Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2017

Copyright © Jennifer M Voorhees 2017

Cover design by Studio Takoma/Zoe Norvell © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover photograph © Deborah Kolb/ImageBrief

Cover image © Alamy (detail)

Jennifer M Voorhees asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008116330

Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008116347

Version: 2017-10-27

Dedication

Dedicated to Elma Mae Bruce.

I am a changed person because your story and my story intersected, no matter how brief that chapter may have been. Your support as a reader meant the world to me as an author, but the impact you had on me as a person … well, that is unforgettable, and I will be forever grateful that I was able to share both your triumphs and disappointments as you fought the good fight. It is true what they say … not all heroes wear capes.

We are all going to leave a legacy behind us when we go. Be it big or small, I hope that all of us take a moment, a minute, a split second to invest in making sure the one that we are building is one that we can be proud of, one that makes others smile and think fondly of us, because it’s so easy to forget the good when the bad seems to always out front and center. Leave the lives you touch better off for having had you in them.

Also FUCK YOU, cancer … you are literally the worst and we’re all pretty sick of your shit.

Epigraph

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

—Winston Churchill

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Riveted Playlist

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Jay Crownover

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

So I’m sure it’s no surprise that I consider myself kind of a badass (on occasion at least). Not much fazes me. I’m pretty willing and able to roll with the punches and I’ve always been a “take the bull by the horns and make him your bitch” kind of gal. That being said there are things that are bigger and badder than me, things that scare the ever-living stuffing out of me and I really didn’t stop to think about how I handled the fear, or rather didn’t handle it, until I started working on this book.

If you follow me on social media at all I’m sure you know I have three dogs that I’m obsessed with. They are my best furry friends and my family. I love them unconditionally and fiercely. The boy Italian greyhound, Duce, (I know, I know, it isn’t spelled right, but even before writing books I was doing weird stuff with names) is getting older and last year he got sick … and I mean really sick. It was terrifying. It was heartbreaking and I handled it like shit. I broke down and turned into a tantrum-throwing idiot, which helped my dog and the situation zero percent. Quite frankly I didn’t know what to do or how to help him and that lack of control, no matter how much money I threw at the problem, turned me into a lunatic. I was terrified that I was going to lose him even though logically I knew he couldn’t stick around forever.

Eventually I got him to an amazing veterinarian … shout-out to Northwest Animal Hospital here in Colorado Springs and Doctor Sudduth, who took great care of him, got him diagnosed, and promised that it wasn’t his time to go yet. Duce is still old, still sickly, but he’s on meds and kicking right along. The last year was a struggle but we spent it together at home for the most part, which means I owe my readers and everyone that supports my books even more than you will ever know.

None of it changes the fact that I’m eventually going to have to say good-bye.

It still scares me. It makes me tear up even thinking about it. It’s going to be one of the hardest things I’m ever going to have to do … but writing this book … focusing on how Church handles love and loss, how we have this stoic, tough-as-nails soldier that has been through hell and back, but has things bigger and badder than he is that he can’t get out from underneath, was eye-opening. No matter what kind of armor we wear, all of it has a chink, a dent that speaks to a battle we fought and lost.

I know now that when the time comes I want to focus on the good, on the years we spent together, and all the wonderful memories my furry little guy gave to me. I don’t want any of that goodness and enduring love to be overshadowed by the pain of letting go. I need to be strong when the little guy can’t be … seriously, he’s only like seventeen pounds … so small to be poked, prodded, and medicated the way he is. He handles it like a boss though.

I can’t lie and say I’m not still scared, terrified even. Every time I leave home for an event I spend most of my free time checking in on the old man. But I like to think that I now have the where withal to be there for my four-legged bestie the way he has always been there for me.

So yeah … this entire book was kind of inspired by my sick dog … the good and the bad … Church and Dixie represent both sides of that … lol … I promise it will make sense when you read it.

Welcome to my love and loss …

Xoxo

Jay

My mom met her Prince Charming when she was a freshman in college and my dad leaned over and asked to borrow a pen so he could take notes. Rumpled, obviously hungover but flashing a smile that promised a good time and with a twinkle in his eyes, he was impossible to resist. She always told me and my sister that it happened that fast. In a split second she knew he was the one for her.

It was a sweet story. One that my parents shared with us often, both still sharing private smiles and eyes still twinkling, but neither one of us gave it much thought until my younger sister met her very own prince before she was old enough to drive. It was during a hard time for my family, hard for all of us, but especially for her. She’d always been the baby, been spoiled and treated like a princess. When the attention was yanked off of her in a really ugly way, she was lost and let the family tragedy consume her. Lost in grief and confusion she somehow managed to sign herself up for auto shop instead of an extracurricular that actually made sense for my very girlie, very feminine younger sibling. She spent five minutes in that noisy, greasy garage, but she spent years and years leaning on and loving the quiet, enigmatic auburn-haired boy she met in those five minutes. He saved her and even though she was way too young to know anything about anything, she had the same story that my mother did … she just knew he was the one for her.

It happened fast in my family. We fell hard and we didn’t get up once we fell. We stayed down and we loved hard and deep. I also learned as I watched all my friends, the men I worked with, the women that I considered sisters of the heart, that when it was right for anyone it happened fast and that they did indeed just know. They knew when it was right. They knew when it was going to last. They knew when it was worth fighting for. They knew when they had found the person that might not necessarily be perfect, but that was without a doubt perfect for them. They just knew.

So I waited, admittedly impatiently and anxiously, for my shot, for my turn to fall. I waited through my family healing, for them to come back with a love that was even stronger. I waited through my sister screwing up and desperately trying to repair her perfect. I waited and watched so many weddings and babies that weren’t mine. I waited through danger and drama. I waited through one bad date and one failed relationship after another. I waited through nights alone and nights spent with the occasional someone I knew wasn’t the one for me. I waited and waited as good men fell for even better women, all the while wondering when it would be my turn. I waited and watched love that was easy and love that was hard, telling myself I was far more prepared for my fall than anyone else around me was. I wanted it so bad I could taste it … but the more I waited the more certain I became that I was never going to fall.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think Dash Churchill was something special the second he walked into the bar where I worked—all coiled tension, sexy swagger, and with a swirling, threatening cloud of attitude hanging over him that would dim even the brightest summer days. I had eyes and I had a vagina, so all the things that I thought were special were the things those parts of my anatomy couldn’t miss. Long limbed, with a body that looked like it was ripped from the cover of Men’s Health magazine, bronze skin, unforgettable eyes, and a mouth that even though it was constantly frowning brought to mind every single dirty, sexy thing a pair of lips like that was capable of doing. I liked the way he looked … a lot … but I couldn’t say I much liked him. He was sullen, distant, uncommunicative and there was an air about him that marked in no uncertain terms that he was dangerous and volatile. He came across as a very unhappy individual, and no amount of rest, relaxation, and good friends seemed to shake that dark shroud of discontentment that hung over him. His amazing eyes flashed warnings that I was smart enough to heed. I liked my days spent basking in the sun, not dancing in the rain.

I was friendly to Church because I was friendly to everyone. The first month or so we had an uneasy working relationship that involved me dancing around him while every other single and not-so-single woman that came into the bar where we worked did their best to catch his eye. It worked out well for me and seemingly for him, so I went back to waiting for my perfect, my fairy tale, my heroic knight, my unmatched hero. He had to be out there somewhere and I was starting to think if he wasn’t looking for me I needed to start looking for him. My patience was wearing thin and my typically affable attitude was starting to get just as gloomy and gray as the one that hung over Church.

