Ride the River by Patricia McLinn

Author:Patricia McLinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
ISBN: 9781944126193
Publisher: Craig Place Books
Published: 2017-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

He could have let this silence go on. Instead, he heard words coming out of him. Words he hadn’t known were coming.

“You want to know why I did it this way? Going by Bill. Not telling Dad and Sue. Not telling other folks. It’s because at the start I knew I wasn’t ready for the big time. Might never be ready for it again. And I wanted to find out one way or the other without brass bands and fireworks all over the place. You said I didn’t want the spotlight on me and you were right. You can say that makes me a—”

“I don’t blame you.”

“—stiff-necked, stubborn— What?”

“I don’t blame you. That means,” she said with saintly patience that had one side of his mouth quirking up, “that I understand why you didn’t want all the attention a comeback by Chapin Johnson would stir up.”

“You sure weren’t understanding about it in Park.”

She turned her head away like she might have spotted something out the side window, though he didn’t see anything there except her reflection.

“Have you found out?” she asked.

He snorted. “Yet to finish in the money. Those results are pretty obvious, don’t you think?”

She turned back to him. “No. I don’t think. Because they’re not the answer to the question you really have — if you can make it to the big time again.”

He snorted. “How about if I can be decent again.”

“You know with time you’ll be better than that. You’re avoiding the real question. Have you found out?”

This time he said it straight out. “Yeah, I have.”

Her next question was there in her eyes.

He hadn’t even said the words to himself, but he had to answer her. “I can get back to the big time.”

Her breath came out in a soft “ah.”

“I can feel it. The rhythm, the … the knowing. The flow, I guess you’d call it. It’s starting to come with this hand.” He opened his left hand, looking at it a moment, before returning it to the steering wheel. “It’ll come.”

“As long as you can stay on the circuit and keep competing.”

“Yeah. As long as I can do that.”

*

Why the hell hadn’t he gone on to Bardville?

Why hadn’t they?

It was Monday morning and four of them — Chapin, Tate, Adam, and Goose — were hanging around like they were going to take up permanent residence in Sherman. She hadn’t seen Lindy, though the rumor was that she’d spent all her free time with that local roper.

Tate and Goose had the best reason to still be here, since they’d competed in the last go-round last night.

Chapin had wrapped up around sunset, so maybe he’d decided to wait to have daylight for the trip east across the Big Horn Basin, then winding up and over and down the Big Horn Mountains to reach Bardville.

But Adam had finished in the early afternoon. With the other two preparing to compete, she’d tailed him the short distance to the ratty motel where he was staying.

That was another weird thing.

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