DUE TO ITS incredible popularity, for the second season, The Closed Circuit had to map out a brand-new route for its caravan—and one that was twice as long—but as she was already endlessly satisfied with her new and improved RV model and they were just two hours into their summer of driving, Sierra knew she would be comfortable the whole way.
Already, the additional comfort features of the upgraded vehicle were proving worth taking the risk of asking for what she wanted. She got greater reflective glare protection from the slightly larger sunshades, a wider view through the oversize side-view and rearview mirrors, and a much clearer back camera picture and a more precise voice-commanded smart dash.
She felt like the queen she was called.
Years of carting her own horses to rodeos in her preprofessional days had cemented her ability to drive big vehicles, which she was especially grateful for now, as the super deluxe model was slightly larger than the last.
Her seat was all cushy leather and panoramic views, perched on a swivel that gave her near perfect sight to the road and environment in front of her and to her sides for miles and miles.
The experience would have been peaceful and picturesque, if Diablo Sosa wasn’t still on her mind.
She certainly could have done with a little less time alone with her thoughts.
She just couldn’t get over the mix of yearning and embarrassment that rose up in her whenever his face filled her mind. She usually made such winning choices.
He had a way of throwing that off. She rarely felt like she won in their encounters.
Having been a professional rodeo queen for the past nine consecutive years and having become the television face of rodeo queening was nothing if not winning—and winning a lot.
She made more money now, and at an older age than any rodeo queen who had ever come before her.
But when Diablo showed up, she stumbled.
Maybe he would get eliminated early? Maybe she wasn’t really facing weeks of tension, stretched taut between all the feelings he stirred up in her.
Or maybe the driving and the demands of her job’s full schedule would be enough to keep her too occupied to think of him.
Instead of circulating through a cluster of small towns generally centered in the mid-and southwest before saying goodbye to the RVs for the grand finale, this year the caravan was darn near traversing the full width of the lower forty-eight states.
Honoring the competition’s roots, they’d kicked things off in Houston for the qualifier and kickoff, but immediately after that, the schedule changed.
Sierra was looking forward to the new route.
While she loved the rough delights of rodeo, her day-to-day tastes were a bit more varied than the kinds of entertainment and dining options they’d all encountered during the first season tour.
This season the caravan was stopping at major cities in Louisiana, Florida and Georgia, before looping back up and around to hightail it through Tennessee, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Like the first season, they would travel the last leg to Las Vegas where the even-grander finale would take place.
Though the CC schedule meant her tourism activities were limited to things that could take place in a single day off, and though she was contractually obligated to behave as if there were cameras on her at all times—whether she was on break or not—this year’s route offered more opportunities to spend her downtime eating delicious food, exploring new cities and even visiting some museums along the way; all pleasures which—outside of riding—were joys she never tired of.
And if The Closed Circuit had increased the drive time for the second season, then they’d also kicked the camp and kitsch elements up a notch.
As decorated a rodeo queen as she was, Sierra was no stranger to or one to shy away from a little glitzy and campy showmanship, but the heavy-handedness of The Closed Circuit was at times enough to make even her blush.
Of course, she would never actually blush.
She was far too professional to ever do anything that could ever be construed as negatively reflecting on rodeo; she loved and respected it too much for that—whether it was the reality TV version or the real thing.
She had put off putting down roots or establishing stability and security for herself for that love of rodeo, pursuing crown after crown, and then again to audition for the hostess gig for The Closed Circuit; all the while the years raced by.
And she couldn’t stop now, not if she wanted to keep what she’d earned thus far. There was no room for error in a career where retirement at twenty was a normal thing. If she wanted to keep going where no woman had gone before, she thought as she angled her neck from one side to the other in an effort to get the knots and cricks out of it, she had to remain perfect.
She loved rodeo and riding, and loved being center stage, and if she was beginning to tire of being a paragon, she could accept that it was just the downside of her job.
But then again, she usually didn’t have Diablo Sosa swirling around in the same circles as her, either. He stirred up the kind of thoughts that spelled the end of rodeo queen dreams. But they were dreams she would have to be careful to protect, if she wanted to maintain the record-breaking career she’d worked so hard for.