But then it happened and I just knew. I knew like I had never known anything as clearly and as unquestionably in my whole life. I knew with a rightness that shot through my soul and made my heart flip over in my chest.

I was trying to cash out a group of overly intoxicated and obnoxiously difficult young men. It wasn’t anything new. I’d been a cocktail waitress for a long time and knew how to handle myself and the customers. This drunken group was no better or worse than any other one I’d had to deal with in all my years slinging drinks and working the floor, but they were loud and the things they were saying were easily heard throughout the bar. Some of it wasn’t so bad. They liked my hair (curly and strawberry blond—who didn’t like my damn hair?) and they liked the way my shirt fit tight and snug across my chest. I was a solid D cup, so again who didn’t like my tits? But they also had a lot to say about my ass. Apparently it was too big for my small frame, and they didn’t love my freckles. That red hair was authentic and as real as it could be, so there wasn’t much I could do about the colored specks that dotted the bridge of my nose and brushed the curve of my cheeks.

I had pretty thick skin, you had to when you worked in a bar and liquor loosened tongues, so I was ready to brush the entire conversation off and snatch the credit card off the table when I felt a hand on my lower back and a storm not just brewing off in the distance but collecting and gathering, ready to unleash hell at my back.

“You good, Dixie?” The question made me freeze and it wasn’t because it was asked into my ear with an unmistakable slow and very southern drawl. It wasn’t because he was so close I could feel every line of muscle in his massive body and both the heat of his skin and the chill of his icy anger pressing into my back.

No, I froze, riveted to the spot and stunned stupid, because in twenty-six years no one had ever bothered to ask me if I was good. They always assumed I was.

I was the girl that could handle myself and everyone else around me.

I was the girl that never asked for help.

I was the girl that always smiled even when that smile hurt my face.

I was the girl that always had an ear to bend or a shoulder to lean on for a friend even when I really didn’t have time.

I was the girl that everyone ran to with a problem because I would drop everything to help fix it even if it was unfixable.

I was the girl that never let anything or anyone drag her down and fought to keep everyone else up with her.

I was the girl that everyone always assumed was good … so they never asked … but he had and the world stopped.

I gripped my pen and struggled to clear my throat. “I’m good, Church.” My voice was barely a breath of sound and I felt his touch press even deeper into my lower back.

“You sure?” No, I wasn’t sure. I was as far from good as I had ever been and I had no clue what to do about it.

I gave a jerky nod and blew out a breath, which had him taking a step away from me. I looked at him over my shoulder and he returned the look. There was no warmth in his fantastic eyes. There was no change in the harsh expression on his face. There was no knowledge that he had fundamentally changed my life in the span of a few terse words.

He was simply doing his job, making sure everything in the bar was okay and that the staff was safe. Meanwhile I was shoved unwillingly into the kind of love that had my arms flailing, my legs kicking, while a-scream-ripped-from-my-lungs in love with him. Of course I did that all silently and in my head as he walked away from me, because I might have now known he was it for me, but it was evident Church didn’t have a clue.

No one had ever given me any idea how to handle it when the right one came along, but you weren’t the right one for him.

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

—Malcolm Muggeridge

Dixie

Um … I had a lovely evening.” No, I hadn’t. It was awful. It would go down as the worst first date in the history of first dates, which was something considering my recent run as the awful-first-date queen. But it wasn’t in my nature to say so. All I wanted to do was say good-night and go hide in my bedroom with a glass of wine and my dog for the rest of the evening.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in for a drink?”

I fought to hold back a cringe and looked over the shoulder of the very cute but painfully shy young man I had accepted the date with after several weeks of online chatting. I’d met him through one of the dating apps I had signed up for when I decided I was done waiting for my perfect to realize that I was perfect for him.

My terrible luck in love had held true and this date, with this cute boy … and his mother, the person who had asked about coming in for a drink since my actual date seemed incapable of speech. Yep, it solidified the fact that I was bound to end up alone. That beautiful blinding thing that everyone important in my life that I loved seemed to find with such ease was clearly not in the cards for me. I wanted a fantasy but every day was faced with the fact that all I was getting was cold, hard and very lonely reality.

I sighed and reached up to push some of my wayward, strawberry-colored curls out of my face. I was annoyed that not only had I clearly been cat-fished—there was no way the son was the one running his dating profile, not if he couldn’t string two words together, and not if he couldn’t look at me without blushing and trembling nervously—but by the fact that I had wasted a perfectly cute outfit, killer hair, and a face full of flawless makeup on this sham of a date. I was typically a very low-maintenance kind of girl, so pulling myself together like this took time and effort that I would never have expended if I had known it was all for a woman with crazy eyes and a psychotic interest in finding her grown child a suitable mate. Honestly, I was surprised the woman hadn’t asked for blood and urine samples before the appetizers arrived. She’d grilled me like I was a POW for the entire date and when my answers didn’t meet her expectations I could feel her disappointment wafting from across the table.

Anyone else would have gotten up the instant their date showed up with parental supervision. They would have chalked it up as a loss and deleted the guy off the app. I, unfortunately, wasn’t wired that way. Nope, I was predisposed to believe every situation, no matter how bad, had a silver lining. I thought maybe my date would loosen up and tried to reason that it was actually kind of sweet he was so close to his mom. I figured after dinner and the interrogation I would be vetted enough that maybe he would want to do something without our eagle-eyed chaperone. I thought his shy demeanor made him seem vulnerable and that he was even more adorable in person than he was in his profile picture.

It didn’t get better.

It got worse, and I quickly realized the lining was never going to be silver because it was made out of lead, and I was sinking with it to the bottom of the bad-date ocean. I tried to think of a polite way to get out of the rest of the evening but the woman wouldn’t give me a minute to breathe. She even went as far as to follow me to the bathroom so I couldn’t send out an SOS call to one of my friends for a convenient escape. It was brutal, but I powered through, thinking once they followed me home and saw me to the door in an old-fashioned but still over-the-top gesture that it would be over. I had a boatload of nosy neighbors and a big dog in my apartment, so I didn’t fret too much about him knowing where I lived (the mom was a different story).

I was wrong.

I shifted my weight on my feet and bit back a sigh. I should have known she was going to be persistent, but I was done playing nice for her when it was clear her son was so beaten down that he was too scared to make a move or even speak for himself. She was a tyrant and I wasn’t going to subject myself to her vile company anymore. As soon as I slipped inside my apartment I was going to delete all the dating apps I had on my phone.

“I have a dog and she’s leery around strangers.” That was partly true. I did have a dog, a massive blue pit bull that I rescued from a shelter just days before she was supposed to be put down. Dolly looked like a brute, but she was a sweetheart and had never met a human she didn’t want tummy scratches and love from. We were kind of kindred spirits in that way. I mean I didn’t need my ears scratched or my belly rubbed, but I was afflicted with the same pressing need to be liked and accepted by pretty much everyone I came in contact with. It was ingrained in me to at least try to make everyone a friend, and if they didn’t reciprocate my kindness it only forced me to try harder. Sometimes I hated that about myself, and sometimes it was my favorite personality trait because the men and women in my life weren’t the easiest nuts to crack. They all loved me and let me in because I’d refused to let them shut me out.

Well, all except for one man.

I couldn’t hold back my flinch when he crossed my mind because he had warned me about online dating from the get-go, and I hated that he was right about it. I also hated that he was the reason I was desperate to find a man … a man who wasn’t him … in the first place.

Mommie Dearest shook her head and clicked her tongue at me. “Joseph is allergic to dogs. Your pet will have to go as things progress between the two of you.”

I felt my eyes pop wide and the forced smile I had plastered on my face for the entire evening finally slipped away. I already knew she had a few screws loose, but she was taking her crazy to another level if she thought she could tell me to get rid of my dog or what to do with anything in my life.

I straightened my shoulders and tilted my chin up. It was a look that worked on the drunks and unruly college kids that I hustled out of the bar where I worked every night.

“That’s not going to be a problem because things are not progressing beyond my front door. Thank you both for dinner, but if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go inside and cuddle my dog and erase every online dating app there is.”

The woman narrowed her eyes and stepped around her son. The young man made a noise low in his throat and his eyes widened. I thought he was scared of his mom, but the closer I looked at him the more obvious it became that he was scared for me as the woman advanced. He reached out a hand to grab his mother’s elbow, but it fell away before making contact like he knew the repercussions for intervening would be severe and drastic.

“Listen here, you little …” I lifted my hand before she could throw at me whatever insulting word she was going to label me with. I don’t think the woman was used to anyone standing their ground with her because she gasped and fell back a step.

“Stop. I thought I was talking to Joseph. I thought he was a nice guy, maybe a little sheltered and awkward … but a nice guy. Obviously it wasn’t him running his dating profile and there was some other agenda here from the start. I’m well past the age where I need a mother’s approval or permission to date her son, so I’m going to go into my apartment and end this date before either side gets nasty.” I looked at the shell-shocked young man hovering behind his mother and mouthed good luck before turning my back on both of them and inserting my key into the door. Dolly barked loud and deep from the other side, which was both comforting and reassuring.

I turned the knob on the door and pushed into the apartment without looking back. Once the door was shut and my dog was happily rubbing against my legs, I tossed my head back and let out a sigh that felt like it was tied to my soul. I was tired, so tired.

I loved my life. I had a job that I enjoyed going to every day, and I worked with people I adored and admired. I was never going to be a millionaire doing what I did, but I was good at it and most of the time it felt more like spending time with friends than actual work. I loved and was deeply loved back by my family, even if my younger sister was an idiot. I had a cute apartment, an active social life, and great freaking hair. There wasn’t a lot I could complain about on a day-to-day basis and things that did get under my skin were things I had a hard time explaining to anyone that didn’t grow up knowing love at first sight was real and that when you found the other half of your heart life was infinitely better.

I was only twenty-six, still plenty of time to live life and settle down, but I felt ancient and overlooked when I compared myself to my younger sister. She’d found the fairy tale our parents had laid out for us when she was still in high school and I got nothing but lonely nights and a string of dates so bad no one believed me when I tried to tell them how awful they really were.

I jolted when there was a knock at the door behind me, making my ears ring since my head was still resting against the wood. Dolly growled low in her throat when she felt me tense up, so I put my hand on the top of her broad head and used the peephole to see who was interrupting my pity party.

My new neighbor, the girl who moved like a ghost and spoke so softly I often had to struggle to hear what she was saying, stood on the other side. Poppy Cruz, quiet, withdrawn, but so sweet and smitten with my dog. I’d totally leveraged that love she had for my pet into a budding friendship that Poppy was obviously reluctant to have.

I knew some of her history through stories from her friends and family who were all regulars at my bar, so I was careful not to push too hard even though all I wanted to do was cuddle her and tell her the clouds have to part on even the darkest of days. She was comfortable enough with me now to knock on my door well past the acceptable visiting hours, so there was no way I was going to leave her standing in the hall, even if that meant my wine and sob-fest were further delayed.

I pulled the door open and Dolly immediately lunged for the visitor on the other side. Poppy was willowy but she had no trouble bracing for the impact from the dog and she seemed just as excited to receive the slobbery kisses as Dolly was to give them.

“I heard you talking out in the hallway and I just wanted to see how your date went. It didn’t sound like it ended on the best note.” Her quiet voice drifted to me as I shook my head and snorted.

“It didn’t start on a great note either. He showed up with his mom, can you believe that? I need a glass of wine, do you want one?”

She wrinkled her delicate nose and wrestled the big dog into the apartment so she could shut the door behind her. “I don’t drink, but thank you.”

She didn’t do much of anything. The product of a very strict and religious upbringing, Poppy was as straight and narrow as one could get. She’d suffered severely at the hands of a man her father had handpicked for her and it was clear that every single day was one more step in the process of healing from that.

“I forgot. I’m in the bar so often I forget that there are humans in this world that can cope without alcohol.” I lifted an eyebrow at her and made my way into the kitchen. “I’m not one of them.”

She laughed lightly like I meant her to and followed me into the tiny galley-style kitchen.

“So his mom?” Her eyes were the color of hot cider and they gleamed with gentle humor. She was impossible not to like and as much as I wanted a different life for myself I also wanted one for her. I hated that her history was so ugly, but I loved that she’d survived it and was pushing herself to live beyond her experiences. That was beautiful and hinted at an inner strength her delicate appearance kept hidden.

I snorted again and rolled my eyes. “I thought the guy that took off halfway through the date with my wallet was as bad as it could get. I was wrong. Really wrong.”

“I can’t believe it gets worse, Dixie.” She shook her hair at me and I wanted to reach out and touch the bronze strands. They glimmered like they were lit from within. Everything about her was meant to shimmer and shine through the shadows that surrounded her. Eventually that inner glow was going to break free and I hoped I was around to see it. “I didn’t think it could get worse than the guy who wanted you to be third person in a ménage à trois with his wife.”

I sucked back a mouthful of wine at that and shuddered. “Yeah, when he told me it was fine because their kids were with his parents for the weekend I almost threw my water at him. That was bad, but this mother was still the worst. It was a shame because her son was actually really cute and I think if he wasn’t so browbeaten he might actually be a good guy.” I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Oh well, you live and you learn.”

Something crossed her beautiful face, something tragic and painful that hurt to look at, but it was only there for a second and then her typical serene and unaffected expression was firmly back in place. “If you’re lucky you get to live. So no more online dating?”

I nodded and finished off the rest of my wine. “No more. There seems to be an infinite amount of crazy out there in the world and I’m a magnet for it.”

They can be whoever they want to be on the internet, Dixie. You’ll never know who you’re dealing with, and that’s dangerous. Church’s warning drifted through my mind and it made me want to hit something. He was right. He also always seemed to be looking out for me, which would be thrilling, exciting, and exactly what I wanted if he had been doing it out of something other than some misguided need to watch out for me because we worked together. If he cared about what happened to me because he cared about me in some way, shape, or form, I would be over the moon. But really it all boiled down to the fact that I was important to the people that were important to him, so he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to me.

I was turning to pour another glass of wine when Poppy and I both started as someone started pounding on the apartment door. I gasped a little as Poppy jumped to her feet in a panic with a startled yelp pealing out of her throat. Alarmed by the human’s distress Dolly started to growl and stalked to the door like the born protector that she was. She let out a sharp bark that had me practically sprinting across the room to see who was causing the commotion so that her gruff growling and sharp yapping didn’t wake up the neighbors.

