Page 60 of The Cowboy's Bullfighter
“All right, I’m listening. What’s your point?”
“My point is that the thing that hurts the most is believing that you’re something to someone that you’re maybe not. So if you made him feel like, I don’t know, you were using him…to get off, so to speak?”
His eyes went wide, and his cheeks burned. “You watch your mouth.”
“You watch yours.” Benji’s nostrils flared. “I am not underage, I am not a child, and last time I checked, this is not your goddamn house. Now you want to go out back and tear it up? You and I can. You’re a good guy, Uncle Brooks, and I know it, but don’t push me.”
“No. I do not want to fight you, Benji. Christ, you’re like your dad. And I know you’re not a child, but you’re still half my age, if you’re lucky, so give me something for that.”
Benji’s lips curved the tiniest bit. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I’ll talk to Coop.” Because he still couldn’t remember what he’d said, but he sure hadn’t meant…that. What Benji had said. That he had no care for how he was using Coop. If he just wanted to get off, he could use his hand.
Coop meant something to him. He wasn’t sure exactly what yet, and he didn’t have to. But Coop needed to know.
Benji nodded to him. “Sucks, I know.”
“Do you now?” He had to hear this.
“Dude, I met Mr. Coop when I was thirteen years old, and I thought I was tough shit. My dad was in the rodeo, and my mom was in sports medicine and all that.” Benji blushed a deep dark red and shook his head. “He overheard me saying that if a man was brave, he’d get up on a bull, not just wander around arena with one. I hurt him bad. That’s mean, and he never said a word, but he didn’t smile at me no more. He didn’t ask if I wanted to take a walk or come see a bull or nothing.He wasn’t mean. It was just like I had existed for him, and then I didn’t no more. I was at a distance.”
“Damn, man.”
Benji nodded to him. “Now, I knew what I’d done, right? But anyway, I went to my dad and I asked him what to do, how to fix it. Then I confessed what I did, told him what I’d said. He sat me down, and we watched the show and he told me—he said a bull rider gets on a bull for eight seconds. A bullfighter works all the roughstock. All of it. They watch over the kids during the mutton bustin’. The saddle broncs, the bareback, the bulls. Them and the safety men, they work their asses off. And they’re not the ones who get big checks.”
Brooks was listening to Benji, but in his heart, he was hearing Andy.
“There’s no buckles. There’s no big checks. It’s a job that they do, because nobody else could ride if they didn’t. Anyways. I told Uncle Coop how sorry I was and that I’d made a mistake. How I was being stupid and bragging to my friends, and that I had hurt his feelings, and that it was real mean. And he? He gave me a quick hug and said ‘thanks, son,’ and that was that. It took a few days, but then I was back to where I wanted to be. I think you need to do the same. Get back to where you want to be.”
“But I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, Benji. Doesn’t that matter?”
“So ask him, like I said.” Benji grinned, straightening up. “I’m gonna go grab a shower.”
“Okay, man.” He fought not to call Benji kiddo like he had once upon a time.
He guessed it was time for him to talk to Coop.
Brooks would do it tonight.
Chapter Sixteen
Coop had a feeling Brooks was trying to have a sit-down with him.
He was avoiding it. Not because he was all mad or anything. Or even butthurt. But he didn’t want to do it. Because then he would have to admit he’d been thinking thoughts that Brooks absolutely had not, and that was not his strong suit.
Admitting to stuff like deep-ass feelings.
Wouldn’t he damn know it, though, his luck ran out on Christmas Eve eve.
They still needed to put those bikes together.
So when Brooks presented him with a plate of still-hot cookies and an adult hot chocolate, he had no choice but to let Brooks into the sitting room of his master suite and sit on the floor with him to assemble toys.
They’d been strained over supper, when Brooks had made him lasagna, just like on his birthday, and he realized how little time he’d actually known the damn man and how stupid it had been to get all happy about how they’d been rubbing along together.
Literally and figuratively.
“So.” Brooks cleared his throat, then glanced up at him.
