Page 94 of Untamed
If a rider slaps a bull with his free hand during a ride, he is disqualified and, therefore, does not receive a score.
We spend a couple days with Wyatt in Decatur and seeing Grayer as a dad, I’m convinced this guy is totally perfect. Moody as heck, but perfect. He’s so tentative and sweet, and his son is just so cute. Wyatt even lets me rock him to sleep one night and it’s like my ovaries tugged and I suddenly wanted a baby of my own. Not really, but he’s the most adorable little boy I’ve ever seen.
We leave for Tulsa on Tuesday with Ty and Haylee, all four of us in Grayer’s truck. When I think about road trips, I had no idea what they’d be like with the four of us, two lost souls and two insane bull riders, traveling across the south. And it’s the best time of my life. He tells me, after we make more detours than we probably should, “Die with memories, honey. Not dreams.”
I get my second tattoo with Haylee. We both get, “Wild Heart, Gypsy Soul” tattooed on the inside of our left wrist.
Parked at a rest stop waiting for Ty and Haylee, Grayer kisses the painful spot on my wrist and whispers, “Blame it on her gypsy soul?”
I laugh. “Or my rebel blood.” And alongside a highway, we take our first selfie together. My hair wild in the wind, his so pretty eyes shadowed by his hat. I laugh and eat a bug. On accident. It doesn’t go down easily. “Goddamn. Did it have spikes for wings?” I ask, choking.
Grayer reins in his laughter and hands me a bottle of water. It’s not that picture I’ll remember. It’s the way his grip on my hip felt and the warmth that radiated through me when he whispers, “I have a thing for dirty mouth girls who run around barefoot.”
I kiss his raw knuckles where he got his hand pinned between the bull he rode in the short go and the chute. And then I brush my fingers over the cut on his cheek where Cochise got him with his horn. “I have a thing for cold restless eyes and battle wounds.”
Sex isdefinitelyon my mind throughout the entire drive. It’s like, all I can think about. I’m nervous to do anything in the truck with him. With only the lights of the dashboard, he sings along to Randy Travis “I Told You So.” I try to resist, but have you ever had someone whisper a Randy Travis song to you?
Exactly.
“You know you want to,” he says, my eyes on his buckle, the gold illuminating off the speedometer.
“I do, but what—”
My whisper is cut off by him wrapping his hand around the back of my neck. “The girl I know . . . she’s fearless.”
He knew what to say to get to me. Damn this bull rider. “You’retrouble, Eight Seconds.”
So just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, Grayer’s pulled over for speeding. Might have had something to do with me giving him a blow job while driving, but we won’t admit to it. Especially since Ty and Haylee had been sleeping just feet from us.
Passing through Lake Ouachita, we stop off and camp because Grayer tells me no road trip is complete unless you sleep outside under the stars. He asks me that night if I regret coming. I tell him, “Your heart belongs where your mind wanders.”
Ty gets stung by a scorpion that same night and throws up for a couple days, but is totally fine. Some minor numbness in his ankle, but he couldn’t feel his ankle before the sting. And somewhere along Route 66, Haylee and I sing along to “I Try to Think About Elvis” and find the true meaning behind being wild and free.
To truly find yourself, you need to take a road trip. You need to eat tacos from roadside joints and drink enough Dr. Pepper you think you might vomit. You need your co-pilots singing “Friends in Low Places” at 2:00 a.m. with the windows rolled down and the warm Texas night wind in your hair. You need to get caught in a tornado, hide out in a ditch and then run into an In-N-Out Burger at midnight, soaking wet, laughing and have your first taste of what real fast food should taste like and know that you’ll never ever live in a state that doesn’t have one. You need your soundtrack to be songs like Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s in Love with the Boy.” You need to blare The Kentucky Headhunters until your ears ring and maybe even throw in some Bob Dylan or if you’re Ty, Lil John. You need Ty serenating your best girl while standing in the bed of a truck rocking a fake microphone to “Achy Breaky Heart” with nothing but a cowboy hat, boots and boxers.
You need to chase the sun across the state, never look back, and have the boy you can’t stop thinking about whisper, “Your past won’t follow you on the road,” when he kisses you just before sunrise.
Joe Diffie carried us through Louisiana. Chris LeDoux played when we went over the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, and I can’t hear Garth Brookes’ “Beaches of Cheyenne” without thinking of Hwy 380 coming into Decatur. But it’s at the end of the days, when the two sleepy heads in the back are passed out and the hum of the silence fills my mind and the way Grayer’s lips feel pressed to my temple . . . that’s when I find myself and really begin to grasp that renewal awaits around the bend.
It’s days later and I find myself in Nashville with Grayer. He’s slipped to third in the points and I can tell he’s bothered by it, but he doesn’t say much about it. I sit in the front row at the Bridgestone Arena, a little sorer and smiling. Grayer’s memory burns my skin like the sweet summer kisses he gave me in the rain and all week long. I knew then that I didn’t care if this feeling lasted twenty minutes or twenty years, I’d take it.
He’s edgy today, having slept in late with me and missed a sponsorship obligation he was supposed to be at. Haylee’s beside me, reassuring me everything’s fine, despite Grayer yelling the entire way here about being late. We both look up to see Britany sitting down next to us with Wyatt, the dusty air around us bringing with it stale beer, popcorn, and manure.
Wyatt grins when he sees me, pointing to my necklace he likes to pull on. “Maes!” Apparently that’s my name he’s given me. I’ll take it.
“Hey, buddy!”
To my surprise, he reaches for me and wants to sit on my lap. I let him, as does Britany, like she’s thankful to have her arms free for a moment. After spending one night with the little guy and Grayer, I can’t imagine what taking care of him full-time is like. Boys are definitely much rowdier than girls.
“Ty!” Wyatt screams, pointing to Ty who’s standing on the arena floor, dusting himself off.
“Yeah, buddy. That’s Uncle Ty.” The bull Ty was on came out of the gate strong, but then didn’t perform like they thought he would.
“What are they scored on?” Haylee asks, wondering, when Ty’s score of eighty-one pops up on the screen. It’s a good score, but he doesn’t seem all that pleased with it when he kicks at the dirt. All three of the Easton brothers have been struggling and here we are on the last night in Tulsa and that score could have knocked Ty out of the top ten.
“Style, control. . . .” Britany’s extremely knowledgeable when it comes to bull riding and it’s clear she’s spent a lot of time around the bull riding life. Probably why she’s their manager. “Both the rider and the bull are scored on a ride. Zero to fifty points for the bull and same for the rider for an accumulated score of one hundred. They’re judged on control, rhythm with the way the rider moves with the bull, and whether he stays on for the full eight seconds. If he’s bucked off, he doesn’t get a score. But the bull still does.”
“What’s the bull scored on?” I ask.
