Page 47 of The Hearts We've Broken
Jake sat tall on his horse in the roping box, the calf he’d rope in the chute. As a tie-down roper, he held a small string of rope between his teeth.
Up on the screen, his horse spun in a few circles. Jake backed him up then nodded. The calf was released from the chute, and his horse took off after it in an explosive run as Jake swung the longer rope over his head. He threwhis rope and caught the calf, the loop falling around its neck.
His horse came to a full stop as Jake jumped down, and the calf was jerked back, not quite falling on the ground. Jake ran over to the calf to flip it over then tied three of its legs together with the string. When he was done, he threw his hands in the air.
Running back to his horse, he mounted it then urged it forward to take the slack out of his rope.
If the calf broke free before six seconds was up, he would get a no time.
The judges nodded, and the calf was freed. Once it was up on its feet again, it was as though nothing had happened as it happily ran to the gate to exit the arena.
“Eight-point-two seconds!” the announcer called out. Jake could be seen up on the big screen nodding, happy with his time.
In between competitors, the cameras panned around the audience for different activities to engage the crowd like the muscle cam or the dance cam. I should have expected the kiss cam to land on me and Juniper.
“Look! You guys are up on the screen!” Isa squealed.
Sure enough, the six of us were projected up on the jumbotron for everyone to see. Ellison and Colter obviously kissed, as did Isa and Reid after her outburst, but my eyes widened.
“Are you sure?” Juniper asked in a low voice.
I didn’t get to answer as chants of, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” erupted around the arena.
I guess if we were doing this fake dating thing, we were going all in. After all, media sources had already “confirmed” our relationship, so not kissing would have raised more questions than anything.
I took off my hat and put it in front of our faces for some sense of privacy as I leaned in and kissed Juniper, giving her a quick peck on the lips, fully intending to pull back. Instead, she grabbed the back of my head and pulled me back to her. Her taste invaded my mouth, and my dick twitched in my jeans. Everyone around us cheered, and as we pulled apart and I lowered the hat, the camera picked up the pink flush in her cheeks.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
juniper
After the second semifinal round—the one that Mikey, Colter, Reid, and Jake competed in—concluded, we piled into another bar downtown. This one had a mechanical bull, and Mikey was hell-bent on convincing me to get on it. The boys were all up at the bar grabbing us drinks, and Isa, Ellison, and I sat at a table in the corner away from the entrance.
At this point, people recognized me from social media and all the public displays of our relationship, even without Mikey by my side, and I was either being gawked at or glared at.
I had to make my social media accounts private, because I was also getting an influx of random followers, some of which were not kind in their comments on my old posts.
“Do you guys have people spamming your social media all the time?” I groaned as I removed yet another account who was lucky enough to follow me before I went private.
“My account has been private since I created it.” Ellison laughed.
Isa shrugged. “I get the occasional person. However, Reid and Colter aren’t as…controversial as Mikey.”
“I think Isa just secretly likes the attention,” Ellison teased, prompting Isa to lightly smack her on the arm before mumbling, “God forbid a girl wants recognition.”
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
Ellison and Isa both raised their brows at my complaint. Which was fair. I may not have explicitly asked for the recognition and attention and everything that came with it, but I was with a world-famous bull rider. One whose notoriety wasn’t exactly positive.
My mouth gaped, my brain trying to come up with something to say, but any excuse I could have come up with would have been disputed. I couldn’t claim that I didn’t know who he was; everyone in the near vicinity of Miles City knew who he was. I couldn’t say I didn’t know his reputation, either; it was obvious just looking at him and the way everyone talked about him.
I decided on, “Okay, technically, I signed up for this when I started dating him, but that doesn’t mean I wanted this!”
The girls’ response was to giggle at how flustered I’d gotten.
“You’ll get used to it.” Ellison patted my arm in reassurance.
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. No one knew that Mikey and I wouldn’t be together long enough for me to get used to it.
