Chapter Eleven
Joss arrived home from work the following Saturday night at almost midnight. It had been a long, depressing night in the ER. A full moon plus a sizzling summer’s day hadn’t boded well. She was hot and tired. And hungry. Her feet were killing her.
She wanted food, a cool shower and a deep, dreamless sleep—in that order.
Deep and dreamless… She should be so lucky. She hadn’t had that since before Troy had debauched her on his hood. Her dreams had been full of erotic images of Troy going down on her in just about every room and on every flat surface in the house.
She was grateful that Troy was away at the Big Spring rodeo tonight. She was at a low enough ebb to consider he may just be an antidote to a heinous shift and she wasn’t going there. Thankfully the man was a two and a half hour drive away.
Unfortunately, her plans went awry when she discovered Damien was awake, apparently waiting for her to come home. Once upon a time this would have filled her with motherly pleasure but he seemed tense and broody and an itch shot up her spine.
Tense, broody teen plus tired, emotional mother was bound to end well. Not.
Normally Damien would be in bed by now. He’d worked the last few nights until after ten and while he may be fifteen and insistent he didn’t need a bedtime anymore, he’d always been an early to bed, early to rise kind of child.
She missed that kid.
He sprang from the couch, hitting the mute button on the remote. The whole house was dark—Gus would have gone to bed hours ago—except for the light flickering from the television.
“You want some sweet tea, Mom?”
Joss blinked, her tired body waking quickly as her mommy senses went into overdrive. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He laughed but it was nervous. “Just made up a batch earlier because it’s been so hot today and I know how much you like it.”
“You made sweet tea?”
“Yes.”
“Since when do you make sweet tea?”
“It’s your favorite.” He shrugged. “Thought I’d do something nice.”
Five years ago she’d have ruffled her son’s hair and hugged him for being such a softie but Damien wasn’t the same kid and Joss was a lot more cynical these days.
“Okay.” She dumped her bag on the coffee table and crossed her arms, a squall of dread spinning in her stomach. “What happened?”
Damien’s face ran the gamut of emotions. Surprise, shock, hurt. Finally anger. “Jesus, Mom.” He glared at her, his mouth a bitter line. “Do you always have to think the worst of me?”
Joss shut her eyes briefly, searching for calm. His voice was wounded and it cut her to the quick. Damien was right: she was so tense about him all the time. She did tend to be suspicious about everything he said and did.
She took a deep steadying breath. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her eyes opening. The divide between them yawned wide and she wished their relationship could be like it was before his father had died and he’d turned into the devil’s spawn. “I…it’s been a long shift. I would love some tea.”
“Sit down. I’ll bring you some.”
Joss gaped a little but sank gratefully into the squishy layers of the couch. Of course she immediately thought about Troy lying shirtless and sprawled on it that first night he stayed and things that had started to relax, tensed again.
Damien re-entered with two long, tall glasses, frosty with condensation. She took hers and gulped half of it. It slipped cool and welcome down her throat but did not, unfortunately, have any effect on the heat between her legs.
“This is very good.” She relaxed back into the cushions. There was a fruity flavor to it she couldn’t pick. She was about to quiz him for the recipe when he spoke.
“I was wondering if I could…” He swallowed. “Go to a party. Tomorrow night.”
And there went her relaxation. Joss sat straighter. “What kind of party?”
“Just a bonfire thing. Out at the Maxwell farm.”
Oh no. Joss knew exactly the kind of thing that went on at bonfire parties. If it wasn’t the drinking, the pot smoking and the underage sex, it was the yahooing around fields in pickups and the inevitable fights that broke out. Not to mention the hazard of a blazing fire.
“No.”
“Mom—”
Joss thunked her almost empty glass down on the coffee table. “I said no.” She rose to her feet. She was tired; she was not going to go seven rounds with Damien over this.
“Why not?” he demanded, also rising to his feet, clearly not caring how tired she was and prepared to go as many rounds as it took.
He was taller than her these days but he was still only fifteen and her responsibility.
“Give me one good reason.”
She could give him a dozen but she’d start with the least controversial. “You start work at six Monday morning.”
