Losers Weepers Read online

  LOSERS WEEPERS

  Copyright © 2015

  Nicole Williams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations

  Editing by Cassie Cox

  Formatting by JT Formatting

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  A Preview of Three Brothers

  I’D BEEN ON the losing side of life for so long it had become my marching beat. I’d become so good at losing it was all I believed I was capable of. Things like winning, coming out on top, and success were concepts that had floated to the horizon, becoming so distant I’d almost lost sight of them.

  When you’ve been told for most of your life that you’re nothing, you start to believe it. When you’re reminded you’ve got an impressive record of screwing up and told that record’s only going to continue, you fulfill that expectation. When you’re told you’ll never amount to anything, that’s exactly what you do.

  When your mom bails when you’re a kid and the only thing your dad coddles is a bottle of whiskey, you question things like love and loyalty. You realize that the same blood that ran in their veins runs in yours and every piece of your make-up came from them. Not a scrap of your DNA isn’t tied to theirs, and questions like “Will I become just like him one day?” or “Will I ditch my family one day too?” or “Will I wind up a pile of ashes inside the charred shell of a trailer after drinking myself into such a stupor that the fire ripping through all that was left of my life wouldn’t even rouse me?” play on repeat through your head.

  Those are the questions that have haunted me my entire life. The answers have haunted me even more.

  What took me decades to realize was that instead of trying to convince myself that I could never be just like them, I could all too easily become like them. That was the big eye-opener. Getting there was just one more choice made because it was the easy one instead of the right one. Once more turning to the bottle instead of confronting the real problem. Once more pushing away the few people who cared about me instead of reciprocating the sentiment.

  Freedom came the day I accepted that being a better person was a daily battle, fought one moment at a time, choice by painstaking choice. Forgiveness came when I realized both of them had probably started out like me, wanting to do right, but they had lost the battle, one easy choice after another. I was more in danger of becoming like them than I wasn’t, and that knowledge kept me sharp. That daily reminder molded and shaped me into the man I was today.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t some perfect chump who smiled too goddamned much and wore his heart on his sleeve like Walker, but I was a different man from the one I’d been before. At least in the places that counted. I still cussed like I was competing for some kind of award and I still preferred my fists over more diplomatic measures and I might have taken being hotheaded to new heights, but I’d changed where it counted. That was what mattered. At least, that was what I’d been told by the person who counted most.

  Joze—or Josie when we were tangled between the sheets or in the heat of an argument. The woman who’d brought me to my knees or cut me off at the knees or taken a sledge hammer and shattered my knees. Something having to do with knees malfunctioning.

  She’d been my salvation in my darkest hour, when I was nearly past saving. I’d loved her in secret for so long I’d given up hope of that love being returned. Of course that was the moment it came . . . and when it did . . . shit, there was nothing like it in the whole entire world. I had nothing to compare to the way she loved me, and that’s what made it so special. No one but her had ever come close to loving me like that. No one had ever believed in me the way she did. Her love was so big and overwhelming that each day with her erased another day of pain and failure from my past. Her love was magic, healing me as it lifted me up, and though she tried convincing me otherwise, I knew I could spend ten lifetimes trying and failing to give her what she’d given me in a year’s time.

  If tonight went as planned though, I might tip the scale in my favor this once. For something that only weighed a few grams, it shouldn’t have felt like a damn bull had crawled into my back pocket and was jabbing its horns into my ass.

  The guy at the jewelry store had assured me I’d made a solid pick—that if I’d been proposing to a starlet, even she would have been wowed—but I still wasn’t sure. Josie wasn’t some vain, shallow starlet who gave a shit about size or status or labels—that wasn’t why I’d purchased the rock I had. I’d picked it out because I’d tried words and actions, but nothing had seemed to explain how I felt about her. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe a fancy ring would either, but it was something, and if any woman deserved to have some giant-ass diamond on her finger, it was Joze.

  I wanted every last guy who looked at her in a way that would make me want to shove my boot up his ass to take a good look at her ring and realize I wasn’t just any other husband but one who wanted the best for his wife and wouldn’t stop at anything to give it to her. I wanted Joze to be reminded of that every time she looked at it. I wanted the world to know that I’d spent a large fraction of a year’s worth of winnings, of getting bucked, bruised, and beaten, to get her the ring currently burning a hole in my back pocket.

  I wanted the world to know that a man loved Josie more than any human had ever loved another in the history of the world. That was all. Not much, right?

  If I spent the rest of my life trying to prove to Joze how much I loved her, and if she finally came to some understanding of it the exact moment before I died, then I’d won. Score.

  Yeah, I might have given Jess a hard time for going and getting all whipped before I’d fallen victim to the same fate, but I rode bulls. I could dress in drag every Saturday night and sing Cher on a stage and still be more of a man than any other whipped sap out there.

