Reject Sniper: My Wife Banged a Bullrider novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Kiss Cam
Wyatt comes home a day early and takes Poppy to the rodeo, where the big screen shows his wife in a bullrider's lap, and Cassidy tells him he was not due until the fourteenth.
The kiss cam found my wife in front of eight thousand people, and she was in another man's lap.
I had been home for forty minutes.
I had landed a day early, with no call and no warning, because I wanted to see my daughter's face.
Poppy was seven and sitting on my knee in the bleachers, in her pink hat, eating a funnel cake with both hands.
She had screamed so loud when I walked into her school that the whole front office turned around.
"Mama said you weren't coming home this year," she said, with powdered sugar on her chin.
I laughed and told her Mama was wrong.
That morning my wife had texted me from the clinic.
*Working a double today. Kiss Poppy for me. Home soon?*
I had not told her I was already on the road.
I wanted to surprise her too.
The Calloway County Rodeo was the biggest night of the year in our town, and Poppy had begged to go.
"Everybody goes," she said. "Even the cows have a parade."
So I paid twelve dollars for a funnel cake and found us seats high in the sun.
Down in the arena, the announcer was warming up the crowd.
"Folks, you know him! Three-time circuit champion! Brody Faulk!"
The crowd stood up and roared.
I knew Brody.
He was a year behind me in school and stood up at my wedding.
When I shipped out for my last tour, he sent me one text.
*Don't worry about the girls. I've got them.*
I had been grateful.
On the big screen, a man in a black hat waved from the owners' box and bowed.
Then the screen flipped to the kiss cam, with a pink heart around two people.
The woman was laughing, with her hair coming down and her red boots up on the rail.
The man's hand was on her thigh.
It was Brody.
It was Cassidy.
Eight thousand people started to chant, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"
Cassidy turned her face up and kissed Brody on the mouth for a long time.
Nobody was surprised.
The woman behind me said, "They look so good together."
Poppy had stopped chewing.
"That's Mama," she said.
"Eat your funnel cake, baby," I said.
She did not eat it.
I looked at my wife's hand in his hair, and I felt nothing, which I knew from the war was a bad sign.
My wedding ring was still on my finger.
Hers was not on her hand.
I remembered the night before I shipped out.
She had set a new life insurance form on the kitchen table with a pen on top.
It named only her, where it used to name both of us.
"Sign it, babe," she had said. "In case anything happens."
I had signed it without reading the rest.
I took out my phone and filmed the screen for as long as it stayed up.
The camera kept on them even after the kiss ended, and the crowd cheered again.
Brody pulled Cassidy closer, and she put her head on his shoulder.
A man two rows down turned around.
He saw me, and then he saw my daughter.
"Oh, hell," he said quietly. "That's Rawlins. That's the soldier."
The word went down the row, and the chanting behind us died.
People stopped looking at the screen and started looking at me.
I put Poppy's hat straight.
"Poppy, listen to me," I said. "I need you to sit next to this lady and hold her hand."
"I don't know this lady," she said.
"You do now."
The woman in the next seat held out her hand without being asked.
I handed her the funnel cake as well.
On the worst days overseas my pulse never moved.
It was steady now, and for a worse reason.
I was done being surprised.
So I walked down to the arena.
I went past the beer stands and the ushers, and nobody stopped a man who walked like that.
The owners' box had a rope across the stairs.
I stepped over it.
Brody saw me first.
He did not move his hand from my wife's thigh.
He smiled with half his mouth and tipped his hat.
"Well, look who's back," he said. "Welcome home, brother."
Cassidy turned her head.
I waited for her face to fall.
It did not.
She sat up, smoothed her top, and looked at me with no shame at all.
"Wyatt," she said. "What are you doing here?"
I held up my phone, with the kiss still playing on it.
"I could ask you the same thing," I said. "You're working a double."
She did not even glance at the screen.
"You weren't due until the fourteenth," she said.
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