It was kind of the entire point of team roping.
* * *
Maddox couldn’t help watching the emotions flicker across Harlow’s face. They changed so quickly as she’d demonstrated how to form a lasso and how to throw it, from concentration to annoyance aimed at him. Followed by a flicker of happiness as soon as he’d shown interest in the mechanics of what she was trying to teach him.
“Okay, so I make the loopy thing…?”
“You’re holding it in the wrong place.” Harlow stepped closer, and as she readjusted his grip on the rope, he studied the freckles on the bridge of her nose. They drew his focus downward, to unique, heart-shaped lips that were thin on top and plump on the bottom.
Maddox’s fingers twitched with the urge to withdraw the pencil he always had in his pocket and sketch them. Unfortunately, his pad was in his room, hidden away from prying eyes.
“Are you payin’ attention?” Harlow asked, and he nodded, even though he was paying attention to all the wrong things.
Or maybe they were all the right things.
When Brady announced they’d be training for the local rodeo, Maddox had thought Kill me now. The last thing he wanted to do was ride horses and chase after cows, much less put on a display for an audience full of strangers.
His instructor pulled at the rope, making the loop bigger. “Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that it’s even more fun than it looks.”
Give him a souped-up motorcycle and a busy road, and he could show the girl across from him what fun truly was.
Not that Harlow would get on the back of his bike, and she was far from his type, anyway. There was something adorable about her, though, like a happy chipmunk who’d found a discarded Cheeto.
For a blissful second, Maddox hadn’t even realized where the memory of the chipmunk had come from, but the instant it hit him, it punched him in the gut.
Camping with his mom. Back when he had one of those. Those had been the simpler days, when he’d thought her spur-of-the-moment adventures were fun instead of a way to avoid people to whom she owed money. Before he was old enough to determine that her being high was what led to poorly planned trips without much to eat.
The stupid squeeze in his heart intensified, so he gritted his teeth and dragged the rope through his palm, focusing on the way the rough fibers scraped his skin. Remembering what it felt like to be loved—even in his mother’s fleeting lucid moments—to have a home and a family, wasn’t good for him. Happy memories made reality harsher, and how could you get harsher than no motorcycle, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, away from his job and his friends and his semblance of what family meant nowadays?
“You okay?” Harlow asked, and with her all up in his grill, he noticed the contrast between the caramel-and-honey-colored strands in her loose braid. She looked as if some fairy had perfectly highlighted her hair while she’d been sleeping in the forest—which she probably did.
“I’m fine. I mean, I could use a little breathing room.” He lifted the lasso the way she’d demoed the move. “Or did you want me to smack you in the head with the rope?”
Her face fell, and he felt like the ass that he was. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she’d turned away, and it was for the best. This was just another temporary situation with temporary people.
Not sure why the judge thought it would convince him to magically change his ways.
He’d get through it like he’d gotten through the other shitty stops forced upon him. Head down, emotional tap turned off, and minimal engagement as he counted down the days.
Maddox began to swing the lasso again, but shouts cut through his iffy concentration. A calf was charging toward him and Harlow.
Aiden and the cute blond he was always with were hot on its swinging brown tail.
“Stop him,” the blond shrieked, and Maddox dropped the rope and lunged, tackling the calf to the ground.
It bellowed and mooed, and Maddox craned his neck to check if the cow was okay—he’d wanted to stop it, not hurt it. The calf licked his hand, leaving enough saliva for a hundred envelopes, and seeing no other option, Maddox pulled a face as he wiped the hand on his jeans.
Aiden slid a rope around the calf’s head and urged it to its feet. Then he stood there as if he were simply taking his cow-puppy for a walk.
When Maddox pushed to his feet, three pair of eyes were trained on him. Wide, surprised eyes. Harlow’s mouth also hung open a few inches.
“What?” he snapped, despite telling himself he wasn’t going to lash out at her anymore. It was hard to do when people gaped at you like you had three heads. Was cow saliva like a zombie bite? Would he start mooing soon?
Okay, that’s the stupidest thought I’ve ever had.
But maybe there was a disease. Mad cow disease—he’d heard something about that before.
“How in tarnation did you tackle that calf so fast?” Harlow asked.
His first instinct was to mock her for saying how in tarnation, but he managed to bite the comment back. There had to be some middle ground between asshole and disengaged. “Was that impressive?”
“I mean, throw up your hands to signal the judge”—Harlow flung up her arms to demonstrate—“and we’d have our competition in the bag, lickety-split.”
Maddox blinked at her. “I don’t understand half of what you say.”
“In the rodeo? Calf roping?” The tilt of her head conveyed how dense she thought he was being, so he ran with the smart-assness.
“Okay, now I don’t understand any of what you say.”
“I’ve only been doing this a short while,” the blond said, “but that was fast.” She looked to Aiden for confirmation, and he nodded.
Harlow placed her hand on Maddox’s elbow, and in his determination not to think weird, pussy thoughts about fairies and her hair, he accidentally concentrated on her brown eyes. The rim around her iris was darker than the rest, and were her pupils dilating in time with his quickening pulse?
“Were you a wrestler or somethin’?” she asked.
“Or something.” Maddox wiped the back of his hand on his pants again. It still felt sticky. “My little br—” He quickly switched gears, because he’d just ruled against happy memories, and the foster placement he’d had during his freshman year, when there’d been that almost family definitely applied. It was too late to completely avoid the subject, but brother wasn’t the right word.
Not anymore.
A sharp pain radiated through his chest, the fissure that’d formed in his heart a few years ago shuddering. “This little dude at one of my foster homes used to sprint out the door and be halfway out the gate of the front yard if anyone ever turned their back on him. It was my job to catch the tiny fugitive before he reached the street.”