He sneered in a most adult way, his braces bared. “I’m not a little kid, Mom. I can stay up late and still get up early.” He stuck out his chin. “What else you got?”
Joss sucked in a breath at his belligerence. In her state it was like a dose of accelerant to what was usually a very slow-burning fuse.
Time to go controversial.
“I don’t know, Damien. How about the underage drinking and the pot that will be there and a bunch of drunk, doped-up teenagers piling into pickups all trying to impress each other with burn outs in the fields?”
“You don’t trust me,” he yelled.
Ordinarily she’d have told him to keep his voice down so as not to wake Gus but once that man was asleep there wasn’t a lot that woke him. “You haven’t given me a lot of reason to trust you lately, have you?” she yelled back.
“God, Mom!” He gritted his teeth, sucking air in and out noisily, clearly trying to calm down. “I promise I won’t drink or do drugs or get into a car with anyone who has, okay?”
“Considering you’ve lied to me about drinking at parties before, why on earth should I believe you now?”
“Because I’m telling you—” He raised his hand oath-like. “I’m promising you I won’t.”
Yeah. Right. “You think I don’t remember what it’s like to be young, Damien?” She dropped her voice, pleading with him to try and understand. “To feel bulletproof? To do something rash and crazy without any thought to the consequences?”
“Oh right.” Damien’s eyes almost bugged out of his head at her. “So you were allowed to be young and crazy but I’m not?”
Joss refused to buy into this line of argument. “It’s my job to protect you from that stuff, Damien. I do not want you ending up like my patient tonight. A fifteen-year-old boy, just like you, who’s done untold damage to his brain and is probably going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life because he was being stupid in a car with a bunch of his drunk-ass friends.”
“God, enough with the gross medical stories already,” he snapped. “Why couldn’t you be a secretary or something?”
Joss had the absurd urge to laugh. She remembered when Damien had been so proud of what she did. “Well I’m really sorry that you got the sucky mother.”
“Please, Mom.” His voice changed. She recognized the pitch he’d used to get his way since he could talk. He’d obviously forgotten how little it worked. “I promise I won’t do anything illegal and I’ll be back by eleven.”
Joss shook her head. “I’m sorry, Damien. Not this time.”
His jaw tightened and his eyes got a familiar glint to them. “Dad would have let me.”
She shook her head, already prepared for the jab. “No, he wouldn’t have.” Andy had heard too many of her gross medical stories about partying teenagers to have been blasé about their son’s safety. “Trust me on that.”
“Yes, he would have,” Damien yelled. “You think because you had him for longer than I did that you know everything about him? I knew him too, Mom. And he knew me.”
The angst in his suddenly wobbly voice cut her in two and she took a step toward him but he held up his hand, warding her off. “He would have understood me. Man to man. I wish you’d died—” He raised his voice even further, hurling the words at her as if he could injure her with their velocity as well as their content “—instead of him.”
Joss sucked in a breath and blinked hard at the instant spring of tears to her eyes. He’d said it to her a couple of times in the last few years and it hurt every time.
“And good evening to you both.” Joss swung around, startled at the low, calm voice behind her. She hadn’t heard the front door open or Troy’s pickup. “Looks like we’ve got some hot heads in the house tonight.”
Damien turned immediately to the other man to plead his case. “Troy, can you please tell Mom I won’t end up a vegetable at this stupid bonfire party tomorrow night.”
Joss narrowed her eyes at Troy. She was prepared to eviscerate him if he so much as looked like he was going to side with Damien.
Troy held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, mate, but I’m keeping way out of this. I will say though that it may seem a bit of a drag right now but you’re real lucky to have a mother who cares what happens to you. Some people don’t get that kind of break in life.”
Joss could have kissed Troy for his answer. Damien was scowling but she was so damn relieved and happy she’d have jumped Troy for sure had they been alone. The fact he was looking all dusty and cowboy in his hat and Wranglers that sat low on his hips, not to mention his big-ass belt buckle shining in the light from the television, only reinforced this idea.
Not even his splinted left arm ruined his casual sexuality.
