Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
I tip my head so I can stare up at him. “These aren’t simple bowling trophies, Brady. This is a big deal. You should have those on display.”
“You’ve been to my cabin,” he reminds me. “Where do you propose I put them?”
I twist my lips and then turn back to the computer. “Someday, you’ll show them off. Now, where should we start?”
“Do you want to see me ride?”
“Hell, yes. I want to see you ride.”
He pages back up the screen and clicks on the Brady Wild Wins Second World Championship video. There is commentary, a little interview with him before, and he says, “I want Bushwacker.”
He pushes away, places his cowboy hat onto his head, and the announcers start talking.
“Bushwacker again. That’s the toughest bull out there, and Wild keeps choosing him, week after week.”
“No one has conquered that bull sixteen times in a row. Wild wants to set another record.”
I glance up at him, and his eyes are narrow, watching the screen, as if he’s studying it.
“You’re going to miss it, Blue Eyes.”
I turn back to the computer, and now Brady’s settling onto the bull, still behind a big gate. Men are around him, helping him, and then a buzzer sounds and the gate swings open, and that huge bull starts to buck and kick, trying to get the human off his back.
But Brady holds on, one arm in the air, his body jerking and bouncing. When the eight seconds are over—which feels like an eternity to me—he falls off, and the men hurry to him, helping him scurry out of the pissed-off bull’s way.
“Wow,” I breathe, my heart hammering. “That’s intense.”
He chuckles. “You should be on the bull.”
“I think I’ll leave that to you.” I look up at him again. “That is scary as fuck, Brady.”
“But so fun.” He laughs and kisses my cheek.
“Your arm is limp as you run away.”
“Dislocated it again,” he says, as if it’s no big deal. “It happens. Twisted the shit out of my ankle on that one, too.”
No wonder his body hurts and he has the walk of a man twenty years his senior.
“Oh, watch this one.” He clicks on a link, and the noise of the arena is back. “I’m only about twenty-three here.”
Before Dirks died. Brady’s chatting with a man, laughing with him, before he walks to the microphone and says, “I want Bruiser.”
“Do you always announce which bull you’ll be riding that day?”
“Yeah, it’s like a challenge to the bull,” he says with a shrug. “Bruiser was a son of a bitch. Mean old thing. Not as bad as Bushwacker, though.”
“Which one will you be riding this week?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s over.” He kisses my head, and I frown up at him. “Call me superstitious, okay? When it’s over, babe.”
I sigh and go back to watching him, over and over again. He explains the point system to me, the importance of certain things, and why it’s done the way it is, for the safety of the rider and the animal.
“Is that Dirks?” I ask, pointing to a handsome blond man, and Brady nods.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
He pushes play on one ride from last year, where he falls and has a huge gash in his head, bleeding badly, and I have to turn and bury my face in his chest, cringing away from the injury.
“And that’s why I don’t want you there,” he murmurs as he closes the laptop and sets it aside. “You don’t need to see me get hurt.”
“You get hurt, in some way or another, almost every time.”
“Usually,” he agrees with a grin but then sobers when I frown at him. “It’s not usually that bad, Abs. Mostly, what hurts the most right now is knowing that I’ll be gone from you two for a few days.”
“When do you fly home?” I ask him.
“Wednesday. But then I’ll be back out on Sunday. That’s how it’s going to be for a few months. I’ll be in and out.”
“If it weren’t for me, would you usually come home between events?”
“Usually, yes. I don’t live on the road.”
“And when is the season over?”
“End of October.”
I let out a long, slow breath. “Okay, then.”
He takes my chin in his fingers and makes me look up at him. “Are you okay?”
“I have to be.” I smile up at him, but I’m trembling inside. “Because my man is a cowboy.”
“Listen to me, Abbi. It’s going to be a long summer, but it’s going to fly by at the same time. I’ll be here roughly half of each week. There will be weeks that I don’t have to go anywhere at all, but most of the time, I will. I’ll be in touch with you constantly.”
“You don’t have to explain—”
“Yeah, I fucking do, because I don’t want you to worry or wonder or come to any ridiculous conclusions because I didn’t communicate with you. There will be women there. We call them buckle bunnies, but they’re basically groupies. I haven’t had anything to do with them in a decade, but you’ll see them hanging around in photos, and because the media are assholes, they might try to say some shit about that.”