  Josie was my salvation—she always had been—and bull riding was my penitence. It kept me sharp. Focused. Connected to that wild part of me that could never be tamed, or should never be tamed, because like it or not, I needed to look danger and death in the face from time to time or risk losing myself.

  I didn’t need to have asked them to know my parents had lost themselves years ago. The trouble with losing yourself was that you never knew where you might try to find yourself after. For Clay, it was at the bottom of a bottle. For my mom, I guess it was on the open road and traveling light. For me . . . I didn’t want to imagine. So I kept bull riding close and the people I cared about closer.

  Thankfully, Joze was an understanding woman who wasn’t concerned with “taming” me or turning me into a carbon copy of every other man no longer in possession of his balls. So life was good. No, that wasn’t right . . . life was fucking amazing.

  “Hey, Black! Your fan club’s waiting, bras on display and Shar
pies in hand.”

  I shoved back from the rail lining the arena and lifted a brow. “Why don’t you go instead? You’ve got my permission to ‘be’ me and sign bras until your eyes go crossed. Besides, you’ve got plenty of experience posing as me, don’t you?”

  Justin adjusted his belt buckle—since it might have been a whole two millimeters off center—glancing over his shoulder down the hallway where I guessed the Sharpie-wielding bra-flashers were waiting. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about you, Black. I’m taller, better looking, and a way better dresser. You’d think the girls in every city would be lining up for me instead of you.”

  I patted my back pocket again—still there. “You might be taller thanks to those high heels you like to call boots and you might be better looking to a female orangutan and you might be a better dresser to someone who believes rhinestones and purple belong on a man, but the reason I have the fan clubs in every town is because I’m the best damn bull rider on this circuit.” I hitched my thumbs under my belt, framing my belt buckle, which had “champion” stamped onto it. “I’m better where it counts, and I win. If you want to earn the right to sign girls’ bras, why don’t you try staying on the bull’s back longer instead of focusing on what you’re going to wear?”

  Justin shook his head, giving me a look. “I hate you.”

  Half of a smile worked its way onto my mouth. Justin was a show pony and probably would have preferred a career modeling men’s underwear, but he was a solid guy. He was a decent enough rider, and he did it because his dad had died a few years back. He was just trying his best to take care of his mom and younger sisters. As human beings went, he was one of the good ones . . . but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t give him a hard time for dressing like a tool.

  “You might hate me, but you’re still going to go impersonate me for a few vicarious moments, aren’t you?” I called after him.

  He was already heading down the tunnel toward the girls. “Damn straight I am. One of us has to reap the benefits of your fame.” He adjusted his hat as he continued down the hall, those boots of his making a sharp, look-at-me sound.

  “Happy reaping!” I shouted.

  He replied with not one but two raised middle fingers.

  It was getting close to being my turn to ride, but I liked to wait until the last possible moment to make my way to the chute and the bull. I liked taking my time and running the dirt through my fingers before I got sucked into the adrenaline vortex that resided within a fifty-foot radius of the chutes.

  Crouching, I cupped a handful of dirt from the arena and felt the weight of it. This past year, I’d spent more time riding indoors than outdoors, which meant I’d “arrived” in the bull riding world. It seemed kind of backward to me that when a rider made it big, he started spending more of his time indoors than out, but that was the way it worked. The soil in the indoor arenas had taken some getting used to. Don’t get me wrong, it was still dirt, but it had a different feel. It was heavier, grittier almost. Like every grain of dirt was vying to get its own attention. It was darker too.

  After spending long summers riding outdoors, where the dirt got dry and hard in August, and spending plenty of time in the red soil of eastern Montana, the dark, thick indoor soil had been as foreign as the bright lights and giant crowds. After a few months, I’d gotten used to it. The bright lights and giant crowds at least. The soil still felt wrong, but I couldn’t let rituals die just because the dirt felt strange.

  I was sifting the last of it through my fingers when I heard someone come up behind me. I knew who it was without looking. Before I knew it, I was smiling . . . and I wasn’t supposed to be the goddamned smiling idiot.

  “There’s a rumor going around that Garth Black is signing women’s bras at the end of the rider’s hallway.”

  The last of the soil slipped through my fingers. “You know what a rumor is, right?”

  “A half truth.”

  I lifted myself up, fighting every instinct to whirl around and wrestle her into my arms. The other thing I hadn’t known about “realizing” my dreams in the arena was that it meant spending plenty of nights in roadside hotels and waking up to a cold bed. Being away from Joze so much was the worst part of it, but a bull rider’s career only lasted a few years. My plan was to win as many competitions and cash as many checks as I could before I was either forced or broken enough to retire. Then I’d spend the rest of my life crawling into bed beside the woman I loved. If I made the same kind of money for the next couple years that I had this past year, we’d be all set to remodel the old farmhouse we’d purchased last summer and purchase the thousand acres around the house to raise cattle on. That was our goal. The guy who’d wanted nothing better than riding bulls and winning buckles wanted to retire as a cattle rancher. Go figure.