It was just too bad that she couldn’t do both.
It wasn’t like her desires were anything but simple and normal. In fact, it would be considered utterly ridiculous—if not discriminatory—if she was in any other field and was forced to choose between the two.
But rodeo was rodeo, and if she’d learned anything in the years she’d been in the sport, it was that the harder you pushed it to change, the harder it dug its heels in against progress.
She’d seen girls try to fight it after losing their crowns and seen them lose every time, and she was no activist. It just didn’t make sense to her to fight to change longstanding tradition. Instead, she just did her part and toed the line, putting her faith in the fact that things would change incrementally over time at a pace that the largely conservative audience could accept.
Hadn’t her career up to this point proven just that? She, Sierra Quintanilla, was the most decorated queen the world of rodeo had ever seen, and her hair wasn’t blond and her last name had a letter from a non-English alphabet in it. Didn’t that prove that, when given time and reassurance that their entire way of life was not actually under threat, even people’s most entrenched ideas could be changed and space for difference could be made?
Sierra certainly hoped so; she’d gone so far as to stake her faith in the idea deep enough that she believed she was doing something bigger than playing dress-up with ponies every time she went out in front of a crowd. She was proving to the world that the face of rodeo didn’t have to be a white one.
So really, it wasn’t even a sacrifice that her contract and his standards meant this attraction to Diablo could go nowhere. It was merely an inconvenience for a far greater, more important good.
Changing the world was more important than Diablo’s lips, or jaw, or shoulders, or callused palms, or intoxicating scent...
“Play driving playlist,” she said aloud, hoping to distract herself. Really, it was past time to distract herself from the man her mind seemed so desperate to circle back around to.
She didn’t think about men. It was one of the things that had set her apart from the competition; in general, being rather oblivious to the distraction of men.
She thought about rodeo.
A rodeo queen was an ambassador, on at all times—as the CC and years of representing local and national rodeos had been quick to drill into her—and appearance and poise were always something a queen was judged on, even when it just meant passing and waving on the road.
Nonfans often criticized rodeo queens for their open admission that looks mattered, but for herself, Sierra had always appreciated the honesty.
Navigating life in a female body meant that, whether you liked it or not, your appearance—and particularly whether or not you were perceived as beautiful—was going to play a role in your life.
Sierra’s mother had drilled the fact into her daughters, unflinchingly acknowledging both the injustice and the reality of it in the same pragmatic way with which she approached everything else.
“You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but everyone does,” she would tell her three girls with a shrug. “The cover is the first thing anyone sees, and more often than not, it’s the main reason they pick up the book.”
Now, more than twenty years later, Sierra’s mother remained just as beautiful and just as blond as she had been back then, and, as each day passed, Sierra realized, grew far savvier about how to keep it that way.
For the longest time, it seemed Sierra had been cut from a very different cloth.
She had been a horse girl and a sports girl and had generally looked the part as a child because she thought that a long, scraggly ponytail, scuffed tennis shoes, torn jeans and either a baseball hat or a Band-Aid or a smudge of dirt on your head were required if you wanted to show the world that you were committed to the athletic lifestyle.
She had had no idea that a person could go hard and be pretty at the same time.
But then she’d discovered rodeo queening, and it’d turned into the bridge to connecting with her mother and sisters that she had always craved. She finally belonged among them, having found her own place in their cloud of glitter and gel without having to give up who she was and what she was about—or even the core wild and competitive spirit that made her Sierra.
Her mother loved her interest.
Her father, whose pride in his three beautiful daughters knew no bounds, loved it.
And her sisters, with whom she had frequently been at odds in the past due to her rough and tumble and messy inclinations, also loved it.
Discovering rodeo queening had created a tidy place for a rowdy daughter, and one that didn’t squeeze or hold too tightly and let her express her athletic prowess while also respecting the norms of her family.
She had entered her first pageant at the age of eight, won for the first time at the age of nine and hadn’t slowed down since.
Until now, there had never been a reason to.