“Oh come on,” Damien pleaded. “You ride bulls for a living. I just want to go to one lousy party.”
Joss dragged her head out of Troy’s jeans and back to the argument. She knew the only real way to tackle teenage boys was to get down to their level. And what was the one thing that seemed to occupy their mind the most?
Girls.
Dates. Kissing. Sex.
Sometimes, you just had to hit them where it hurt. She turned to Damien. “You do know that genitals burn just as well as the rest of the body, right?”
Damien’s face screwed up. “Mom! Jeez.”
Joss ignored him. “People always think of arms and legs getting burned in these accidents, maybe faces. But never their genitals. Falling into a fire can make a big mess down there. Big mess. It can even burn it completely off. No plastic surgeon or medication in the world will ever get it right again.”
She saw Troy wince in her peripheral vision at her vivid description.
“God, Mom.” Damien shook his head in disgust at her casual use of grotesque medical detail. “You keep on at me at finding some kids from school to hang out with and when I do you go all horror-story-doctor on me. In case it’s escaped your attention, there’s nothing else to do around this shit-box town.”
“You could come to Big Spring with me tomorrow night.”
Joss had been prepared to rattle off a dozen things Damien could be doing on a Sunday night, including having some friends over to their place—where there would be no booze, drugs or bonfires—but Troy’s offer pulled her up short. They both turned to stare at him.
Damien blinked. “Really?”
“Sure.” Troy nodded. “We can watch the show from the bleachers then I can take you back so you can meet the cowboys. I can even take you out to the bulls if you want.”
Damien turned to her, no trace of the anger from earlier, or the belligerence. He looked five years old again the day she and Andy had taken him to Disneyland, stars shining bright in his eyes. “Can I, Mom?”
“Uh…sure.” She couldn’t quite believe how quickly the conversation had turned around but she was immensely grateful to Troy for offering. She glanced at him. “He won’t be any bother?”
“Nah.” Troy shook his head definitively. “It’ll be fun hanging out together—right, mate?”
“It’ll be awesome,” Damien said, nodding like a bobble head doll.
“All right then, we leave at three.”
Damien grinned like a loon at Troy then loped over to his mother and gave her a kiss on the cheek like he hadn’t just cut her heart out and stomped on it. “Sorry, Mom,” he whispered hugging her tight before letting her go. “I’d better go to bed.”
He shot Troy a big smile and was out of the room in a matter of seconds. Joss stared after him. Love for her son warring with anxiety for him.
“Are you okay?”
Joss turned at the soft enquiry to find Troy had moved closer. Concern jaded his green eyes. “Yes.” She nodded. “Thank you for asking. And for offering to take Damien with you tomorrow night.”
“He didn’t mean what he said, you know.”
A lump the size of Texas lodged in her throat as Troy’s gaze locked with hers. The fact he understood how wounding Damien’s words were made her want to jump him even more. “I know.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth for a long slow beat and for a crazy moment, Joss thought he was going to lean across and kiss her.
For an even crazier moment she wanted him to.
“Well anyway…” He cleared his throat and dragged his gaze back to hers. “Better hit the sack myself.”
She nodded but he didn’t move and Joss held her breath.
One beat. Two. Three. She was a nanosecond off grabbing his belt buckle and yanking him closer when he touched the brim of his hat in farewell, stepped around her and walked out of the room.
Air left Joss’s lungs in a noisy stream. She hoped like hell Troy locked his door tonight because she owed him big time for what he’d just done for her.
And she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t go and offer him payment in flesh.
*
Damien wrinkled his nose. “Man, it stinks round here.”
Troy laughed. Such a city kid. He even wore the hat Troy had purchased him at one of the merchandising stalls like a city slicker. “Yeah, it’s a bit of an acquired aroma.”
He remembered when he’d first been in cattle yards as an angry sixteen-year-old. The reek had pissed him off even more, a fact that had slid right off Martin Forrester’s back. Troy had preferred the chemical harshness of city smog and diesel fumes to the more earthy odors produced by a herd of bulls and he’d bitched and moaned about it endlessly.
