Deep End: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (34 page)

It was then that I knew I wanted to be with Colton forever.

I really didn’t know much about him.

I would learn later that there were things…things about his personality that should have given me pause. His desire, for instance, to pursue his own fame without regard for anything else or anyone in his life…well, that might have become a problem later on…but there was no way I could have known it at that moment. Although, I later kicked myself for not realizing that every bad boy sports hero is practically the same. It’s something inseparable from their personality. It’s what helped make them who they are…

Colton’s eyes were locked on mine…

He wasn’t paying attention.

For that brief moment, he let his love life, or his future love life, interfere with his career.

The bull was shaking with rage.

It ran at Colton, who was just starting at me…

With a whoosh, the sound of the crowd came back into my senses. It was if my ears had suddenly opened up.

The crowd was roaring…not with delight, not with applause, but with fear.

People were holding their faces. Women and children were screaming. Men were groaning with anticipation with what they knew was about to happen.

I realized it before Colton.

I tried to frantically move my arms, my whole body, to let him know what was about to happen.

He kept starting at me.

Finally, he caught on. He understood I was indicating danger.

“Watch out, Colton, watch out…the bull,” the announcer was saying through the megaphone.

But it was too late.

By the time Colton looked over, the bull’s horn was less than an inch from him.

It pierced Colton right in the stomach.

The horn was all the way into him, more than a few inches…worse than the wound from a long knife.

The horn was stuck all the way into his soft flesh. I couldn’t believe my eyes, the sight was simply horrifying to behold. I questioned my own sanity because I knew that this image brought to my brain from my eyes was impossible, nonsensical, unfathomable, incredulous,
preposterous
.

I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. When I finally had to face the reality that what I was seeing was true, I took a deep breath and focused on the scene unfolding in the arena below me.

The bull’s horn had punctured his flesh right in the center of his abdomen. The blood had already started to ooze out, and seemed to look strangely beautiful. It shone and glistened in the afternoon sun. For a split second, I thought how peculiar that the day was so pretty when my life was collapsing around me.

There was a lot of blood now, gushing from the puncture wound to pool in puddles on the dusty arena floor.

Time seemed to stand still. What was probably only a couple of seconds seemed like eternity to
me.
I had just fallen in love with Colton, and now I didn’t know what would happen.

What happened next shocked and horrified me.

The bull, enraged, reared its massive head toward the blue sky.

The bull used its massive head to move Colton’s body.

The bull lifted up Colton’s body, which was pierced on its one horn.

The horn ripped through Colton’s flesh in a sideways motion.

I was horrified as Colton’s blood continued to flow freely, increasing the flow until it was completely pouring out of him.

His guts started to pour out…his actual intestines were pushing out of his body.

The bull roared and snorted….

People were rushing into the ring. They had stun guns and nets…they were supposed to be controlling the bull…they were supposed to be stopping it.

I was crying, as I got up and rushed down through the crowd of people, down the bleachers. My only thought was to get to Colton…no matter what.

Colton flew high through the air as he was finally released from the bull’s horns…

He fell onto the dusty dirt with huge thump….

His cowboy hat lay in the dirt, completely trampled and squashed by the bull’s heavy hooves.

Colton
lay
there, his guts and blood streaming out of him….

He didn’t move an inch…

The smile was still plastered to his face, but there was also a look underneath it of pure terror.

“You can’t go in there, lady,” said a security guard, who was holding me back. I had run smack into two or three big burly security guards who were wearing black security jackets.

“I don’t care,” I cried. “I’m in love with him. I’m in love with Colton. And he’s dying.”

“Lady, I think every woman in the arena is in love with him. Sorry, but that doesn’t give you any special privileges.”

“But we’ve already slept together,” I cried, somewhat unaware of what I was saying. I was desperate for anything that would work, anything that would let me get closer to Colton.

The security guards exchanged a look and began to chuckle quietly. “I still don’t think that excludes many of the women in the arena,” said one of them.

“Assholes,” I yelled, and pushed myself forward again.

I don’t know where I had gotten the strength, but…it was like one of those situations where a mother is able to summon incredible strength to lift a car up off her toddler…it was just like that. My adrenaline was pumping insanely. My heart was beating furiously, beyond furiously.

Somehow I pushed so hard that I knocked one of the guards clean over. He was big and burly too…he must have weighed close to 350 pounds.

The other guard grabbed me, trying to hold on to me.

But my strength was too much for him. It was the strength of love. It was the strength of furry and intense anxiety…
.Colton
couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him. I would save him myself. At least that’s what I was thinking at the moment…
.no
matter how delusional the thoughts were….that’s how powerful that look we had exchanged had been…I knew he was the man for me. I knew we were meant to be together, and now
he had been ripped away from me cruelly, by some idiotic bull
, by participating in some idiotic brutal sport….

I ran past the security guard. His grip was nothing against my new strength, a strength born out of love and anxiety.

I wasn’t even aware of the other people in the crowd. I might have knocked them over. I might have just rushed through them, through the crowd. I didn’t know what was happening, but a second later I was climbing the fence to the rodeo arena.

I was over it in a second.

Colton was still lying on the ground. The medical
staff had rushed into the arena, and were
leaning over him…the smile was still on his face, but the blood was still gushing out, despite the pressure they were applying to his abdomen with their hands. There were two medical staff, and their hands were already soaked with Colton’s blood. At least his guts had stopped pouring out of him…now they were just hanging, looking sickly and alien against the backdrop of his impressive leather cowboy gear.

The bull was still angry. A team of four men had surrounded it, holding the their cattle prods with sedation drugs loaded. They looked like professionals, in their movements and confidence. They didn’t take their eyes off the bull for a moment.

