother lying there, silently begging him to move, to get up, to breathe.

People ran into the arena, other cowboys and contestants, and the judge jumped off of his chair where he was sitting on the side. Richard was right near Mason, and chaos erupted around me as my brother was lying in that arena, unresponsive.

Dusty was making a sound I’d never heard before, unable to move himself up.

Off of Mason, I finally realized, and I snapped out of the numbness that held me still and ran.

I wanted to run right to my brother to make sure he was okay, but I needed the horse off of him first and moved to help the group that was trying to move the thousand-pound animal off of him.

I moved to the poor horse’s head and gently but firmly pulled on him, “Come on, boy! Move! ”

Finally, he did. When he was off of Mason, I saw the aftermath left behind.

My brother lay in a puddle of blood that could be his or his horse’s, and consciousness finally found him, his eyes snapping open and panic warring inside of them.

And then, he screamed.

His lungs wailed with a sound I’d never heard before as he realized what just happened.

When he realized the career he had worked so hard for, the one that had been his only goal for his entire adult life, just slipped right out of his hands.