Buck You

Prologue

I knew pain. There’d been spills off my bike when I was a kid. Or the time I broke my arm after I jumped off the barn roof. And there’d definitely been injuries from being stupid enough to climb onto the back of a bull and try to ride him for eight seconds. 

But those had been few and far between. And oddly minor, for how dangerous the sport I loved was.

I heard what the fans said about me on the circuit. That I somehow drew ‘easy’ bulls because my dad was Kai ‘Frost’ Hunt, four times WBRA champion. But anyone with half a brain and a lick of bull riding knowledge knew nobody wanted an easy bull, anyway. Nobody wanted one who didn’t kick or spin or try his damn best to get you off his back. You wanted the bulls that had you digging your heels in, every muscle in your body working to keep you on so you didn’t end up mincemeat beneath his hooves. Those were the bulls that got you big scores. Those were the bulls that won you championship buckles.

But that left the whispers of the other riders. Those hurt more than the fans, and they were none too subtle.

She doesn’t belong here. This ain’t no girly competition.

The judges go easy on her because she’s a woman.

The judges score her higher because she’s Frost’s daughter.

Nobody ever said it to my face, but I heard it all anyway. I heard it in the way they frowned, or in their annoyed hat toss when my score rocketed up the leaderboard. I heard it in the way I wasn’t just one of the guys, who liked to drink beer at the bar after work, like I was back home.

Their rejection was a different sort of pain altogether, but one I’d dealt with my entire life and could no longer afford to care about. I’d had to learn to lock it up, and shove it deep inside, where it was barely even a pinprick.

Because I was going to be the first woman on the WBRA circuit.

I was going to win the whole damn thing, take home the check, and add a shiny championship belt buckle to my collection. No matter what it took.

Until I wasn’t.

Until I was thrown off that bull at the Masonville Invitational, landed awkwardly, and heard the pop of my shoulder dislocating.

Until the acute agony of muscle tearing ripped through me.

Until the bull’s hooves slammed down and shattered the bone so bad it pierced through my skin.

A new pain like nothing I’d ever experienced before splintered through my entire body. It radiated from my shoulder in a blinding rush that took out all other senses.

I lost the screaming of the crowd and the smell of the dirt beneath my broken body. My mouth filled with blood, but I didn’t taste it. When my vision flickered, it was almost a welcome relief.

I needed to get up and run. I needed to get out from beneath the bull’s hooves that pounded into my flesh, vicious and unforgiving.

But the worst of the pain came from my head, and the knowledge that with one ride, my career was over before it had even truly begun.

Nobody came back from this sort of injury.

So when the darkness tried to take me, I let it.

Because there was no pain worse than that.