But the bull was still enraged…enraged that a measly human, a cowboy all in leather, had dared to ride him for so long.

He was huffing and puffing and pacing and scratch his hoofs against the dirt.

“You can’t be out here, lady,” called one of the bull handlers to me.

“I don’t care,” I yelled back.

To get to Colton, I would have to rush past the bull.

I saw his hat lying there, totally crushed, trampled. I picked it up. I put it on my head. I must have looked like a lunatic. I didn’t care at all though in that moment.

The dust and dirt fell from the hat down across my body.

I dashed right towards Colton in a full out sprint.

The bull was raging, roaring.

It saw me. Apparently Colton’s hat reminded it of Colton, of the rider who had dared to stay on the bull for so long.

“Watch out,” cried the bull handlers.

The bull had broken free.

At the last moment, one of the bull handlers managed to stab the bull in the rear flank with a long cattle prod device, releasing strong sedative drugs into it.

But the bull was still roaring and angry, sprinting after me.

It was faster than me, far faster. No matter how much adrenaline I had pumping in me, the bull would always outrun me.

“It shouldn’t still be on four legs,” yelled one of the bull handlers. “I gave it 1000 cc’s.”

“It’s still running,” shouted another.

“Look out, lady!” cried another one.

“What an idiot,” I heard someone else yelling.

I ran over to Colton.

The bull was inches behind me. I could feel its breath against the back of my hair.

“Colton!” I cried out. “Colton! Are you ok?”

“He can’t hear you. He’s unconscious,” said one of the medical attendants, unaware of the bull right behind me.

The bull was chasing me.

It ran right over us, its powerful hoof landing right on Colton’s chest.

“Oh my God!” I cried.

It was my fault…my fault that the bull had escaped once again and now hurt Colton more than he was already hurt…

The last thing I remembered was Colton’s’ face…he momentarily woke up as the bull trampled his chest…he looked me right in the eye…a look of confusion…but I could tell he was happy to see me.

I was too overwhelmed…

I passed out, and didn’t know any more.

Colton woke up in the hospital, hurting terribly.

“So the champion is awake,” said the doctor, looking away from his clipboard for a moment.

“What the hell happened?” said Colton, wincing with the pain. He tried to move a little in the bed, but he could barely move his head more than an inch without feeling an excruciating pain. His chest hurt. It felt like he had been run over by a tractor-trailer. His guts ached with an intense pain…his stomach was twisted completely into knots.

“You had an accident while riding a bull, as I understand it,” said the doctor. “A completely idiotic activity, if you ask me…”

“How did I do though?”

“What do you mean? You’re still alive, if that’s what your wondering. You wouldn’t believe how many patients come in and ask if they’re alive. I mean, what do they think, that this is what heaven looks like? A barren hospital room?”

“You never know,” said Colton, speaking slowly, even though he was trying to make a joke. For some reason, his whole face hurt, including his jaw, even when he moved it just a fraction of an inch in order to try to get some words out. “But what I meant was how did I do in the match? Did I win?”

The doctor laughed, a scoffing laugh. “It’s amazing…you sports guys and race car drivers are all alike…the injured are all just fun and games until you wind up paraplegic, believe me.”

“Am I still in first?” said Colton.

“Yes,” said the doctor, in an exasperated voice. “From what I understand, you did spectacularly well on the bull...until you fell of that is. You’re still ranked number 1 in the country, according to some of the nurses who happen to big fans. I practically had to fight them off you…they wanted to give you sponge baths and all that…I told them that could wait until you woke up, at the very least.”

Colton grinned. Although just thinking about a sexy nurse giving him a sponge back made his body hurt in anticipation of the movements required for that type of fun.

“Well, thanks anyway, Doc.”

“You got to get your head on straight,” said the doctor, giving Colton one final exasperated look before leaving the room, his white lab coat flapping behind him as he turned the corner into the hallway. He stethoscope flapped too, clanging against his laminated hospital ID card as he walked swiftly.

Colton lay there for a moment, trying to remember what had happened.

At first, nothing came back to him. Absolutely nothing…then he remembered it.

Well, he didn’t remember all the events. He couldn’t even remember the bull.

But he remembered a look that he had shared with…what was her name, Katy?

It was that sexy woman from the other night…the night he had fired his old manager had decided to change his career.

Colton was overcome with a strange feeling, a feeling that ran through his chest, around his solar plexus, his heart, and seemed to gush up through his head. It was the feeling of love…a feeling that Colton hadn’t actually felt since he was a young teenager in love for the first time.

Colton remembered how it had felt to look at Katy. Somehow his intuition had drawn his gaze towards her, alone in the crowd. Around her there had been countless young busty women with their shirts off, swinging their breast back and forth enticingly, but Colton had had eyes for her, for Katy.

Then he remembered…that’s how
he had been gored by the bull
. He had been so transfixed on Katy and on her face that he had lost all his normal awareness. He had stood frozen still like an idiot, just waiting for the angry bull to gore him.

“I heard you were awake,” said someone.

“It’s you!” said Colton, sitting up in bed a little, at the sight of Katy. “
Ow
, shit,” he said, wincing in pain. It felt like his whole body was on fire.

“It’s
me
…” said Katy, peering around the corner of the room’s entrance. “Do you want to see me? Can I come in?” She spoke timidly, as if she wasn’t sure what Colton thought of her.

“Of course!” said Colton, mustering as much enthusiasm as his bruised and battered body would allow him. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Katy didn’t answer, but she came into the room slowly.

She looked beautiful. She reminded him of some wild animal, maybe a gazelle, or a beautiful bird.