Rodeo Nights and Screen Lights

Maya's iPhone buzzed for the third time in five minutes, notifications stacking up like chips in a betting game. She ignored them all—her friends back in Los Angeles wouldn't understand why she'd spent her entire summer "wasting time" at her uncle's ranch in Wyoming anyway.

"You're too scared, city girl." Cody's grin was practically illegal, dimples and all. He leaned against the corral fence, boots caked in dust that somehow made him look even more annoyingly confident.

"I'm not scared," Maya shot back, though her heart was doing gymnastics. "I'm just thinking about how incredibly stupid this is."

The annual junior rodeo. Cody had been training her for weeks, and somehow she'd let him talk her into entering the beginner's calf riding event. The prize money wasn't even that good—like, barely enough to cover a phone bill.

"That's bull and you know it." Cody bumped her shoulder with his. "You've been practicing. You're ready."

The social pyramid at school had always placed Maya somewhere in the middle—not popular enough to sit at the coveted lunch tables, but not invisible either. Here, though, she was something else entirely. Here, nobody knew she was the girl who'd once thrown up in front of her entire English class giving a presentation.

Here, she was just Maya, the girl from the city who could actually ride.

"Fine," she said, already regretting it. "But if I die, I'm haunting your iPhone forever."

Cody laughed—that warm, real sound that made her stomach do that annoying fluttery thing. "Deal."

The arena lights blazed as Maya mounted, the calf beneath her shifting nervously. She could hear her name over the crackling speaker, could see Cody's face in the crowd—proud, excited, maybe something more.

The gate swung open.

Eight seconds of pure chaos—dust and motion and the world tilting sideways. Maya's fingers gripped, her body remembering everything Cody had taught her. When the buzzer sounded, she was still on. Still riding.

She slid off, legs trembling, grinning so hard her face hurt. Cody vaulted over the fence to pull her into a hug that smelled like dust and leather and him.

"Told you," he whispered against her hair.

Maya's phone buzzed in her pocket. But this time, she didn't care about notifications or social status or the pyramid she'd left behind in LA. She was exactly where she was supposed to be.