I glanced sideways at her. She wore a vacant, dreamy expression, her expertly-lined eyes glued on the scene before us. I snorted in laughter. She was too much. I was about to poke fun at her, when I spotted Beth on my other side with a similar expression on her face. It seemed I’d lost them both. Even Sarah had lost her focus and was staring at the cowboys with a predatory look on her face.
“Come on, guys.” I brushed a dark brown curl out of my face and sighed. “Don’t lose focus. We’ve got to keep an eye out for Hunter. He’s around here somewhere.”
“Hunter McNally?” Sarah shot me a quick frown. “He’s back in town?”
I wrapped my arms tight around my torso. The fact that Sarah cared about Hunter’s return made me feel all kinds of twisted up inside. “Yep, he’s coming back to Rock Valley.”
The interested spark in her eyes made me growl internally. The girls in our class had always paid Hunter plenty of attention, but he’d never been very interested in pursuing anything with them. But Sarah had a way of sinking her claws into people. I wouldn’t have put it past her to try.
Beth shifted beside me, pointing at the stalls in the arena. “Actually, I think we already found him. Isn’t that him? In the helmet?”
My pulse thrummed excitedly as I redirected my gaze back to the group of guys. Sure enough, there was one among them that I recognized. Hunter McNally stood hunched over the side of the stall, wearing a wire face mask and black helmet that covered up his short, brown hair.
Hunter had changed since he’d moved away. He was now taller than me by several inches, his lean body filled out with sinewy muscles that flexed and tensed as he climbed higher on the side of the stall. A ragged black t-shirt stretched over his broad shoulders and tight denim jeans hugged his hips. He put a leg inside the stall and straddled something large inside it, giving me a flash of his tan cowboy boot with the rounded toe.
There he was — my best friend! And he was finally home.
I clutched hard onto Lexi and Beth’s arms as Hunter settled into the stall. There was an intensity in the way he moved that I wasn’t used to seeing. Curiosity blossomed inside of me. Was this the surprise he was talking about? What was he doing in there?
I didn’t have time to speculate much longer. He mouthed something to one of the other guys. With a firm nod of his head, they all stepped back and someone pulled a rope that opened the stall, revealing a massive thousand-pound horned white beast with Hunter sitting on its back.
“What the...?” Beth pulled the headphones off her neck. “Is he riding a cow?”
Not a cow.
A raging, muscular bull.
My lungs had officially forgotten how to work. I stared breathlessly as the bull tore from the stall and began to kick up its hind legs and twist in midair, doing anything possible to dislodge my best friend from its back. Despite its best effort, Hunter remained in his seat, his legs holding tight to the thick backside of the monster.
The ride seemed to last forever. Hunter raised his left hand up and down with the flow of the bull’s kicks, holding on tight to a strap with his right. Even from this distance, I could see the deadly concentration on his face. The cowboys on the fence whooped and hollered, waving their hats as if to goad the bull on even more. The massive thing lowered its head and let out a nasty snort before charging toward the fence and stopping fast enough to fling Hunter from his back.
He landed hard on the ground, looking up at the clear blue sky above him. The sight nearly gave me a heart attack. Two of the cowboys raced into the ring, waving their hats and chasing the snorting bull toward the other end of the corral.
A fall like that would’ve knocked the stuffing out of me, but Hunter was tougher than that. He pushed himself up on his elbows, laughing as his gaze trailed the bull. And when he turned back in my direction and our eyes met, red hot relief burst inside me.
“Ow, Charlotte, you’re hurting me,” Lexi whined, looking down at where I’d grabbed her arm.
“Oops, sorry.”
I dropped my hand from both of them and took a steadying breath. I wasn’t sure whether to be furious or impressed with my best friend right now. The emotions swirling inside of me were too confusing to make out. He’d mentioned how his time in Texas had gotten him into extreme sports, but for some reason I’d had a vague notion that it involved wrestling a greased-up piglet or maybe tussling a calf. I’d had no idea that meant bull riding. This was dangerous. This was stupid. This was reckless.
And so unbelievably cool.
“Charlotte Hale, how’d you like that eight seconds?” Hunter pushed himself off the ground and ran to climb over the arena fence.
He easily cleared it and landed on the other side with a solid thud and a cloud of dust forming around his boots. Part of me longed to run to him. I would’ve done it a year ago, no questions asked. But this young man in jeans and a threadbare shirt, half-covered in dust, was not the kid I remembered from my childhood. The boy who had secretly admitted to me that he listened to Taylor Swift to put him to sleep at night and didn’t mind when I picked Easy A every time it was my turn to choose for movie night.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said, his hazel eyes glittering as he tore off his helmet and shot me the ornery grin I knew so well. “Are you fixin’ to stare at me all day, or are you gonna come say hi?”
What was
