“How’d you get this scar?” she asked.
“A friendly parting gift from a not-so-friendly bull who taught me that I should just stay in school. Cowboy Buster. His reputation preceded him.”
“Cowboy Buster? That was the bull’s name?”
“Is. That bad boy’s a mean sucker, and only a few riders have bested him.”
Her finger swirled it. “Were you one of them?”
He barked a laugh. “Hell no. I only made it two seconds before he flung me around like a wash rag. All I remember is that high-pitched whine of feedback through an amplifier. One of the bullfighters was banging the mic on the rail to distract him. Didn’t make a damn bit of difference, just pissed him off more.”
Her swirling stopped, and her grip tightened a degree. It was almost imperceptible, but his senses were on such high alert while his smaller bull rider saluted him from his jeans, waiting to be released out the chute, that he noticed it. And it cast hope on the doubt she’d introduced earlier. The incident with Cowboy Buster was in the past, and yet she still felt worried for him, hearing it retold.
“How’d you get away?”
“He gored me on his cowboy catcher, just below my safety vest. It hurt a lot less than one would think—because the pain was so blinding, I went into shock. I passed out shortly after that. The cowboys roped him while the bullfighters dragged me away. Tossed me on a waiting stretcher and rushed me to the hospital.”
“My God…” She looked up at him, concern darkening her eyes. “How bad was it?”
He shrugged. “I got lucky. He didn’t pierce anything vital. I went into surgery to get a repair job, took some intense antibiotics, and a week later I was walking away. It could have ended up so much worse. My momma once told me I’d get a reality check. That was the first one. Though I’m a slow learner. One reality check wasn’t enough.”
“What were the others?”
He looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Your mom sounds like she was a wise woman,” she continued, gently coaxing him to talk.
He remained silent, then took her hands in his, squeezing them as his thumbs caressed her knuckles. “My momma was a lot of things. And I didn’t appreciate it until it was too late.”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath, as if he was about to enter a confessional, but still couldn’t speak. Rose harbored bitterness over losing her mother so young. Why would she want to hear about his? But she seemed genuinely concerned, and that sympathy she’d shown him last night, telling him he should talk about her, softened her eyes as she gazed at him.
“You can talk about her, Toby. I want to hear.”
Her encouragement finally dislodged the cork keeping the flood at bay.
“I came home after the accident and spent a year healing up—more than just my wound, ’cause my pride was more busted than my body, but my dad was riding my back so hard about taking over the ranch since my brothers had refused, I hightailed it back to college, then grad school at A&M, then bridged my master’s into a doctorate. It seemed like the only thing I could do that my pops wouldn’t get up in arms about. He got tuition incentives for being an alumnus there, and that man pinched pennies. Rich people don’t stay rich by wasting their dollars, but man, he’d forked out for Ty’s Harvard law degree—hoping Ty would use his legal know-how to improve the cattle business.
“He probably would have forked out for Trav’s medical degrees, too, had Travis let him, but my brothers all inherited the stubborn gene, and Travis didn’t want the old man dictating his life, so he refused any money. Nothing I wanted to do resonated with my dad. He’d argue everything. Always made me wonder if he didn’t think I was as good of an investment.
“When my dad died three years ago, I finished my degree, took an unpaid internship at a ranch up in the panhandle studying cattle husbandry ’cause I was still bitter and wasn’t ready to come home yet. I took a job there after that. Until Travis—the one sulking in that photo—emailed me about Momma. Travis doesn’t talk much anymore. He’s down in San Antone, finally finishing his orthopedics residency. He was deployed to Afghanistan fourteen years ago and came home fucked up from it. Took him a while to heal up from his injuries, a lot of them up here.” Toby tapped his head. “Getting a long email from him finally got my attention.”
“What happened?” Rose asked, as if she feared she already knew his answer would be tragic, and her gentle caressing started anew.
He swallowed hard. “She died a few months later. Just a year ago. The big C. Ate her liver till there was nothing left to eat, metastasized to her other organs. Chemo was working…until it wasn’t. I missed most of it, and dammit, she never told me, ’cause she didn’t want me to worry.” His voice wavered. Shit, get it together, man. “I left it on her to run a ranch when she was sick, without even knowing it. I left it on Travis with his issues and Tyler with his kids, all the way from his farm in Nacogdoches, to come back and forth to be her power of attorney. I ignored their messages that I should come home, their texts that they needed to talk to me in person because I was such a selfish dick, when through it all she was the only one who ever propped me up and believed in me and told me I was good enough the way I was. And I failed her.”
“I’m so sorry, Toby,” Rose whispered, squeezing his hand.
He allowed her to give him affection for a moment but then finally pulled away. His eyes were reddening again like an idiot, and he blew out a harsh exhale to get it to-freaking-gether. “Yeah, well, life ain’t all shits and grins. Sometimes it’s just shit. You pull your bootstraps up and get on with it. Ain’t much else you can do.”