Two Shots Down (Battle of the Bulls Book 1)

by T. S. Joyce

  Cheyenne slipped her hand into Two Shots Down’s, and he squeezed it. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand yet? He was going to make sure everything was all right.

  Six seconds, and the rider went sailing through the air. Only three riders had stayed on for eight seconds tonight. Forty-three even was his score. Two Shots was higher. He never counted his eggs before they hatched, though, so he waited for the official ranks to go up on the big screen.

  The bull scores mattered most to them. Two Shots’ phone vibrated in his pocket, and as the scores went up, he grinned at a text from Brick.

  I did the math. You did it again, boy. Number two bull now. So damn proud of you. Your momma’s freaking out. We got a number two bull in the family!!! Hell yeah!

  He showed Cheyenne because it felt right to share with her. He showed her the selfie Brick sent of him and Mom in their Team Two shirts as well, and her smile lit him up from the inside out.

  Ranks were up.

  Quickdraw Slow Burn - #1

  Two Shots Down - #2

  Dead of Winter - #3

  First Time Train Wreck - #4

  Kiss Your Momma Goodbye - #5

  They’d done it. They’d all done their job and kept the top three. They’d kept the team together.

  Dead rolled his head back and sighed up into the air as the tension left his body. “Hooooly moly, I don’t know how I pulled that off.”

  “Good job,” Quickdraw muttered, punching him in the bad arm.

  “Ow!” Dead yelled, grabbing his shoulder.

  “Buck up,” Quickdraw muttered as he jogged down the stairs of the podium.

  “Why don’t you go strip down naked for the cameras again, you sell out,” Dead called, jogging after him.

  “I’m hungry,” Cheyenne announced to the group as she followed them, hand gently grasping the crook of Two Shots’ arm. Damn, she was pretty all lit up with those dancing eyes and that heart-stopping smile.

  “I’m starving,” Two Shots agreed. “Hey, over dinner we can show the boys their social media accounts.”

  “I got social media?” Dead asked, walking backward to better glare at Cheyenne.

  “Yeah,” Two Shots answered. “You’re probably half naked in the pics on there. Sell out.”

  “Ha!” Quickdraw’s laugh bellowed down the alleyway.

  “I need a winner’s beer and a ribeye,” Dead murmured.

  Two Shots scrunched up his face. “How can you eat cows? It’s like eating your own people.”

  “Only half my people since those dumbass commentators decided to out my lineage to the whole world. I’m half human, boys. I’m gonna eat all the steak I want to, and guess how many ounces of sleep I’m gonna lose over it?”

  “Zero?” Quickdraw guessed.

  “Zeroooo,” Dead howled up at the rafters. “Hey, we should come up with a cool herd name.”

  “We aren’t a herd,” Two Shots grumbled. “Herds are unbreakable. We’re all still competing for number one bull.”

  Quickdraw muttered, “It’s not a competition because you’re both beneath me.”

  Dead said, “We could call our team the Moo Dudes. Wait, Cheyenne isn’t a dude so that doesn’t work.”

  “Oh, my God, stop talking,” Two Shots said.

  Dead’s eyes lit up, and Two Shots could practically see the lightbulb flicker above his head. “We could be the Moo Crew!”

  “We could just cut his tongue out and he wouldn’t talk anymore,” Quickdraw pointed out.

  Cheyenne jumped on Two’s back for a piggyback ride. “I like the Moo Crew!” She pulled her phone around his neck and started messing with Quickdraw’s Instagram account. She was hashtagging his pictures with #moocrew.

  Two Shots hadn’t laughed this much in a long time. Quickdraw was going to be so pissed. All his pictures were shirtless. He was beginning to think Cheyenne was a marketing genius.

  He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring when they all went back to their homes and their own lives. He didn’t know how the media would treat Cheyenne with all the rumors flying around back here. He didn’t know how long they would be able to hold the top three spots because that was the nature of this game. Ranks changed all the time. Longevity meant near perfect rides and never letting off the gas pedal. It meant never slipping up, and look at the three of them? Quickdraw was over there starting a fight with one of the bull riders he thought had looked at him funny. Dead had stopped to flirt with a barrel racer, who was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, which was possible. And Cheyenne was humming a song about a lovely bunch of coconuts in his ear as she squeezed around him like a little octopus.

