In the momentsright before I compete, I stop seeing and hearing the crowd. Everything around me goes silent and still. It’s just me and Ballantine together, and the ring in front of us, waiting quietly for our ride. It’s my favorite part about competing—the utter silence and the unity I feel with my horse.
I urge Ballantine forward towards the center of the ring, where we start the pattern off with a spin. Ballantine does it perfectly, like he always does, and a bit of the crowd’s cheering filters into my head as we finish. We start making the circles with the left lead, drawing them large and fast, then slow and small. Then, back in the center of the ring, we move into circles with the right lead.
As I approach the ring wall, a flash of familiar blonde and black catches my eye.
Candice?
No—that’s impossible. It must be someone else with blonde hair and a back hat. Still, as Ballantine and I start the final circle, I look up at the crowd, knowing it will cost me the winning spot. But I can’t help it. I have to know.
Time slows as I realize that Candice is right in front of me, cheering me on, her black Stetson cradled against her chest, herblonde waves loose down her back. On instinct, I pull Ballantine to a halt right in front of the wall, and because my horse is the best damn reining horse in the world, he pulls the stop off easily.
The crowd goes silent as they realize that something has gone wrong.
“What the fuck?” someone yells in the stadium.
Over the loudspeaker, the announcer starts to discuss the moves I should be doing right now. But I don’t care—all I see in Candice. She’s looking right at me, her eyebrows upturned, an anxious but hopeful look on her face. I dismount, and walk Ballantine over to the wooden fence separating us.
“Hi,” I say, breaking out into a grin.
“Hey.”
I lean over and hold my hand out towards her. “Come here.”
“Right now?” she asks. “But the competition…Nathan, you’ll lose, and I know how important this is to you.”
“Screw the competition. I don’t care that much about winning and I already ruined things for myself when I looked at you. There’s no way I could miss you in a crowd, Viper.”
She grins back at me, finally, and moves to take my hand. Not paying attention to the announcer saying some dumb shit about how audience members aren’t allowed to enter the ring, I help her over the wooden siding, and into the ring. Ballantine swings his head to look at her, and she dutifully gives him scratches in his favorite place.
“Hey Bally,” she says.
“Why’d you come here?” I ask.
I may be happy to see Candice, but I want to know what’s on her mind. I try to quell the hope that rises in me, because she could be here for any number of reasons, and I could be making a whipped fool of myself in public for nothing. But I have hope anyway. I can’t help myself.
“I needed to know what you thought of this,” she says, pressing her phone into my hands.
I look down at it. “The article?”
“You haven’t read it yet?”
“I’ve been involved in the rodeo all day, and I’ve barely looked at my phone.” I leave out the part where I was too afraid to face it.
“Oh,” she says, her face paling. “I assumed you read it. I thought that’s why you stopped Ballantine and brought me in here…”
“What are you talking about?”
Around us, the crowd is getting rowdy, jeering at us and calling for us to be removed from the ring. Cameras are flashing and phones are raised, and I’m sure that whatever goes on in here will be on social media within the next ten minutes. But I don’t care. I’m not done here yet.
“Just read it,” she says, pushing her phone into my hand. “Scroll to the end.”
I can recognize when Candice is being stubborn, so I take the phone, even though I don’t care about the damn article anymore. I dutifully scroll past photos of the two of us and quotes from me splashed across the page, until I get to the end.
“What is your relationship with Nathan Booth?”the article reads.
“I don’t need to read this,” I say, the hope draining out of me and ice filling my chest. I know how she answered this question, and I don’t want to be reminded of it.
“Just keep going,” she urges.
