ST. LOUIS – Abbey Lowe stood outside the locker room at Enterprise Center around 5:15 p.m. on Saturday and took a deep breath.

There was about an hour and a half until the start of the final night of action at the Mason Lowe Memorial, and the wife of the late Mason Lowe wanted to poke her head inside and wish her best to Mason’s fellow bull riders that were set to put their own lives on the line in his honor in St. Louis.

“I still just keep thinking he is coming back,” Abbey said in the hallway before turning her head to the left and glancing inside the locker room.

The sounds of bull ropes dragging against the concrete floor and leather riding gloves rubbing against rosin were all too familiar to Abbey.

Those were sounds synonymous to when Mason was getting ready to compete.

“He was gone so much on the road that it just feels like he is going to come home,” Abbey said with a sigh. “It still does not feel real.”

She then exhaled.

Abbey was ready to step inside the locker room for the first time since her husband passed following injuries sustained at the PBR event at the National Western Stock Show in Denver 32 days earlier.

Abbey was already fighting back tears before she crossed through the doorway and made her way to the center of the room.

She had seen many of Mason’s closest friends since his passing on Jan. 15, but being inside the locker room was certainly a hard experience for her.

As she stood on the plastic-covered floor, the crinkling underneath her was the only sound in the room before she cleared her throat.

“Hey guys,” she said.

A familiar face quickly came over to her to give her a massive bear hug.

Chase Outlaw then said quietly to her, “I love you.”

The hug sent a wave of emotions through Abbey as those pent up tears outside of the locker room finally reached a breaking point.

Outlaw then did his best to try and make Abbey smile.

“Well, you sure look very nice tonight,” Outlaw said with a Mason Lowe kind of grin.

Abbey then laughed and wiped away her tears as best she could.

If there was ever a rider inside the locker room that could be just as witty, just as sarcastic and just as cunning as Mason Lowe, then it was Chase Outlaw.

Outlaw was in Denver right by Mason’s side from the moment he was lying unconscious inside the Denver Coliseum all the way through Lowe’s passing at Denver Health Medical Center hospital.

Those lasting images and memories of Lowe’s passing have haunted Outlaw for the last month.

There have been many sleepless nights when he could not process that he lost one of his best friends.

However, despite his own personal struggles through the grieving process, Outlaw has made it a priority to do all he can for Abbey.

Outlaw, who was also a pallbearer at Mason’s funeral, has made sure to be a beacon of strength and a shoulder for Abbey to cry on.

After the two finished their hug inside the locker room, Abbey barely could muster up enough strength to whisper good luck to everyone and she walked back out into the hallway to another onset of emotions.

She began to make her way back to her family’s suite inside Enterprise Center and the same thought came back into her mind that did days ago.

“I wanted him to win,” Abbey said four hours later after Chase Outlaw made her wish come true with a 2-for-3 winning performance at the Mason Lowe Memorial.

“I love all of the guys in the locker room, but I wanted Chase to bring it home, and he did.”

Outlaw bounced back from a 2.14-second buckoff against Warlock in Round 1 Friday night by riding Lightning Before Thunder for 88.75 points to win Round 2 and Big Black for 91.5 points in the championship round Saturday night to earn his fourth career premier series win.

The win, though, was less about the $40,000 Outlaw won or the 600 world points that propelled him to No. 2 in the world standings.

Yes, Outlaw could overtake the world No. 1 ranking at Iron Cowboy, presented by Ariat, this coming weekend at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, but that was the last thing on Outlaw’s mind in St. Louis with the Mason Lowe Memorial belt buckle in his hands.

This weekend was about honoring one of his best friends, and being there to support Abbey and the Lowe family.

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Abbey and Mason’s father, Stacey, stood next to Outlaw on the back of the bucking chutes when Cooper Davis prepared to take on Stunt Man Ray in the final out of the event.

By the time Davis was hanging off the side of Stunt Man Ray in 6.93 seconds, Abbey was jumping into Outlaw’s arms.

A heartbreaking hug earlier evolved into an emotional celebration unlike any other in Outlaw’s career.

“Where do I begin?” Abbey said after the event. “I am so happy to know one of his closest PBR friends won his event. Where do I begin? He loved the sport and there is no tougher cowboy than Chase. There are no words.”

Outlaw has called Abbey one of the toughest people he knows continuously over the last month, and he held her hand as the two walked to the top of the shark cage for the belt buckle ceremony in Mason’s home state.

The Hamburg, Arkansas, bull rider struggled to comprehend the fact that he had just won a memorial bull riding in honor of his friend.

“It still don’t even seem real,” Outlaw said. “It doesn’t feel like we should be at one of my best friends’, one of our brothers’, memorials. It is what it is.”

Outlaw’s voice then trailed off.

He had already done an interview with Kate Harrison for CBS sports national television, as well as one with Brandon Bates for the in-arena crowd.

Outlaw was emotionally zapped.

“It has been difficult,” Outlaw said. “There have been a lot of sleepless nights. Your mind is a very powerful thing. I can’t say that the sights of what I had seen that play through my head in my mind, when you are about to get on the back of a bull (are easy), but you have to be able to overcome and overpower them thoughts.

“You let that subside and just block that out. You tell yourself to overcome it and improvise, adapt and overcome.”

Outlaw’s ride on Big Black was noteworthy in its own right, but you add in everything else Outlaw has been going through and you can’t help but be impressed, two-time World Champion Justin McBride said.

“That was awesome. Just awesome,” McBride said. “If you just take the ride by itself it was awesome. It was a rematch and he proved it wasn’t a fluke (the first time). It was even better this time around. Then you add the emotion of the event on top of that and his friendship with Mason.

“You stack all of that on there, and it is pretty special.”

Outlaw and Lowe first met when they were 12 years old, and the two developed a friendship over the years as they worked their way up through the ranks all the way to the PBR World Finals in 2015 – their first of three Finals together.

There wasn’t a day where Lowe didn’t make Outlaw laugh or smile.

Outlaw still misses one of his best friends.

“He was always full spirited and it didn’t matter the situation,” Outlaw said. “Mason Lowe was 25 years old and he lived more in 25 years than what 25 people could do in 100 years.

Outlaw then concluded after wiping his eyes, “He will never be forgotten.”

Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko