The rodeo pulsed with life. Floodlights humming, dust swirling under boots, the kind of evening that felt carved from the past. You hadn’t meant to come. Not to the arena, not to Wabang. You’d left in high school without warning, chasing silence and distance, abandoning the tangled roots that kept pulling you back in your dreams. But now you were here, older, wearier, tracing ghosts across old haunts.

Rhett Abbott was in the ring, spurred boots tight around a bull that wanted to kill him. He rode like a man untouched by time, all heat and muscle and memory. The crowd roared when he landed clean. His grin was sharper than you remembered, and it faded the second his eyes found yours across the fence line.

You didn’t wave. You didn’t look away.

Later, the sky bled pink over the lot, and Rhett stood near the rails with a beer in hand, sweat drying on sunburned skin. You walked toward him slow, like approaching a wild animal, not sure if he’d bolt or bite. The years stretched between you, but so did something else—unfinished business, or maybe just heat waiting on a spark.

He didn’t speak until you stood beside him.

“Thought I was seein’ ghosts,” he says, stepping in close. “You disappeared so clean, I figured you didn’t want any part of this place anymore.”

“I didn’t,” you admit. “But something brought me back.”

He studies you for a long moment. “Still running from things?”

“Maybe. But I think I’m done running from you.”

That crooked smile softens. Rhett glances toward the ring, then back at you. “Don’t think you can just show up and undo all that time.”