The Truth
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next
heart-poundingly sexy novel in Heather Slade’s
Cowboys of Crested Butte Series,
available in February,
Win Me Over
Want more from Heather Slade?
Keep reading for a short excerpt from
The Promise,
the first book in
the Butler Ranch series.
Win Me Over
Present Day
The bull he’d gotten on the night before wasn’t just a rank bucker, he was mean as all get out. There wasn’t anywhere on his body that Bullet didn’t hurt.
His ribs still ached from getting under one a few months ago, and if the weather was cold, it hurt to breathe. His twenty-five-year-old body felt more as though it was forty, or sixty.
It didn’t help that he was back in Oklahoma, or that he’d gotten drunk the night before simply because he didn’t want to face the shitstorm his life was becoming. Maybe that’s why his body hurt so badly, because it was being pulled in so many directions.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in Colorado, living his dream. Instead, he’d gotten another call from his mother-in-law, telling him to get “home” because his baby needed him. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the same message from her, and each time, he felt worse than the time before, because it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
They were supposed to be a family. Every few weeks, he and his wife would try to work things out between them. Each time, it ended worse than the previous.
The last one had been so bad he knew there wouldn’t be a next time. As he held his baby boy in his arms, the child’s mother had attacked him. And she’d done it in front of her entire family.
She was sick—bipolar disorder. If she’d just take her medicine, none of this would happen. But she refused. The slightest thing could set her off, and he never knew what, or when, it would be.
Last night, when he heard the local stock contractor was bucking bulls, he knew he had to get on one. Had to. Riding bulls was in his blood. He thought about it all the time, even dreamed about it.
His sister called it “adrenaline addiction,” but it wasn’t criticism. She was the only one in his family who understood. Even though Lyric had never tried to ride a bull, or a bronc, or even barrel-raced, no one understood rodeo better.
She was the founder of RodeoChat, a social-media-based outlet for rodeo news. Lyric managed to keep her fi
nger on the pulse of rodeo around the world. She knew the schedules, statistics, and habits of the cowboys and cowgirls who competed across the field in every event. Since its founding, Lyric had interviewed hundreds of them for her weekly Twitterviews and YouTube videos.
That’s why she understood. When he’d tried to explain how he felt to their parents, Lyric had backed him up. In fact, she’d compared it to their dad’s life.
“You know how it feels,” she’d told him, “to be on stage, in front of thousands of people. It’s the same thing for Bullet, just a different thing drivin’ it.”
As the lead singer of Satin, one of the most successful international heavy-metal rock bands, Nate Simmons was no stranger to adrenaline addiction.
“Thousands of people aren’t threatening to kill me when I’m on stage, that’s the difference,” his dad had countered Lyric’s argument.
His father wasn’t wrong. Every time Bullet got on the back of a bull, he knew he could die. It was that simple. Eight seconds. That’s what it took. If he could stay on the back of the bull for eight seconds, he’d conquer both the beast and himself.
His mother shook her head, that day, and looked between him and his father. “Neither of you will ever grow up.”