I glanced at Poppy and frowned when I saw that she was as white as my countertop and looked like she was going to pass out. Her hand was to her throat and her fingers were shaking so badly I could see the tremors all the way across the room. She was terrified. I wanted to fix that for her but I didn’t know how.

“Dixie, open the door. I left Kallie and I need a place to crash for a few days.” The voice on the other side of the door was as familiar as my own. His words made me swear out loud as I pulled the door open without another thought given to the fact that Poppy might end up facedown on the carpet.

“You left Kallie?” I barely got the words out before my little sister’s obviously furious and clearly frustrated fiancé barreled into the tiny living space. I shut the door behind him. Dolly went about her typically happy greeting once she realized she knew the tall, lanky, auburn-haired man that was now frantically pacing through my living room, raking his heavily tattooed hands through his messy hair.

“She’s been cheating on me … again. I was such an idiot to believe her when she told me it would never happen again after the last time. How could she do this to me after all we’ve been through together?” His heated blue eyes locked on me and I could see he was struggling to keep both his emotions and the moisture trapped in his eyes in check. “We’re supposed to be getting married in a few months.” His voice cracked and I couldn’t stop myself from walking over and wrapping my arms around his trim waist.

“Oh, Wheeler. I’m so sorry.” My sister was an idiot, but in all honesty so was he. My sister didn’t know how to be an adult without him and he didn’t know how to be a family without her. They were scarily dependent on each other and had been since they were kids. Now Kallie was barely twenty-two and had everything I wanted in the palm of her hand—the brand-new house Wheeler bought for them to start their lives together, an engagement ring that made my heart squeeze with envy. I would treasure the love and promises she had been given and part of me died every single time I watched my sister be careless and reckless with what Wheeler had handed her. “You can stay here for as long as you need to. Do you want me to call her?” If I did I was going to rip her a new one. I loved my sister dearly, but at the moment I would gladly strangle her with my bare hands.

I felt his broad chest rise and fall where I was squeezing him. He heaved another deep sigh and pulled back so that he could shake his head in the negative. “Not tonight.” He growled from low in his chest and roughly dragged his hands over his face. “I need a minute … or ten.”

There was a delicate clearing of a throat and we both shifted our gazes to where Poppy was pressed against the front door like Wheeler could grow razor-sharp claws and mile-long fangs to eviscerate her at any moment. Her eyes were twice their normal size and her teeth were buried so deeply into her bottom lip I was surprised she wasn’t drawing blood.

“I’m going to go.” Her voice quivered and her hands were still shaking.

I felt Wheeler tense where I was still holding on to him, and I watched his eyes narrow as they locked on Poppy. His gaze was normally a mellow light blue that looked amazing with his reddish hair and the dimples that dug into his cheeks. Tonight it flared like the blue at the base of a flame and those adorable indents in his cheeks were nowhere to be found.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. It’s been a shitty night on top of an even shittier week and I’m not thinking too clearly at the moment. I didn’t mean to barge in and make an ass out of myself.” And that was why I loved Hudson Wheeler with every single bit of my heart and soul. His world was crashing down around him. He was drowning in an ocean of his own bad choices (and I would call Kallie a bad choice to her face for this bullshit) and misery, but he still had the wherewithal to gentle his tone and rein in his temper so that he didn’t further terrify the young woman plastered against the only exit. He was a good guy … no, a great guy … and Kallie was a world-class moron for screwing around on him … again.

“It’s fine. You’re … um, fine. Dixie, I’ll see you later.” She leaned down to pet Dolly one last time and then slipped out the door shutting it silently behind her. She moved like smoke and vanished just as fast.

I pulled away from the man that was set to be my brother-in-law and tunneled my fingers through my wild hair and squeezed my head. “That’s my new neighbor.”

He grunted and threw himself down on my well-worn couch. The springs protested under his weight and then groaned again when Dolly climbed up next to him and put her head on his denim-clad thigh.

“I know her. She’s Salem’s sister and Rowdy grew up with her back in Texas. He brought her by when she needed a new car. I tried to sell her a ’64 Bonneville that needed a little work. She would’ve made that car look gorgeous. She ended up with a Toyota Camry. It was a goddamn travesty. A girl that looks like that should have a car that stands out, not something safe and predictable.” I forgot that Wheeler knew a bunch of the boys that frequented my bar because they were family, some by blood and some by something more, with my boss, Rome Archer. Rowdy St. James also worked at the tattoo shop that was responsible for the majority of the ink that covered Wheeler from head to toe. I should have realized he would have run across Poppy at least once or twice since she’d come to Denver, even if Kallie tended to keep him on a tight leash.

I lowered myself onto the only available seating left in my small living room and kicked my feet up so that they were resting on my coffee table. “Poppy isn’t really the standing-out type and she can do with a little safe.”

His gaze shifted to mine and his mouth pulled into a frown. “That’s a damn shame, too.”

I agreed with him, so I didn’t say anything else.

After a solid hour of sulking I finally got up and took Dolly out for her nightly ritual. I dug up some sheets and blankets to make a temporary bed for Wheeler on the couch, a temporary bed that was going to be as uncomfortable as hell considering his long legs, and eventually found my way to my own bed.

I wanted to cry for all of it. For Wheeler’s broken heart, for my sister’s stupidity and blindness to what she had thrown away, for Poppy’s obvious emotional scarring and her fear of other people, for Joseph and his creepy relationship with his insane mother, and for me. Unrequited love sucked. I hated it.

No tears fell as I climbed under the covers. Like I always did, I told myself there was bound to be a light at the end of the tunnel … there had to be because I refused to live my life in the dark.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.

—Walt Whitman

Church

You’ve been awfully quiet tonight.”

The southern drawl was lighter than mine, more lyrical and smooth. The Blue Hills of Kentucky rolled thick and unmistakable in Asa Cross’s twang as he looked at me steadily from behind the massive oak bar he was currently in the middle of wiping down.

“I talk when I have something to say.” No one would ever accuse me of being the chatty type. When I did choose to speak the Mississippi Delta was deep and locked thickly around all my words. My drawl was much slower than the blond bartender’s and far less practiced. Asa used his inflection and his southern charm to work whoever was sitting on the other side of the bar like they were one of his marks in a long con. He turned up the south in his voice to make hearts flutter and to fool drunks into thinking he was far less sharp than he was. His Kentucky-flavored tone was nothing more than a tool he used to his advantage whenever he needed it, while my unhurried inflection reminded me of a home I hadn’t seen in far too long. That was one of the reasons I never had much to say. Every time I opened my mouth the sound of my voice, like molasses over gravel and deep as the Mississippi River, took me back to a place I had been actively avoiding for over a decade.

I’d spent a little over ten years serving my country in various capacities while enlisted in the army. I’d been around different types of men from a million different walks of life. In all that time I’d never met anyone as hard to unravel as the man standing across from me. He had eyes the exact same color as the aged whiskey on the shelf behind him, and they were picking me apart with a perceptiveness that made me uneasy. I wasn’t used to being so transparent. Whatever shield I had up, whatever ironclad curtains I had pulled around me, Asa Cross saw right through them.

“You are usually quiet, but tonight you didn’t say a single word. You look like you have something on your mind.” His eyebrows lifted and that smirk on his face turned into a grin that I wanted to put my fist in. He wouldn’t be half as pretty as he was with missing teeth and a bloody nose. “Dixie had a date tonight. I figure you were worried about her since she’s been spending time with those internet guys over the last few months, and the bar is never the same on her nights off.”

