Chute Yeah (The Valentine Boys 3)

“I’m going to have to go to that same food truck again on the way out,” I said. “This is so good.”

“I hate you,” Mack mumbled from my side.

I reached into my oversized purse and produced my bottle of beer that I’d snuck in, then promptly twisted the top off and took a swig.

It was when I had it tilted up to my mouth and I was looking around the arena that I saw him.

He was directly below us, about twenty feet away, and he was standing on the side of the paddocks looking down into the gates that were below. That was where I could see a bull angrily bucking the metal fencing that penned him in.

But he wasn’t looking at the bull. He was staring directly at me.

I pulled the beer bottle away and looked down at my plate, all of a sudden very aware of how I looked pigging out on beer and funnel cakes.

When I looked back up, it was to still see Banks staring at me with a look of confusion in his eyes.

“Looks like someone knows you’re here,” Mack said.

I grumbled out a ‘fuck off’ and kept eating, trying to look anywhere but at Banks.

Mack laughed at my obvious discomfort, and it took everything I had not to smack him upside the head with my beer bottle.

I polished off the last bite of my funnel cake, then licked my fingers as I stood.

“I’m going to run to the potty,” I said airily. “Don’t drink my beer.”

Mack scoffed. “Like I’d drink that pussy beer.”

I grinned and started back down the bleachers, heading straight for the bathrooms.

Luckily, with Mack being in the press, he got to use the special bathrooms for the rodeo officials, press, and athletes. All the normal peons like me had to use the regular porta-potties at the entry to the fields.

Luckily, I’d snatched Mack’s press pass before I’d headed down.

Sighing happily at my use of the facilities in record time, I was smiling when I exited the bathroom. That smile quickly fell off my face when I ran into Banks, who was pinning some girl to the wall right outside the bathroom.

“Listen,” I heard him saying. “I get done tonight about…”

His voice trailed off as he looked over the girl’s shoulder and saw me standing there trying to get out of the bathroom.

Out of habit, he hooked the girl around the waist and moved her over.

I gratefully skirted around them, hoping to be anywhere but there at that moment.

I didn’t know why I was so hurt by seeing him with another girl, but I wasn’t comfortable with the feeling.

I also wasn’t sure that I wanted to be here anymore—well, more so now after I didn’t already want to be here.

Shit.

With nothing else to do, I got in line for another funnel cake and Coke, hoping to drown my sorrows in fried food.

I was rounding the corner of the food truck when I nearly dropped my food straight down Banks’ chest.

“Whoa.” He settled my food. “Sorry.”

I grumbled something under my breath and went to skirt around him, but he stopped me by hooking his finger in one of my belt loops.

And, since I loved my pants like I did, I stopped and turned, regarding him with barely concealed hostility.

“What?” I asked.

He let me go when he knew that he’d gotten my attention.

“I just wanted to say…”

The girl from the bathroom came up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pillowing her head on his perfect chest.

I gritted my teeth and stared at them like I didn’t have a care in the world.

“Yes?” I pushed impatiently. “You stopped me because…”

I knew the second that he decided that he was going to go there—back all those years ago when he broke my heart and humiliated me all at once.

“Listen, Cray-Cray,” Banks said. “I wanted to clear the air. It’s really uncomfortable running into you as much as I do now. Your hostility comes off loud and clear, and I just want you to know that I’m not the same person I was in high school. I’m sorry. I should’ve thought that day through a little better. But if I had gotten caught, I would’ve been suspended. And my dad would’ve literally kicked my ass. I couldn’t have gotten suspended.”

I hated that name with a passion.

Cray-Cray.

That was what they called me in high school. That was the name that’d been whispered in my ear when…

I viciously cut that thought off and turned my haunted eyes to Banks.

I hadn’t meant to let him see the hurt and the pain, but ‘Cray-Cray’ was the one name that really sent me into a tailspin.

“It’s fine,” I lied. “What’s done is done. I’ll let it go.”

Banks narrowed his eyes.

“Why are you being so agreeable?” he asked suddenly. “I thought for sure you were going to give me more shit.”