  They were definitely gonna fuck this up.

  The question was, how long could they hold their little piece of happiness in the comradery they’d found?

  Two weeks? A month? Didn’t matter. They couldn’t live for the future. They had to live for the here and now because, when it came down to it, tomorrow had never been promised. And for a bull shifter? Crap could hit the fan in an instant.

  But tonight?

  Tonight was a good night. They’d worked hard and not only earned money, but they had earned two more weeks being represented by the best bull shifter agent in existence. Okay, so she was the only one in existence, but that made him want to work even harder to keep them together.

  Quickdraw’s fight started getting louder. The rider pushed him, and now his friends were starting to join the yelling match.

  “Wait here,” he said, setting Cheyenne—his Cheyenne—on her feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  Two Shots looked at Dead who was already headed in the same direction.

  “Maybe to get in a fight.”

  She snorted behind him. “Typical. We still have interviews! This is against rule number seven.” She let off a very human, very cute growl. “At least protect your faces!”

  “Anything you want,” he called over his shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty

  What could she even say to excuse their behavior?

  Two Shots sat beside her with a split lip and a black eye.

  Dead sat on his other side with a laceration on his cheek that would gush if he took the towel off it. His shoulder was all bruised and swollen, which all of the interviewers could see on account of he didn’t have a shirt on because he’d ripped it off like the Hulk when he went into the fight. Quickdraw wasn’t bleeding, but his knuckles were all swollen and bruised, and the left side of his face was swollen. He couldn’t even open his dang eye. And he was sitting at the end of the oversize folding table with his shit-covered boot on it.

  They were all three glaring at the interviewers as Tommy, the organizer of the entire circuit, gave them a pep talk about speaking one at a time for the best audio for the cameras.

  “Can we go yet?” Dead asked, massaging his shoulder.

  “We haven’t even started,” Cheyenne reminded him. “And this was part of the contract. You can’t just duck out on interviews. This is part of marketing you.”

  “I don’t want to market like this,” Dead complained. “Can’t you just take some shirtless pics of us and post them and we can call it a night?”

  That was actually a good idea. She needed to start a merchandise shop. Hoodies with their names on them. Koozies, T-shirts, beer openers, coffee mugs. She frowned at the cow crap that had come off Quickdraw’s boot and was sitting in a grody little pile on the otherwise clean table. She could probably get him a sponsorship with a boot company. She squinted and tried to read the brand so she could call them after this.

  As the first interviewer stood, she looked around at the others and joked, “Well, this is different from the way we usually do it with these guys, isn’t it?”

  A few of the reporters chuckled.

  “Yeah, usually they don’t even show up,” one of the reporters mumbled.

  There was laughter, and the boys smirked remorselessly. Through the back door filed a sizable group of sponsors, contract
ors, and arena organizers. Crap.

  “Your smile went stiff,” Two Shots whispered to her.

  Dead leaned into his microphone. “That’s what she said.” His grin was obnoxious.

  Quickdraw’s frown deepened, if that was possible. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Your mom doesn’t make any sense,” Dead said into the microphone.

  Quickdraw sat up straight, finally dragging his dirty boot off the table, leaned over Dead and told Cheyenne, “I’m going to kill him on camera.”

  “Just be normal for ten minutes, and then you can go back to being the heathen brutes you are.”

  “Did you hear me?” asked Rhonda, the main interviewer for the circuit.

  Cheyenne pursed her lips into a tight smile. “What’s that?”

  “I asked you how your first week as a bull agent went.”

  Cheyenne looked from the expectant faces to the three cameras aimed at them to the dead-silent organizers in the back who happened to be in charge of her paycheck and the travel funds for the boys.

  Two Shots leaned over and murmured, “Honesty is best.”

  “We didn’t catch what Two Shots Down just said,” Rhonda informed her.