My back teeth clicked together in aggravation and a low growl escaped my throat. My hands curled into fists at my sides without me being aware they were doing it and I could feel a furious heat climb up the back of my neck.

The idea of Dixie, sweet, sunny Dixie, out there with God only knew what kind of troll she was going to find on the internet made me want to destroy everything. I wanted to break the bar top in half. I wanted to throw chairs through windows. I wanted to smash all the meticulously placed bottles displayed behind Asa into smithereens. I wanted to dropkick the remaining few stragglers nursing their last-call drinks out the door and I wanted to get my hands on whoever had taken Dixie out tonight and throttle him within an inch of his life.

Logically, I knew there were decent, normal individuals using the internet to find love and sex … the sex being more likely. There were millions of people online dating and while I thought that was okay for them I refused to think it was an option Dixie should be utilizing. I hated the idea of her dating at all, but there was something about her meeting strangers, meeting men that hadn’t had the opportunity to see her in person before taking her out, that really rubbed me the wrong way.

Dixie Carmichael was the nicest girl I had ever met. She didn’t have a mean bone in her perfectly curvy and petite body. She was always smiling, always laughing, and there wasn’t a moment spent in her company where it didn’t feel like the sun was shining directly on you. She embodied warmth and care. Someone behind a computer monitor would never understand that. They would never feel the way her innate ability to make everything seem like it would be okay made the world seem like it was worth saving. There was a lot of bad shoved at us all on a day-to-day basis but somehow Dixie was a filter for it, and when you were around her it seemed like the only thing you could focus on was the good she let through.

She needed someone that could appreciate that. She needed a man that shined as bright as she did and that would hold her above the shit that was always trying to drag everyone else down. I doubted that guy was on Tinder or Bumble. In fact, I doubted that guy existed at all.

“I don’t keep track of her comings and goings.” I rubbed a hand over my mouth and watched as Asa’s eyebrows shot up and his lips twitched. I was a damn good liar. I lied to myself for years and years about the kind of man I was in order to convince myself that the choices I made were the right ones. But I was currently trying to lie to a man that was a professional liar, so it was no surprise that he saw right through the bullshit I was laying down.

“Ahh … I see. You have no interest in the fact she might be out there with a serial killer that wants to turn her pretty hair into a coat for his pet hamster?”

I glowered at him and crossed my arms over my chest. I was a big guy. Years of doing PT and boredom in the desert had led to a strenuous fitness routine I still maintained, partly out of habit and partly because when my muscles burned and I made myself sweat I could shut off all the other stuff that was crowding my head. Some of it nagging, niggling regret from the past, a whole lot of it new nightmares and realizations from my present. I had a couple inches in height on the Kentucky charmer and a whole lot more brute strength. Yet none of that or the glower that I was sure was stamped across my face kept Asa from keeping his stupid, sound advice to himself.

“Dixie is a good girl, she deserves someone who can give her that kind of good back.” I could see the surprise on Asa’s face as I finally gave him something that was wholeheartedly true.

He pushed off the bar and hollered that it was time for the last few customers to finish up. There were some grumbles but everyone left was a regular and as soon as the clock hit one thirty they would move towards the door without any hassle. I liked nights like this, where there were no fights to break up, no crying girls to console, no puke to clean off the floor, no amorous couples to shoo out of the bathrooms. Typically on a night like this I would watch Dixie scamper around shutting the bar down while pretending I wasn’t looking at her. I couldn’t help myself. My eyes were pulled to her and when she laughed or smiled I felt it in my gut like a punch. She did things to me that no woman had ever done to me before.

She made me want to smile and that alone was enough to have my feet itching to hit the road before I did something stupid, like fall in love or take her up on her blatant invitation into her bed. I wanted to fuck her, but I knew if I did it would fuck us both. She was nothing but good and when I got good in my life it always went bad, so I didn’t allow myself, or her, to go there. She shone as bright as the sun every single day but I was a man that knew all too well that too much time in the sun could lead to some serious burns.

I’d spent the last few months biting my tongue until it bled while she dated men that weren’t me and I went to bed alone each night wondering why I didn’t just pick up one of the barflies that hung around making it known they were ripe for the picking.

I’d never been the kind of guy that burned through women. My mother, and subsequently the women that stepped in to raise me after my mom was gone, Elma Mae and Caroline, taught me to understand that women’s hearts were fragile and you had to be careful with them. They tried to teach me how to take care of the good when you had it, how to respect it and earn it. I kept the lessons close because they were some of the only things I had left of the women that shared them with me. I never played with a woman’s body if I didn’t know for sure her heart was kept in a separate box somewhere. I liked my hands on soft tits and full hips, and silky legs wrapped around my back as much as any other guy. What I didn’t like was wiping away tears, explaining myself, and dramatic good-byes when I didn’t stick around after a good time. I was picky about who I went to bed with and I made sure they understood all my hard and fast rules about not committing or sticking around before I ever put my hands on them.

“Denver was just a pit stop.” I rubbed my hand over the top of my buzzed head and looked down at the wooden floor under my boots. “With everything that happened with Brite and Avett a few weeks ago I think it’s about time I put some space between me and the Mile High.” A friend and his daughter had recently run afoul of some really nasty people. My old commanding officer and current boss and I had moved in to help in any way we could, which ended with bullets and blood and some seriously pissed-off drug dealers. Holding a weapon in my hand and kicking in doors was second nature to me. I missed the fire of combat in my blood and the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I was made to fight, not to rest on my laurels. “Well past time I made my way home and tried to mend some fences.”

This was why Asa was such a good bartender. He pulled your story out of you whether you were planning on telling it or not, and he listened like he cared even if my story was told in fewer words than he was used to.

He nodded at me and pushed a rocks glass filled with amber liquor towards me. He typically drank Scotch at the end of the night, but I was a bourbon guy through and through. “I know all about mending fences, brother. Not a day goes by that I don’t have to dig a hole for a new post and string up some new wire.” He took a swig of his own drink and plastered that arrogant smirk back on his face. “Plus you might as well run before that girl you’ve been watching when she isn’t watching you fall in love with someone who ain’t you.”

I was going to hit him. My intent must have been clear because he put his glass down on the bar and lifted his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “My girlfriend is armed and she likes my pretty face the way it is. Keep that in mind, soldier.”

I slammed back the rest of the bourbon and let it burn its way down my throat. “Fuck you, Opie.”

He chuckled at me and turned to cash out the register behind him. “That’s why they say the truth hurts, Church.”

Before I had been Church I’d been Dash. And before I had been Dash I’d been Dashel. It was already hard enough being a kid with less than white skin and with parents in an interracial relationship, but having a name that was as uncommon as mine down in the Deep South was fuel on an already burning fire. I’d hated it growing up and even with shortening it to Dash I’d still struggled with it. But now I’d been Church for a long time, and he was a man that didn’t give any kind of shit what anyone else thought of his name. I’d earned that nickname through service and blood. It wasn’t a name that was given to me. It was one I had taken and made my own. Elma Mae was going to hate it and she was still going to call me Dashel even when I begged her not to but there was a part of me that couldn’t wait to hear the stubborn old woman tell me, I’ll call you by the name your mother picked out for you, son. That’s the name she wanted for you and you should respect it. I should, but there were a lot of things I should have done to make my mom proud that I didn’t do.

