Have Mercy - Christina Lee Page 0,55
the kind of life I’d envisioned. I’m just sorry that Sienna…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“Hey, you made your peace and did what was right. Stop second-guessing yourself.” I thought of seeing Brad again on Sunday and how she’d acted around him. “Maybe Sienna didn’t make the right decisions either.”
He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You mean Brad?”
I nodded. “What’s the story there? Never mind, not really my business.”
“Not sure there’s much to tell. He crushed on her all through school. But he was always in trouble for one thing or another and didn’t really get his act together until a few years ago. Anyway, I think she made the safer choice.”
My eyes sprang to his. “You mean she settled?”
He picked at the frayed hem of his jeans. “Yeah, maybe.”
“You’re no one to settle for. Have you taken a good look at yourself?”
He actually blushed, and I grinned like a loon.
“Damn, life sucks sometimes,” he said, stretching his legs out in front of him.
“We live and learn, right? I joined the military because I was lost after my dad passed.”
He pressed his shoulder against mine again, and it soothed me in a way most things didn’t. “And did you find yourself even though you…” He motioned to my knee.
“In some ways, yeah. In other ways, I’m still trying to figure shit out.”
“Aren’t we all,” he mumbled just as a broadcaster’s voice came on the loudspeaker. He began announcing the events and getting the crowd riled up. As he threw out names, cowboys began lining up inside the arena and waving to the crowd.
Some tall and lean guy in one of those plaid shirts with a large buckle walked onto the field, and the audience went wild. His cowboy boots were all dusty, and his hat looked worse for wear. He was handsome, and when he smiled even more so, if all the ladies wolf-whistling had anything to say about it.
“Holy shit.” I stared harder. “Are there, like, superstar cowboys at these things?”
Kerry laughed. “Hell yeah, there are. We’ve got infamous bulls that stockmen clamber to ride, and your run-of-the-mill cowboys who just happen to be masters of their events.”
When the handsome cowboy scanned the stands, I could’ve sworn his eyes snagged on Kerry, and my stomach got all tight with a strange emotion I didn’t want to put a name to.
“Wait a minute. Is that the guy you and Sienna were talking about?”
“Zee?” Kerry said, his eyes fixed on the man in the center of the arena.
“Tell me about him.”
“Zee—Zach—is my best friend from high school. And he’s on the road a lot, so we don’t see each other too often anymore.” Kerry watched him for a long moment, his eyes softening as he took him in. “Zee was my first crush.”
“Yeah?” I asked, and I noticed a slow flush crawling across his cheeks.
“Not that he knew it,” he said in a lower voice. “Me neither, really. But you realize stuff about yourself later on.”
“Definitely.”
He glanced at me. “After I came out, he called and texted, offering his support, and fuck, I was grateful for that.”
“I’m glad to hear you had someone else in your corner. Do you still think about him in that way?”
“Hell no. It was only a boyhood crush. My crushes are much different nowadays.”
And this time when he applied pressure, it was thigh-to-thigh as well as shoulder-to-shoulder. Holy fuck, it made me feel warm all over.
For the next two hours, we got lost in the constant action of the show. And I had never seen anything like it. It was like a cross between a sporting event and a country hoedown.
Kerry was kind enough to explain everything going on, but when Zee came on for his bucking bronco event, he fell silent, almost reverent, and I could see the tension rolling off him. And damn, that had to have been so tough—crushing on someone and not being able to tell a soul in the world.
Zee hung in there and apparently broke his own record to deafening applause.
“I swear that bronco almost broke all of Zee’s bones,” I said as we jumped up and joined in on the rousing ovation. “And now I understand why these things draw a crowd.”
“Right? And yeah, he was born for this.”
And all at once my eyesight blurred and I was transported to a different time and location. I was in the desert, sitting next to Smithy as he cleaned his sidearm and said something similar. “I was born to