The Longest Ride

gate behind her and returned to her side.

He kept Horse at a slow but steady walk, and Demon was content to walk beside him without any work at all on her part. They crossed the drive and veered onto a path that skirted the last row of Christmas trees.

The scent of evergreen was stronger here, reminding her of the holidays. As she gradually grew used to the rhythm of the horse’s gait, she felt small weights lifting from her body and her breathing returning to normal.

The far end of the grove gave way to a thin strand of forest, maybe a football field wide. The horses picked their way through an overgrown trail, almost on autopilot, uphill and then downhill, winding deeper into an untamed world. Behind them, the ranch slowly drifted from view, gradually making her feel as if she were in a distant land.

Luke was content to leave her alone with her thoughts as they made their way deeper into the trees. Dog ran ahead, nose to the ground, vanishing and reappearing as he veered this way and that. She ducked beneath a low-hanging branch and watched from the corner of her eye as Luke leaned to avoid another, the ground becoming rockier and densely carpeted. Thickets of blackberries and holly bushes sprouted in clumps, hugging the moss-covered trunks of oak trees. Squirrels darted along the branches of hickory trees, chattering a warning, while shafts of fractured sunlight cut through the foliage, lending her surroundings a dreamlike quality.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Sophia said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.

Luke turned in his saddle. “I was hoping you’d like it.”

“Is this your land, too?”

“Some of it. We share it with a neighboring ranch. It acts as a windbreak and property border.”

“Do you ride out here often?”

“I used to. But lately, I’m only out here when one of the fences is broken. Sometimes, the cattle wander out this way.”

“And here I was, thinking this is something you do with all the girls.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never brought a girl out here.”

“Why not?”

“I just never thought of it, I guess.”

He seemed as surprised by the realization as she was. Dog trotted up, checked to make sure they were okay, then wandered off again. “So tell me about this old girlfriend. Angie, was it?”

He shifted slightly, no doubt surprised that she remembered. “There’s not really much to tell. Like I told you, it was just a high school thing.”

“Why did it end?”

He seemed to reflect on the question before answering. “I went on the tour the week after I graduated from high school,” he said. “Back then, I couldn’t afford to fly to the events, so I was on the road an awful lot. I’d leave on Thursday and wouldn’t get home until Monday or Tuesday. Some weeks, I never made it home at all, and I don’t blame her for wanting something different. Especially since it wasn’t likely to change.”

She digested this. “So how does it work?” she asked, shifting in her saddle. “If you want to be a bull rider, I mean? What do you have to do to get into it?”

“There’s not much to it, really,” he answered. “You buy your card with the PBR —”

“PBR?” she asked, cutting him off.

“Professional Bull Riders,” he said. “They run the events. Basically, you sign up and pay your entry fee. When you get to the event, you draw a bull and they let you ride.”

“You mean anyone can do it? Like if I had a brother and he decided that he wanted to start riding tomorrow, he could?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s ridiculous. What if someone has no experience at all?”

“Then they’d probably get hurt.”

“Ya think?”

He grinned and scratched under the brim of his hat. “It’s always been like that. In rodeo, most of the prize money comes from the competitors themselves. Which means that people who are good at it like it when the other riders aren’t so good. It means they have a better chance to walk away from an event with cash in their pocket.”

“That seems kind of heartless.”

“How else would you do it? You can practice all you want, but there’s only one way to know whether you can ride and that’s to actually try it.”

Thinking back, she wondered how many of the riders last night were first timers. “Okay, someone enters an event and let’s say he’s like you and he happens to win. What happens next?”

He shrugged. “Bull riding is a little different than traditional rodeo. Bull riders have