Dare . . . a Teaser

I opened up book five in the Crested Butte Cowboy series today. I have no time to write, but it's calling me anyway.  I started this book on February 20, and haven't looked at it since. I didn't get very far . . . only two pages, but as I read it that familiar feeling came over me. Wow, I thought to myself, I'm really gonna love this book. So here you go . . . it isn't much at all, but isn't that what a tease is supposed to be?

The bull he’d gotten on the night before wasn’t just a rank bucker, he was mean as all get out. There wasn’t anywhere on his body that Bullet didn’t hurt.  

His ribs still hurt from getting under one a few months ago, and if the weather was cold, it hurt to breathe. His twenty-four-year-old body felt more like it was forty, or sixty.  

It didn’t help that he was back in Oklahoma, or that he’d gotten drunk the night before, simply because he didn’t want to face the shitstorm his life was becoming. Maybe that’s why his body hurt so badly, because it was being pulled in so many directions. 

He wasn’t supposed to be here; he was supposed to be in Colorado, living his dream. He came to expect the calls from his mother-in-law, telling him he to get “home,” because his baby needed him. Each time it made him feel worse than the time before, because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. They were supposed to be a family. Every few weeks, they’d try again. Each time it ended worse than the time before. The last time was so bad, he knew there wouldn’t be a next time. As he held his baby boy in his arms, the child’s mother attacked him. And she did it in front of her entire family.  

She was sick. If she’d just take her medicine, none of this would happen. But she refused. The slightest thing could set her off, and he never knew what it would be.  

He’d been in Oklahoma four days when he heard a local stock contractor was bucking bulls. He had to get on one. Had to. Riding bulls was in his blood. He thought about it all the time, even dreamt about it.  

His sister called it an adrenaline-addiction, but it wasn’t criticism. She was about the only one in his family who understood. Even though Lyric hadn’t ever tried to ride a bull, or a bronc, or even barrel-raced, no one seemed to understand rodeo better than she did. 

She was the founder of RodeoChat, a social-media-based outlet for rodeo news. Lyric managed to keep her finger on the pulse of rodeo around the world. She knew the schedules, statistics, and habits of the cowboys and cowgirls who competed across the field in every event. Since it’s founding, Lyric had interviewed hundreds of them for her weekly Twitterviews and YouTube videos.  

That’s why she understood. When he tried to explain how he felt to their parents, Lyric backed him up. In fact, she compared it to their dad’s life.“You know how it feels,” she told him. “To be on stage, in front of thousands of people. It’s the same thing for Bullet, just a different thing drivin’ it.” 

“Thousands of people aren’t threatening to kill me, that’s the difference.” 

Every time Bullet got on the back of a bull, he knew he could die. It was that simple. Eight seconds. That’s what it took. If he could stay on the back of that bull for eight seconds, he’d conquer both the beast and himself. 

Their mother shook her head and looked between him and his father. “Neither of you will ever grow up.”