“Why does Tim have a horse?” Wes opened his own bottle, which foamed over the top and onto his pants before he took a long pull.
“Not Tim. Liv.”
“Liv has your horse?” Wes wiped the back of his hand across his mustache, clearing it of foam. “Quiet Liv Bailey? I didn’t even know she rode.”
“She rides,” Matt muttered. Shae had once told him that Liv was actually an accomplished rider, but lacked the drive to be a real competitor. Funny words from a girl who was mainly interested in competing in the queen contests and not in the events.
Wes leaned back against the side of the truck. “How’d she end up with your animal? Isn’t she living in Billings?”
“She’s on the ranch right now, and I have no idea how she ended up with him.”
Wes scratched the side of his head. “She and Trena weren’t friends or anything, were they?”
Matt snorted. “As far as I know they weren’t.” Trena and Liv had traveled in different circles. Way different circles. Almost to the point of being on different planets.
Trena had moved to Dillon at the beginning of their senior year, a California transplant. Blonde. Beautiful. Not a rural bone in her body. She’d arrived with the kind of splash that would have sent shy Liv running for cover, instantly making the girls jealous and the guys pant. It’d taken her almost a nanosecond to hook up with the king of the football team, Russell Marshall.
Matt had been doing his damnedest to pass his classes and stay on the rodeo team, thus the tutoring sessions with Liv, and hadn’t made a play for her back then. He’d been more focused on his own kind—rodeo girls such as Liv’s stepsister, Shae—and that had remained his focus until his early twenties when he and Trena had run into each other again when he’d come back to Dillon during the hiatus after the NFR. They’d clicked in a big way, and the next thing he knew, they were married. Happily. For a while.
Trena had sworn that she wouldn’t mind going on the road with him, but the reality, even with a state-of-the-art live-in trailer, had been too much for her. She’d wanted to rent motel rooms, eat out, fly everywhere. Spend money as fast as he made it. He made good money, too, but not enough to spend like that.
The next year she didn’t go on the road with him. That had spelled the beginning of the end, although Matt hadn’t known it at the time.
The gate banged shut behind them and a few seconds later a cowboy Matt didn’t know rode by. He nodded at Wes, who nodded back.
“There’s a get-together later tonight at the Lion’s Den,” Wes said. “We’re making some plans for the Fourth of July rodeo.”
“I have to get home,” Matt said. “I’m, uh, babysitting.”
Wes coughed. “You?”
“Me. For Willa’s kid.”
“Does he rope?”
“He loads the dishwasher.”
“That’s a handy talent,” Wes said.
“Even if I wasn’t taking care of the kid,” Matt said, “I’m not feeling all that social right now.” He set the bottle on the edge of the truck bed. “I thought I was, but...I shouldn’t have come down here yet.”
“So what are your plans?” Wes asked quietly. “Now that you’re back in the area.”
“My plans are to heal my knee in time for the Bitterroot Challenge.”
Wes sent him a dubious look. “Is that possible?”
A twist of the knife. “I won’t know unless I try.”
“That’s right,” Wes said. “You gotta try.”
“I’ve seen guys come back from worse injuries than this,” Matt said, not liking how defensive he sounded.
“Me, too.”
Matt swallowed the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash can near the fence. “I’ve seen guys come back from broken backs and climb back up on a bull again.”
“You kinda gotta wonder if they got kicked in the head one too many times.”
“You’re missing the point,” Matt said.
Wes smiled from beneath his mustache and took another drink of his beer. “Other than healing, what are your plans?”
To rodeo for another five years. He was thirty, single and not ready to settle down. When he did settle down, it might not even be in Dillon. His mother would hate that, but sometimes he thought it would be best if he didn’t settle too close to his dad.
“And I mean other than rodeo.”
“I don’t know.”
“You could start a babysitting business.”
“I could punch you in the face,” Matt said conversationally and Wes smiled.