Jessica pulls me away, laughing like Wyatt is funnier than a rodeo clown, and ignoring the steam coming out of myears. We walk several feet before she stops to talk to someone she knows from work. I give them enough space to talk and study Wyatt out of the corner of my eye.
From the broken-in custom boots to the Wilderness Circuit Champion buckle at his waist to the perfectly shaped American hat on his head; his gear tells a story. This isn't new money trying to buy its way into respectability. This is old money wearing its heritage like a second skin.
"He's not just a rodeo cowboy," I murmur, more to myself than to anyone.
I watch him handle another fan who's approached for an autograph—flirty and light, but with boundaries that keep things from getting too personal.
He's been raised to this, I think slowly, pieces clicking into place. The rodeo, the sponsors, the publicity—it's part of something bigger. Family business, probably. Multi-generational. Halloway. Halloway… where have I heard that name?
Men with that kind of family background are shaped by legacy the way rivers are shaped by their banks—powerful, but not always free to choose their own course.
I find myself more intrigued.
“Hell-o!” Jessica shakes my arm to get my attention. She looks back at the tent and then at me. “Distracted much?”
I glance around and don’t even see her friend. How long has she been watching me watch Wyatt? "He’s got all the makings of a major distraction," I admit.
"And you're hooked," she says with entirely too much satisfaction.
I deny it. But the truth is sitting heavy in my chest like a stone I can't swallow. Men like Wyatt Halloway, with thosesmolder-gray eyes and that devastating smile, are complex enough to be interesting, damaged enough to understand my wounds, and attractive enough to make me forget why that's a problem.
Which makes them capable of wrecking me in ways that I may never recover from.
Three
I’M HERE TO DANCE WITH THIS DEVIL.
WYATT
Most men pretend they aren’t afraid to dance with the devil. I grip tight, look him dead in the eye, and take my eight-second ride.
The deep bellow of bulls shifting in their steel cages, the metallic clang of chute gates, the distant roar of twenty thousand voices hungry for eight seconds of chaos pulses around me. I breathe it in like incense.
My phone rings and I glance down.Mom.
I can't answer right now. I silence it.
I pull my riding glove tight and flex my fingers, feeling the familiar bite against my palm. The leather is broken in just right—soft enough to grip, tough enough to hold when everything goes sideways.
Which it always does.
That's the point.
I run through my pre-ride checklist. Vest secure. Chaps buckled. Rope checked and rechecked. The weight of my gear settles on me. Thirty pounds of leather and protection that can't shield me from the voices that follow me everywhere else.
Out there, beyond the arena lights, I'm tied to a legacy that feels more like a noose with every passing year. Back here, I'm just another cowboy with something to prove and eight seconds to prove it.
Dirty Bucker snorts in chute three, a seventeen-hundred-pound mass of muscle and bad intentions that's sent more than one rider to the emergency room this season. I drew him fair and square, and the matchup feels like destiny. I close my eyes and visualize the ride: the gate flying open, the bull's first leap, the technique it’ll take to beat him. Eight seconds. That's all I need.
My mind jumps, and she appears. Blue eyes. Dark hair. A wild thing on the verge of disappearing that made something inside of me want to make her mine.
My eyes snap open, my concentration shattered. I don't think about women during competition. Shoot, I barely think about women after competition. That's part of the code I've built—keep it simple, keep it surface.
She looked at me like she could see past the swagger—and into the parts of me I’ve buried so deep I forgot where I put them. She didn’t see Wyatt Halloway the future king of a cattle empire and she wasn’t calculating my net worth or my buckle count.
"Halloway!" The chute boss's voice cuts through my thoughts. "You're three bulls out."
I shake my head, disgusted with myself. Focus is everything in this sport. A half-second of distraction can end a career, end a life. Whatever spell that blue-eyed woman has cast on me needs to stay in the stands where it belongs.