The truth Asa was laying down did hurt, because there was no hiding from him that part of the reason I was ready to bolt was because I really couldn’t stomach the idea of watching someone else take Dixie’s heart.

“Didn’t ask you for the truth.” I stuck my head out the front door and watched as the last two bar patrons climbed into their Uber. I locked the front door and shut off most of the lights and made my way back to the bar.

I liked the operation Rome had set up here. I liked the people, both the ones who worked for him and the ones he served, and I liked that the atmosphere was usually festive but pretty mellow. On the nights that heads needed to be cracked and tempers needed to be tamed I enjoyed the exertion and physicality of that as well, but I wasn’t meant to be a bouncer. I had too much training, too much experience, and frankly too many demons that needed an outlet, to babysit drunks and party girls for the long haul. It was time for me to stop drifting.

Asa finished up with the money and shot a glance at his phone. I could tell by the genuine smile that crossed his face and the way his gaze sparked that his gorgeous redheaded girlfriend was the one behind the message. Royal Hastings, the pretty Denver policewoman had recently moved in with the annoying southerner and it wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up with a ring on her finger before the year was out. The cop and the con had something special going on even if I firmly believed it was doomed to fail.

“Most folks don’t ask for the truth but that doesn’t stop me from giving it to them.” He gave me a look that told me if I was any kind of man I would take that truth he was so fond of and do something smart with it. I didn’t bother to tell him good and I didn’t really see eye to eye. We made our way to the back door after a quick stop at the office to lock the money up in the safe. Asa scribbled a note to Rome and then quickly checked the security cameras. He typed out a message on his phone and by the time we hit the parking lot at the back of the bar a brand-new Toyota 4Runner was pulling in with a smiling redhead behind the wheel.

Asa clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a look that burned with understanding and seriousness. I felt like he was speaking directly into my soul when he told me quietly, “The real truth is, I let something good go, so I know how that feels. Got it back and would move heaven and earth to keep it by my side, so I know exactly what you’re walking away from, soldier. Be smarter than I was and don’t let all that goodness slip through your fingers.” He turned around and walked backwards for a second while flashing me that shit-eating grin of his. “It’s always better to be warm than it is to suffer the cold, Church.”

He moved towards the SUV and I had to look away when he leaned into the driver’s side window to kiss his girl. There was so much intimacy there, so much passion that it made everything I swore I knew about love and togetherness pull against the reins that held it tight.

I gave a halfhearted wave as Royal honked the horn at me and pulled out of the parking lot, then made my way over to my Harley. It was still nice enough weather to ride, another reason I needed to get my ass in gear and head south. In a few weeks it was going to be too cold to have the bike on the road and I wasn’t interested in putting the beauty on a trailer and driving her like some expensive piece of luggage back to Mississippi.

I was swinging my leg over the chrome-and-leather beast when my phone vibrated in my back pocket. It was after two in the morning so I knew anything buzzing through at this time of night couldn’t be good. Considering I’d recently shot Denver’s top drug supplier’s right-hand man and put down another one of his henchmen for good, I was dreading seeing what was waiting for me on the display.

It was almost as bad as I expected it to be. The number was one I’d been ignoring since I landed in Denver months ago. It was a number that belonged to a man that I owed more than some simple conversation or a handful of words. It was a call I would have continued to ignore if it hadn’t come in the middle of the night and on the heels of three other calls throughout the day that I had turned a blind eye to.

It was time to stop running from my past.

It was time to man up.

It was time to be a better man, the man the person calling had tried his best to raise me to be.

“Hey, Julian.” I rested the Harley back on the kickstand and ran a hand over my face. I could practically feel the shock wafting across the phone line. He hadn’t expected me to answer and that made me a special kind of asshole.

“Dash.” His voice was even deeper and coarser than mine. People often told me I sounded like Johnny Cash but Julian Churchill really had the Man in Black’s rough growl embedded throughout his tone. “I didn’t think you were going to answer.”

I sighed and felt like the wild five-year-old he had tried to wrangle all over again. “Been busy. Took a while to settle in and get used to sleeping without bombs going off overhead.”

He didn’t say anything for a long minute and when he spoke I could tell he was trying really hard to keep the hurt and censure out of his deep voice. “You have a perfectly good bed here and last I heard there weren’t any bombs in Lowry.” Lowry was the small town where I had been born and raised, just outside of Tupelo, Mississippi. There weren’t bombs there but there was a bucket load of memories that blasted me with emotional shrapnel that hurt worse than the kind I’d had surgically removed from my skin.

“I needed time, Jules.”

“Had more than enough time, son. You need to come home.” I bristled just like I always did when he tried to tell me what to do. I thought I’d squashed that urge after we stood side by side and lowered my mom into the ground but there was something about him talking to me like I should know better that always made me feel like an unruly kid.

“Planning on it. Have to tie up a few loose ends around here, and I have to make sure I don’t leave my friend that helped me out in a lurch.” Rome would send me on my way with a pat on the back and a foot in my ass if he knew the real reason I was hiding in Colorado instead of hightailing it home. He was understanding, but the man was all about family first and he wouldn’t abide the way I’d been avoiding mine for the last decade or so. I was a coward and I didn’t want a man I’d been in the trenches with, a man I would die for and knew would die for me, to know just how deeply that weakness ran.

“Dash.” There was a sigh and then Julian cleared his throat, so I knew he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “Elma Mae had an accident.”

I almost dropped the phone as I bolted up from my lounging position on the bike. “What do you mean she had an accident?” My fingers tightened around the phone to the point that my knuckles hurt and the blood rushing furiously between my ears made hearing his response difficult.

“She was carrying her laundry in off the line and tripped going up the stairs. She fell backwards and busted her hip. A neighbor heard the commotion and ran to help. They had to airlift her to the hospital in Tupelo. She’s also got a dislocated shoulder and a sprained wrist. She’s back in the Lowry hospital now recovering and she should be going home at the end of the week.”

“Jesus.” Elma Mae was chasing down eighty if she was a day. None of us knew her exact age and she refused to tell. She would just smile at us and tell us we kept her young. Those kind of injuries were serious for someone in their prime. In a woman Elma’s age they were life threatening. “She gonna be all right?”

“Elma is a tough old bird. It’ll take more than a tumble to keep her down. She’s been asking about you.”

Well, if that wasn’t just a fucking red-hot poker right through the guts. It was also a slap across the face with the reality of everything I’d purposely been avoiding and denying for way too long.

“I bought a Harley. Gonna have to ride it home, so I’ll be there in a couple days.” My homecoming was happening sooner than I’d planned, but there was no way I couldn’t be there for the woman that had always been my true north. When nothing else in my life made sense there was Elma Mae. She was the only safe place I had ever known and if she needed me I was going to be there to return the favor. I owed the woman everything and the fact I’d waited so long to see her after years of deployment was a startlingly clear reminder of why I was correct and considerate in staying the hell away from Dixie.

She lived in the light and I was far more comfortable hiding in the dark.

“I’ll let her know. That will make her day.” He paused for a second, which made me brace for whatever was coming next. “She mentioned a girl. Elma told me the reason you weren’t in any hurry to come home from Denver was because of a girl. That true?”

Son of a bitch. The truth might hurt but the lies I told, and they were more gray than white, were going to outright kill me. “There’s a girl.” And there was, but she wasn’t entirely the reason I wasn’t ready to face Julian or anyone else back in Lowry. She had been one of my reasons for sticking around Denver longer than I’d planned. She was an excuse that would buy me time and one that wasn’t entirely untrue.