  Cheyenne cleared her throat and straightened her spine, clasped her hands on the table formally. “He said, ‘honesty is best.’ So here goes. I came into this thinking ‘How hard can this be?’ and I was dumped on my ass day one. These three are monsters, there’s no wrangling them, I’m on my toes at all times, there is always some crisis to fix, I have a crush on one of them, the other two call me ‘heifer’ on the regular, I’ve been made fun of, booed at, and chewed up and spat out. All of my organization has been put to the test, and they won’t stop bleeding. As you can see. I came into this terrified that I wouldn’t be good enough at this job because no one else had tried it, so I had no foundation. I figured if I didn’t get them enough positive attention, didn’t skyrocket them into fame in the circuit and fix their—I’ll say it—disastrous reputations, then I would be fired. And, hell, after this interview, I might be. But then I think, ‘Who the heck is dumb enough to take on this job but me?’ Look at them.” She gestured to the bleeding, swollen, standoffish bull shifters. “They’re a mess.”

  Two Shots nodded like he agreed, Dead scoffed, and Quickdraw picked something out of his teeth with a pocketknife and looked bored.

  “But…” She smiled at them. “They’re my mess. They won’t give me a single easy day as their agent, but look what they did? Look at the reward? These boys are the best in the world. And they’re doing something no bull shifter has tried in this circuit before.”

  “And what’s that?” Rhonda asked into a microphone.

  Two Shots leaned forward and spoke into his mic. “We’re trying not to kill each other.”

  Cheyenne snorted a giggle and then pursed her lips because Rhonda didn’t look impressed. A couple of the good ol’ boys in the back chuckled, though.

  The man beside Rhonda raised his hand. “You said you have a crush on one of your bulls, and I wanted to hit on that statement. You and Two Shots Down have been the topic of conversation behind the scenes. It’s being talked about online in blogs, and it’s trending on social media as ‘murderercrush.’ How is the hype around you affecting your personal lives?”

  “It’s not,” Two Shots Down growled. “Next question.”

  “How does it affect your reputation in the industry as one of the top rider agents, and how does that translate into your profession as a bull agent?” Rhonda asked.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Two Shots murmured.

  “Do you agree that the hype around your sordid relationship takes away from the valiant effort he’s giving as he reaches for that top rank in the world?” Rhonda pushed.

  “Why is this such a big deal?” Two Shots yelled, slamming his hand on the table. “Huh? Can anyone tell me why you’re so curious about who she does and does not hang out with?”

  “Because you were awful in interviews about her late husband’s death—”

  “Because I got sick of talking about it. Can you understand that? I was sick of talking about it. Sick of feeling awful. Sick of hurting, sick of mourning, sick of my entire life being at the mercy of the media and what you made me out to be. I just wanted to buck. Ask your questions and let’s get this done.”

  Rhonda looked shaken and parted her lips, but nothing came out.

  “Go on,” Two Shots told her. “Ask what you want. Take what you want from us. We aren’t allowed to have feelings, right? Us bull shifters are just animals, right? Would you have handled it differently if you accidentally killed someone and were forced to talk about it and relive it every single day of your life for the world to see? Would you have handled it so different from me? The thing is, you don’t know how you would handle it because it didn’t happen to you. So go on, ask the questions for this one interview and then let Cheyenne live her life. She’s earned it, yeah? She’s hurt enough? She’s mourned enough? Ask and then let her be.”

  “Did…?” Rhonda cleared her throat and looked around the room. “Did the affair start before Tarik died?”

  “The affair?” Two Shots asked. Oooh, he sounded pissed if the rumble in his throat was anything to go by.

  Cheyenne leaned into her microphone. “I came back to this industry to help. I’m a helper. I wanted to represent the top three bulls and, yes, when I applied for this job, part of the reason was that Two Shots Down was making a run for top three. He was a part of my decision to come back. But I didn’t know him. I didn’t know the real him. I’d watched him buck with Tarik and been excited when Tarik drew him that night he died.” Why was her throat going all thick? She swallowed hard and let off a steadying sigh. “I watched the interviews where Two Shots was awful about Tarik’s death, but I saw pain in his eyes, and I felt bad for him. I was having a h-hard enough time, and I didn’t even have to talk about it on camera. I came back because I thought I could help him, Dead, and Quickdraw. A part of me wanted to prove I still belonged here in this circuit, but somewhere along the way, I fell for Two and saw his softer side. The one who protects me, and doesn’t want anyone to hurt me. The one who makes me feel safe, and it’s been a long damn time.” Her voice cracked on that part so she paused and took another breath. “I guess I was in a place of forgiveness. A place where I was ready to accept the good in him. In all the boys, really. You see such a small part of them out there in that arena. You see the raw power, the violence, the aggression…the obsessive focus with bucking a man off their backs. You see the monsters, but for me? I see the men.”