  “Are you asking me or accusing me?” I tilted my head back just enough to see her silhouette behind me.

  Josie’s hand flew to her hip, making my smile stretch. She was about as jealous a girlfriend as she was a prim and proper one, but she was up to something.

  “Neither,” she answered, moving closer. “I came to get my own Garth Black autograph . . . right here.”

  The coy act was over. Whipping around, I found Josie unbuttoning the top couple buttons of her shirt and pulling it down to reveal the top of her bra.

  “Joze,” I warned, looking around and ready to prod any wandering, gaping, or otherwise inappropriate-looking eyes.

  “Come on. I want an autograph.” She fingered the top ridge of her bra, playing with it. My throat went dry. “With the way he’s been riding this past year, an official Garth Black autographed bra should fetch me at least a few hundred bucks on eBay.”

  I feigned a look of insult. “A few hundred? Try a few thousand.”

  She smiled, continuing to play with the cup of her bra. “That’s nice . . . but sign my bra already. Before I’m forced to get physical with you.” She wet her lips, slowly and deliberately, as she moved closer.

  Shit. I was supposed to be focusing on my ride and doing the whole visualization thing, but the only thing I was visualizing was Josie’s bra and the rest of her clothing winding up in a pile at her feet.

  “Now why would I give you your autograph with that threat on the table?” My boots couldn’t stay where they were any longer. I found myself moving toward her without making a conscious decision.

  When my arms were about to ring around her waist, she pulled a pen from her pocket and lifted it in front of my face. “My autograph,” she said in a firm voice, tapping the lace of her bra with her finger. “Now.”

  I took the pen and pulled the cap off with my teeth. “I can’t say no to my biggest fan, now can I?”

  Josie’s eyes held mine as she raised an eyebrow. “Saying no isn’t exactly your strong suit when it comes to me.”

  A crooked smile slid into place as I dropped the tip of the pen to her chest. “No, it isn’t.”

  Signing a girl’s bra was harder than a guy might like to believe. The unevenness of the lace matched with the knowledge of what that material is covering or, depending on the style, just barely covering, made focusing on signing one’s name legibly and correctly next to impossible.

  “Oops,” I said as I finished signing my last name on her skin. It may or may not have been done intentionally.

  Josie gave me a look, knowing every bit how intentional it had been. “So? How did it compare?”

  I capped the pen and handed it back to her, admiring my autograph . . . or admiring the spot where it was. My handwriting was sloppy as hell and looked more like a middle schooler’s graffiti than a grown man’s signature. “How did what compare?”

  “Signing your girlfriend’s bra next to signing the rest of those”—Josie cleared her throat to substitute the word, or string of words, she’d been considering—“bras?”

  My brows were nearly hidden beneath the brim of my hat, so she couldn’t see them pull together. “There is no comparison.”

 
She smiled at where I’d signed my name, tracing the letters of my last name with her finger. I realized just how perfect this moment was for pulling out the ring in my back pocket. I had planned on waiting until after the competition, when I’d had a shower and was in fresh clothes, and doing it over a fancy dinner with a fancy bottle of champagne, but this was the moment. I knew it. She was with me for the first time in three weeks, and she was smiling at my last name scribbled on her body—the same last name I was hoping with everything I had left to hope with that she’d want to make her own one day.

  I might have had a plan for how I’d wanted to propose, but life was meant to be spontaneous. The same went for engagements.

  “Have you been working on that ‘there is no comparison’ answer for a while, Black?” She finished tracing the K before lifting her eyes to mine. “Because it was a good one. I guess since I’ve hardly seen you for a solid twenty-four hours this past month, you’ve had plenty of time to work on it.”

  I patted my back pocket for the hundredth time. It was still there. I didn’t know where I’d thought it would go—it wasn’t like an inanimate object could just hop out of my pocket and bounce out of the arena. “Joze, when I said there was no comparison, I meant that in both the literal and figurative way.”

  She lifted an impressed brow. She liked it when I talked as though I used my brain for more than just a cushion when I landed headfirst after being thrown from the back of a two-thousand-pound animal.

  “Your bra-slash-chest”—my eyes lowered to my name and everything around it—“correction, your perfect chest, is the first one I’ve ever autographed, so there is, literally, no comparison.” When her forehead started to crease, I continued. “But even if I had signed all of those bras you’ve heard from the rumors I have—even if I’d signed millions—there would be, figuratively, no comparison whatsoever. None.”

  She was fighting to keep that stern expression, but it was close to slipping. Joze was a champ at giving me a hard time and making me walk a fine line, but she could never stay upset at me, for real or pretend, when I was layering on the good lines.