“Do me a favor and see if you can bring her with you. Elma would love nothing more than to see you happy, to know you’re finally settling down and moving past the things that happened with your mom and with Caroline. You bring your girl home with you and give all of us some peace of mind. Make an old woman happy, Dash. You owe Elma a few years where she doesn’t have to worry about you catching bullets or ending up alone.”

Shit. I rubbed my temples and kicked at the loose gravel under the soles of my boots. “I’ll see what I can do.” That was bullshit. Dixie would drop everything and come with me if I explained the situation. She was too nice and too sweet to tell me no. Elma Mae was going to goddamn love her after she gave her a ration of hell in order to make sure she was the right girl for her boy.

“If the girl cares about you then she’ll figure out a way to be here. If she can’t figure it out, she isn’t worth your time. Come home, son, we miss you.”

I missed home, too, but I could do without the memories and reminders that had kept me away since the day I signed my life away to my country.

It was my turn to sigh. “I’ll see you soon, Jules.” He hung up and I wanted to kick myself because after all these years and all the time and effort he put into raising me I still couldn’t call the man Dad. He deserved the title, after all it was his last name I carried around with me, not that of the man who had knocked my mom up and run. He had earned it much like I had earned my name, but whenever I tried to say it the word got stuck and I fell back on something that seemed less important. It felt like I was fooling God and everyone under the sun about just how important Julian was to me if I refused to call him the only thing he had ever been to me. I was trying to trick fate so Jules didn’t end up the way so many others I loved had.

I was also going home, and I was going to put some sunshine in my pocket and take it with me.

Dixie

I’d been working bar hours long enough that it took some major commotion and ruckus to pull me out of bed before lunchtime. Even Dolly had adapted to middle-of-the-night walks and breakfast at noon since I was a worthless and cranky blob of indignation if I was forced to abandon my comfy bed while the morning sun was still in the sky. It was the one and only time I let myself be grouchy and hate everything, which meant anyone that knew me well gave me a wide berth in the mornings. My days and nights had been flipped for as long as I could remember, so when loud voices pulled me from a sound sleep the next morning well before noon, and well before the time that most people got up to start their day, I was livid. I hadn’t slept very good the night before, so it felt like I had just shut my eyes even though several hours had passed, but that didn’t mean I was in any kind of mood to be startled awake or to play referee.

I heard Wheeler’s sharp tone as I crawled out of bed almost pushing Dolly to the floor in the process. I was stunned when it was another deep, obviously angry male voice that replied and not my sister’s. I figured Kallie would show up with her tail between her legs any minute now begging Wheeler to take her back. That’s what she’d done the last time he caught her stepping out on him with another guy. She wasted no time in trying to force him to forgive and forget.

She knew exactly where her bread was buttered and there was no way she was going to let the guy that had taken care of her, coddled her, given her everything she’d ever asked for get away from her. There was also no way in hell my vain, spoiled little sister had the backbone and fortitude to weather the embarrassment of canceling her long-anticipated wedding this close to the date. If word got out exactly why Wheeler had pulled the plug on their dysfunctional relationship, Kallie would wither away from embarrassment. She might want to have her cake and eat it too, but if someone pointed out how gluttonous it made her seem she would fall apart. The girl couldn’t take criticism to save her life, which was why she had kept hold of Wheeler for so long. He loved her and everything about her … at least he had until she’d drop-kicked his heart.

I recognized the rough, growly voice with its southern drawl right away. I couldn’t figure out why Church was at my apartment this early, and I couldn’t figure out why he and Wheeler were barking at one another like two dogs staking their claim over territory in my living room. I thought that maybe I was still dreaming until I stubbed my toe on the back of the couch as I rushed into the front of my apartment to see what in the hell was going on.

I swore loudly and hopped around on one foot, which drew both of the snarling men’s attention to me. Dolly, curious about the early morning visitor, gave me a sympathetic look then happily trotted over to Church, who was standing with his arms crossed over his massive chest while he glared at me out of those amazing eyes of his. People would call them hazel for lack of a better term but hazel didn’t cut it. Hazel was too ordinary a word for a color that was so brilliantly extraordinary. Those eyes of his were something else, pretty much all of him was designed to make vaginas surrender without putting up any kind of fight. There were men that were pretty like Asa, and there were men that stole breath with their masculine beauty like Rome Archer. Then there were men who had the best of both those worlds like Dash Churchill.

“What are you doing here before Starbucks is even open, Church?” I rubbed at my sleepy eyes and stiffened when his gaze drifted down from my messy hair, which I was sure looked like I stuck my finger in a light socket, to the oversized T-shirt I was wearing that had a giant cartoon taco on the front wearing a scowl with the words “I don’t wanna taco about it” scrawled underneath. Obviously it wasn’t something I would have ever worn to bed if I’d known he was going to be my six-foot-four, testosterone-fueled alarm clock, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about my ridiculous sleepwear or my out-of-control hair now. There was also nothing that could be done about the fact I wasn’t wearing pants and even though my taco shirt was big it was still just a T-shirt and barely, and I do mean barely, covered up all the things it needed to in order for me to keep my modesty.

I cleared my throat as that mesmerizing gaze drifted down the length of my legs and back up to my heated face. I took a careful step behind the couch and crossed my arms over my chest to mimic his badass pose. Mine was more to hide the fact I didn’t have a bra on and to cover up that even though he was pissed and clearly annoyed his mere presence still had all my lady parts shaking off sleep and waking up bright and early.

“I need to talk to you. I wasn’t expecting you to have company.” The way he said it wasn’t very nice.

I stiffened and shifted my gaze to Wheeler, who was standing at the doorway not letting Church and his palpable anger all the way into my apartment. Dolly was sitting between the two men watching them like they were opponents in a tennis match. She was probably waiting to see who would give her attention first but the visual still made my lips twitch as the dog’s head swiveled back and forth.

“Wheeler, go ahead and let him in. If I’m going to be up this early I need coffee and I don’t want either of you or your male posturing to scare Poppy.” I shuffled from behind the couch and into my tiny kitchen as my no-longer-future brother-in-law stepped to the side. It was only when Wheeler was fully clear from the door that I realized all he had on was a pair of low-slung jeans. His heavily tattooed torso was on full display and his mahogany hair was mussed and messy from a night of aggravated hands pulling at it. If I was on the other side of the door and couldn’t see the tangled mess of Wheeler’s haphazard bed still on the couch, I would probably be jumping to the same conclusion that Church obviously was.

I wanted to rush to reassure him that it wasn’t what he was thinking, that Wheeler was family, but the big, broody man stomping through my living room had me eyeing him warily as Wheeler snorted and muttered, “Come on in, Church.”

Church’s head swiveled around and his jaw went tight. I thought I was going to have to take the sprayer from the sink and hose them both down. “Appreciate the hospitality, Wheeler.”

I rolled my eyes as Dolly whined when the tension ratcheted up a notch and it was no longer fun to be caught between the two men.

“All right, enough. You both have badass names and I’m sure you’re both remarkably well endowed.” I felt like I should offer them rulers to measure just to break through the hostility. “Can we chill out with the pissing contest until after I’m properly caffeinated? Please?” I looked at Wheeler because out of the two of them I knew he would be easier to sway with tired eyes and a weak smile. He looked properly annoyed by my comment about what he was or wasn’t working with behind the fly of those low-slung jeans.

