Page 56 of Hung Up
Maybe I do need to suck it up and see Faith, after all.
“You okay, Hayes?” Wyatt asks as he exits the locker room.
I guess he might have to do.
“Oh, just peachy.” I stop and turn to face him. “You know, living the dream. Pulled fucking Goliath for tonight, so I’m fantastic.”
He raises a brow, studying me. “Jesse.”
“No, really,” I continue, rambling like the idiot I am. “I’m great. Goliath is going to run me into the ground and tank my score. It’s such a wonderful time.”
“What’s going on?”
My arms begin to flail on their own accord, gesturing wildly, which I’ve never been known to do before. “What’s going on is that you were right, okay?” It comes out louder than I intend, but I can’t seem to stop. “You were right. Are you happy? I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, and I’m too much of a coward to do the smart thing.”
“I’m confused.” Wyatt takes a step forward as I begin to pace again. I can practically hear Faith telling me that I’m making her dizzy. That thought has me stumbling briefly as he continues to talk. “What was I right about?”
“You know what you were right about,” I snap, stopping momentarily to narrow my eyes on him before I continue. “I can’t walk away even though I know I probably should.”
The sympathetic expression that Wyatt gives me only seems to light a match to the simmering anger I didn’t realize I had. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” I take my hat off and run my hand through my hair before placing it back on my head. “I just need to talk to her and hope that helps.”
“She’s not here.”
Those three words cause the racing thoughts to slow for a moment before I begin to feel lightheaded and clammy. “What did you say?”
“She’s not here,” he repeats, slower this time as if that’s going to help me calm down the anxiety that has started to rush through my veins. “Kai said she had something to take care of and that she wouldn’t be here tonight.”
As if tonight couldn’t get any worse.
“Okay,” I breathe out somewhat shakily. “I’ll just call her. Yeah, that’ll do it.” I pat my pockets only to find them empty, sending me into another panic. “Fuck, where’s my phone?”
“Locker room, probably.” I shake my head, knowing I hadn’t gone there yet. “Kid, you really gotta?—”
“You’re no help,” I tell him, turning to walk toward the chute. “I’ll be fine.”
But to my dislike, he follows me. “Jesse, you can’t go out there like this. If you get on the bull now, nothing good will come of it.”
“I’m not forfeiting,” I say through clenched teeth. “If I forfeit, I might throw all my chances of the top three out the window. I won’t do it.”
“Would you rather slip out of the top three, or run the risk of never being able to ride again?”
I stop a few feet away from the chute as the announcer starts to read off Goliath’s stats. “If I slip out of the top three, I might as well never ride again, anyway. Not sure it matters.”
“Jesse—”
“Are you watching me or not?”
Wyatt and I stare at one another for a moment, his expression worried and unrelenting. I’m truthfully not sure what I’m reflecting back to him. Movement behind him catches my eye and I see Kai hesitate, his brows furrowed as he looks between us. Putting my attention back on my mentor, I hear the announcer begin to introduce me.
“What’s it going to be?”
Wyatt hangs his head. “I can’t watch what I fear is about to happen.”
He turns and walks off without another word, heading down a hallway with an unknown destination. Kai takes his absence as an invitation to come up to me, and it’s only then that I realize Stetson is with him. They both give me uneasy smiles before they quickly exchange a glance, having a nonverbal conversation.
“We figured we’d watch you,” Kai says slowly, and if he’d had his hands out toward me, it’d almost feel like he thought I was a wild, cornered animal. “Since Faith can’t be here.”
