My stomach growls again, dragging my attention back to the task at hand, and I dig into my food, trying and failing not to worry about the woman sitting next to me.
Fuck, was she a woman.
I’ve done my best not to catch any sight of her since she’s been gone, avoiding looking through pictures on the internet, not following her on social media as much as I could.
It wasn’t easy.
Especially when her shit was trending constantly.
I used social media to build up my reputation as a rodeo clown, and it worked. I wasn’t famous by any means, but at seventy thousand followers, I had people who gave a shit, at least. Using it to find gigs around the country, I was hired to show up to places I’d never been before to help entertain the crowds with my ability to get the hell out of the way of a bull.
So I wasn’t immune to the use of trending songs to help make my content more visible.
I’ve even used some of hers, because I was a masochist like that.
However, I haven’t updated my page in weeks because of my injury and basically retiring myself here. I don’t know if I will ever use it again.
“Bonnie was inquiring about the rodeo school,” Stetson says to CT, who sits down the table from me. “She wants to get it going again.”
“Well, I was thinking about looking into it,” Bonnie says, correcting my brother and patting him on the shoulder like she was embarrassed.
“What happened to the rodeo school?” I hear myself ask, wiping my napkin across my mouth and tossing it onto my now empty plate.
“Ah, it got shut down a few years back. Mr. Henley couldn’t do it alone, and no one was willing to step in.”
I frown. “It’s not even a thing anymore?”
“Nope,” Logan says, shaking his head before looking at me. “There wasn’t anyone who was suited for it.”
I roll my lips together and take a sip of the beer to my right before I look to my brother’s girlfriend. “You’re thinking of taking it on?”
Bonnie blushes, and I feel a little bad, knowing how she doesn’t like the attention on herself. “I was going to do some research, see if there was interest in it.”
“I bet there would be,” Felicity surprises me by saying. “When I was in school, over half of the students were in rodeo school.”
“Yeah, Mitch and Jax included,” Stetson adds.
I glance around then, wondering where my big brother is, and am not surprised to find him standing near a certain Weaver sister.
“Jax was dedicated to rodeo school. He never missed a day,” Felicity tells Bonnie, as if it was normal for her to explain something about me to someone else. Although she was technically around for that portion of my life, so she wasn’t wrong.
“I want to help,” I hear myself tell Bonnie, a tendril of excitement coursing through me at the idea.
Bonnie’s eyes widen a little in shock. “You do?”
I shrug. “Yeah, definitely. I know my way around it.”
She looks to Stetson who nods his head in encouragement, though knowing his spitfire girl, she wouldn’t have let him hold her back. “Okay, let’s figure it out.”
A few hours later, dusk is falling over the ranch. The early signs of true fall are here, and the family gathers around the porch for discussions about the Fall Festival the ranch puts on every year.
I am on the outskirts of the meeting, half-listening to the information, given that I technically have nothing to do with the festival, when I see Felicity wandering down toward the barn.
My feet move before I can tell myself not to, and I trail her there, not once giving away the fact that I am right behind her.
I watch her enter the barn, walking slowly and petting each horse as she goes. Seeing her here, in this setting, sends a pang of nostalgia through me.
We would come hang out at the barn all the time when we were kids, when we were teens. I’d bring her around for a ride whenever I could because I knew that she enjoyed it, and her family weren’t ones that had the means to keep a horse.
