The Last Ride

The bottle of vitamin D sat on the nightstand, gathering dust alongside the others—glucosamine, turmeric, fish oil. Lydia had bought them all, each one a desperate offering to the gods of aging joints and lost dreams. She was gone now, three months past the point where her patience finally snapped like a worn rope.

Rafe pressed his palm against his knee, feeling the familiar grind of bone on bone. At forty-two, he felt ancient. The bull riding circuit didn't take kindly to broken-down cowboys, and neither did Lydia.

"You're chasing ghosts," she'd said, throwing her clothes into a suitcase while their dog, Barnaby, watched with worried eyes from the doorway. The old retriever had been Rafe's shadow since his retirement from the ring, a constant reminder of the quiet life Lydia wanted and Rafe couldn't give her.

Now Barnaby whined at the foot of the bed, sensing Rafe's mood. Rafe reached down, scratching the dog's velvet ears. Outside, the Montana sky bruised purple with coming dusk.

His phone buzzed. Another text from his brother: *The circuit's in Missoula this weekend. One last ride. For old times' sake.*

Rafe opened the drawer where he kept things Lydia hadn't bothered taking—his belt buckles, his old riding gloves, and the black Stetson he'd worn the day he'd almost died. The day the bull called Satan's Own had thrown him and trampled his left leg so badly he'd needed three surgeries and six months of learning to walk again.

The hat still smelled like dust and adrenaline and the bull-headed pride that had cost him everything.

Barnaby's tail thumped against the mattress. Rafe looked at the vitamins, then at the hat, then at his reflection in the darkened window—gray creeping into his beard, lines carved deep around eyes that had seen too much dust.

Some bull riders died young. Others lived long enough to become their own ghosts.

Rafe closed the drawer without touching the hat. He opened the vitamin bottle instead, dry-swallowed two capsules with the bitterness of acceptance.

"Come on, Barnaby," he said, and the dog followed him toward the kitchen, toward tomorrow, toward whatever came after the last ride.