He didn’t remember when it had all changed, when the pungent scent of bulls had gone from offensive to invigorating. When it had stopped representing oppression and started to smell like freedom.
He sucked in a huge lungful now as they walked among the temporary yards constructed to house the bulls for the weekend’s rodeo. The smell of beast and sweat and dung and hay and sawdust filled him up and he smiled.
Fucking beautiful.
Damien stopped at a pen and eyed a gray-speckled bull with a white face. The name plate announced him as Two Up. “They’re big.”
“Yep. Mean too. Although this fella isn’t full grown yet. The biggest ones can get up to a ton.”
“Troy Jensen? Is that you?”
Troy turned and smiled at the woman heading in his direction. Rowan Harper. She worked for her father who was one of the biggest stock contractors in the business. They provided beasts for all levels of the circuit. “Hey, Ro.”
“As I live and breathe.”
She hugged him tight and Troy let her. She was short and petite with shoulder-length brown hair and one of those faces that looked younger than her twenty-four years. Ro would no doubt still look like a teenager when she was ninety.
She was also one of the few women he’d crossed paths with since he’d become a professional bull rider who’d been stubbornly resistant to his charms. He’d certainly given it a red-hot crack but she’d stuck him firmly in the friend zone.
“Who you got here?” she asked, smiling at Damien.
Damien blinked at the full-wattage smile and Troy smothered one of this own. “This is the son of a…friend of mine—Damien Garrity. Damien, this is Ro. Her dad is one of the stock contractors and what she doesn’t know about bulls isn’t worth knowing.”
Ro’s eyes gleamed with speculation, picking up on his slight hesitation during the introduction but thankfully not pressing. She stuck out her hand and Damien shook it on autopilot.
“Damn straight,” she agreed, grinning at Damien. “And we at Harper’s breed the biggest, baddest bulls around.”
Damien grunted something unintelligible, staring at Ro like she was Miss America. Not that he could blame him. Ro might have hidden her figure beneath baggy jeans and men’s shirts several sizes too big for her, but she had a face that could render a man mute.
“I heard about your elbow.” Ro tapped the splint. “How long you out for?”
“I’ll be at Lubbock in two weeks.”
“It must be killing you just to sit there and watch.”
Troy smiled. “I have been tempted to rip this damn thing off and to hell with it.” Although, to be fair, he’d been ably distracted by the no-sex he and Joss Garrity were having.
“Yeah, I figured.” She winked at Damien. “He starts to get antsy tonight about competing, you come find me. I know some guys who’ll have him trussed up like a turkey, quick as you can blink.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She laughed and patted his shoulder. “You want me to show you around?”
Damien’s face lit up. “Yes please.”
Ro gave them the tour and, for a kid who’d complained about the smell, Damien lapped it all up, asking a bunch of questions. By the time they’d seen all the bulls he was clearly smitten and not just with Ro.
Someone called her name and she acknowledged them with a wave and a quick, “Give me a minute.” She turned back to Damien and Troy. “Okay, gotta go. Nice to meet you, Damien and you—” She poked Troy in the chest. “Win some rides, cowboy; want to see you back in the extreme comp.”
Troy saluted her. “Tucson. I’ll be back at Tucson, mark my words.”
*
They moved to the stadium after that. It was a lot smaller than the extreme stadiums but it was no less intense, the fan base no less rabid. There was a reason why bull riding was the fastest growing sport in the country—people loved it!
Damien gawked around him like a kid in a candy store. He stared at the women, cheered at the pyrotechnics and whooped as each bull exploded out of the chute with a rider on its back. He was on his feet for the first bull rider who made it to eight seconds along with the rest of the crowd.
“This shit is crazy,” he yelled at Troy over the noise of the crowd.
Troy didn’t think his mother would approve of his language but he wasn’t the kid’s father. Or his conscience. He laughed. “Why do you think I do it?”
Two hours of pure adrenaline-fueled entertainment later and Damien was as high as a kite. Not even one of the bull riders leaving with a busted femur dented his enthusiasm.
“You want to meet some of the guys?” Troy asked as the stadium cleared out.
“Hell yeah.”