  The boys were all glaring at Rhonda. “She’s been hurt,” Two Shots uttered. “It’s not out of a sense of guilt that I like being around her. She cares about people outside of herself, and these days, that’s a rare thing. Am I the best thing for her? Fuck no.”

  She giggled as Dead muttered, “Heeell no,” and Quickdraw said, “Nope, not at all,” at the same time.

  Unshaken, Two Shots continued with, “But as long as she chooses to be around me, I’m gonna take care of her. And if anyone tries to turn that into some gross thing, that’s on you. She’s the best girl I know. She deserves to feel safe.” He glanced over at her and rolled his eyes at her emotional expression. His smile stretched his whole face. “I mean, look how damn cute she is. I say anything nice, and she gets all mushy looking like this.”

  “That was really sweet,” she said in an octave higher than she’d intended.

  Rhonda’s face had softened, and she gestured to Two Shots. “Your cheeks are turning red. Here y’all have it—bull shifters can blush.”

  “Not me,” Dead said, fumbling to open a package of Whoppers. “Blushing is for sissies.” The bag popped open, and candy rolled all over the table.

  Quickdraw pulled a flask from who-knows-where and took a long swig.

  “You can’t drink that on camera,” Cheyenne complained half-heartedly. “Circuit rules.”

  “Rule ig
nored.” Quickdraw took another drink.

  Cheyenne plastered a smile on her face and said, “Next question.”

  “What do you plan to do as a team in the off week?” came a question from the back.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Boys, what do y’all have going?”

  “Bucking practice,” Quickdraw said in a monotone.

  “I have a favorite bar,” Dead said with a shrug.

  “Back to my little ranch,” Two Shots answered. “Maybe text this one some nudes. Get her feelin’ spicy.” He draped his arm around Cheyenne’s chair as her cheeks caught on fire and she stared blankly ahead.

  “He’ll probably write her poetry,” Dead told the crowd. “The lame kind. Because he’s a sissy.”

  “Yeah, because I’m so poetic. Your fans are the poets.” Two wrenched up his voice. “Dead, Dead, you’re good in bed.”

  Quickdraw choked on the liquor he was downing and cough-laughed really loud.

  “Maybe I am good in bed, and that’s why they have to write sonnets about me, asshole.”

  “This is good.” Cheyenne nodded as the boys started pushing each other. “This is great. Great interview.” She lifted a thumbs up into the air. “Great questions.”

  At least the crowed was giggling now and not just staring at them all appalled at their behavior.

  “I quit!” Dead announced. He stood and started to walk off, but turned and smacked the microphone down so it made a deafening high-pitched sound. “I quit this interview. I’m hungry. Agent! Bull agent. Bull agent Cheyenne. Feed us, we’re hungry.”

  Quickdraw stood and followed him out without a single word of goodbye to the interviewers, and Two Shots yelled behind them, “Dude, you left all your candy scattered all over the table. We aren’t cleaning this up!”

  “Ribeye steak!” came Dead’s echoing voice. “I want to eat my people.”

  Cheyenne said the Lord’s name in vain and then stood, scooping candy balls into her palm. “I’m going to go feed the grown men, who apparently need that from me. Job applications to replace me will be with Tommy,” she teased, gesturing to the organizer, who was cracking a big old grin. “If you would like to see more of their shenanigans, they all have social media now. This should be an epic shit-show to watch.” Two Shots cupped his hands so she could dump the candy there while she talked. “We will see you all in two weeks at the Pendleton Rodeo. I will be the one looking exhausted and sneaking shots of tequila to deal with my new life. Thank you all. You have been great. Goodnight.”