He gave me a narrow-eyed look and walked over to the couch so that he could pull his shirt on. “I’ll take Dolly out for a little bit so you guys can talk.” He gave Church a pointed look as he walked towards the door with my dog happily trotting along behind him. “I’ll only be gone a few minutes.” The implication was clear, Church better state his business and go. Wheeler wasn’t a fan of the early morning wake-up call or the judgment that came with it either. His eyes flicked to me and his lips quirked. “You’re still in fine form in the morning I see.”

I rolled my eyes at his back as the door closed behind him. I popped a pod into my Keurig and looked at Church over the counter that separated us as he paced back and forth in the minuscule space that was supposed to be the dining room. I saw him pause and his step faltered when his gaze hit the tangle of sheets on the couch. He turned to look at me and I watched as a muscle in his cheek twitched as he considered me silently for a long moment.

“He wasn’t your date from last night, was he?” He walked towards the counter and curled his fingers around the edge. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he was looking for something to hold on to.

“Nope. Wheeler is supposed to be marrying my little sister in a few months. He broke up with her last night after he caught her cheating again.” I tapped my fingers on the lower counter and tilted my head to the side. “Even if he was my date from last night that doesn’t give you the right to show up here at the crack of dawn and growl at him.” I expected a flinch or a look of contrition. I didn’t get either.

Then he lifted a hand to his face and dragged it down. I noticed he looked as tired as I felt. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He didn’t look or sound very sorry, but I decided I was still too groggy to fight with him about it.

“So why are you here?” Maybe he would answer me now that he knew I didn’t kick Wheeler out of my bed to answer his knock on my door.

He sighed and his eyebrows dipped low over his fantastically-colored eyes. “Because I need a favor.”

I couldn’t control myself from taking a step back. I’d been subtly throwing myself at the man for months and had resigned myself to the fact that all we would ever have was an uneasy friendship because he didn’t return my interest. I couldn’t fathom what kind of favor would have him calling on me first thing in the morning.

I blew out a breath and watched as it sent a loose curl dancing across my forehead. “We’re friends, Church. I care a lot about you, of course I’ll do you a favor.” I felt like I would do anything for him and not just because I would do anything for anyone I cared about. He was someone special and whatever I could do to chase some of that thundercloud he lived under away I would do it.

He barked out a laugh but there was no humor in the sound. His deep voice dropped even lower as his gaze shifted away from mine. “You probably want to hear what I’m about to ask you to do before you blindly agree.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up at his somber tone. “That sounds ominous. Just spit it out.” It was too early in the morning for my brain to be firing on all cylinders.

He pushed off the counter and resumed his pacing. He put a hand to the back of his neck and I watched as his fingers flexed as he squeezed. “I haven’t been home since I enlisted in the army. That’s a decade, Dixie. That’s a long time to be gone.” He shook his head a little and let out another one of those laughs that hurt to hear. “I knew Rome was still in Colorado, so I asked him to hook me up with something until I could get my feet back underneath me. I knew he would understand.” He cleared his throat. “It’s time for me to go home.”

I nodded absently and snatched up my cup of coffee. I felt like I might need to Irish the dark brew up a little bit to get through the entirety of this conversation. I asked Church if he wanted a cup and was waved off. He was struggling to get to the point and obviously didn’t want any distractions.

“Denver has always been temporary.” He stopped and turned to look at me. I was trying desperately not to freak out that this was essentially him telling me good-bye. I’d never had him, but I was far from ready to let him go.

“When are you leaving?” My voice cracked and I didn’t bother to hide how deeply his words were affecting me. When you fell you eventually had to land but nobody warned me that part hurt like a bitch.

He stopped moving and put his hands on his hips. It was his turn to incline his head at me while he watched me unwaveringly. “I’m leaving this afternoon.”

I lost my grip on the coffee mug. The heavy ceramic fell out of my suddenly numb hands and hit the kitchen floor with a shattering impact. I didn’t even hear Church call my name as hot liquid splashed up on my bare legs. I was frozen, stuck in place as every fantasy I’d built around the man that was rushing towards me, demanding to know if I was okay, imploded inwards. Dying dreams ripped at my heart as blood rushed through my ears in a waterfall of what could be. If only he knew the way I knew.

I gasped so hard that it made my lungs hurt when hard hands landed on my shoulders and gave me a little shake. Before I could tell him that I was fine I found myself swept up in a single fluid motion. I was clasped to a rock-hard chest as arms that felt like boulders held me aloft. His boots crunched across the broken pieces of mug on the floor as he demanded directions to the bathroom so he could make sure my naked lower half was okay.

I’d wanted his hands on me for what felt like an eternity and when I finally got them there he was getting ready to take them away forever. This wasn’t enough of his touch. This wasn’t even close to being the way I wanted to be held and handled by him but if he was going then I would soak it up like a sponge and savor every fleeting second of it.

He didn’t put me down until he found the bathroom, on his own since I was mute and immobile. He set me down on the edge of the vanity and crouched down in front of me. I’d had a lot of really X-rated fantasies about him being in that exact position. In them I wasn’t wearing a shirt with a taco on it, sporting morning breath and rocking hair that looked like a strawberry blond rat’s nest. I also had on underwear that was far sexier than the plain, cotton boy shorts I was pretty sure Church currently had a clear view of, but none of that mattered because he was using the edge of a towel he’d torn from the rod behind him to gently rub the spots on my shins that were turning an angry shade of red.

“You might blister.” The Delta was thick in his voice as he looked up at me. His accent never seemed to change, it was always languid and syrupy thick with the south in it, but while he knelt in front of me, eyes hooded and concern for my well-being stamped all over his beautiful face, it was stronger, more pronounced. Always there making sure I was okay, for all the wrong reasons. I never asked to be his duty. My heart twisted painfully as I struggled to pull it together.

“It’ll be fine. I’m pale, so it always looks worse than it is. I need to go clean up the mess before Wheeler brings Dolly back. Her food and water is in the kitchen and I don’t want her in there until it’s safe.” We’d never been this close before. Normally my want for him prickled under my skin, annoying but manageable. This close, his hands brushing across my tender skin made longing burn along every nerve and my blood come alive with hunger that was throbbing heavy and hard in every single part of me that was female.

He grunted at me and rose to his feet, which immediately made the bathroom infinitely too small for both of us. He shifted to reach the shower and cranked it on. After dousing the towel in cold water and dropping it back on my legs, he leaned back against the wall and resumed his favorite pose with his arms across his chest. I tried not to ogle the way the fabric of his plain black T-shirt strained around the circumference of his biceps and failed. He was effortlessly a whole lot of eye candy and there was no denying I had one hell of a sweet tooth.

“I’ll clean the mess up but, Dixie, I gotta ask you … Will you come to Mississippi with me for a few days?”

He asked it so casually that I swore I misheard him. “What?” I lifted my fingers to my ears and gave each one a poke and a tug. “I must’ve heard you wrong. It sounded like you just asked me to go to Mississippi with you.”

One of his eyebrows lifted and the corners of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but it was the closest thing to one I had ever seen on his handsome face.

“I did ask you to go to Mississippi with me. It’s a long story, and if you agree I promise to tell you all the important parts of it.” I stared at him in stunned silence for a long moment feeling like I’d been dropped in an alternate universe. There wasn’t much between us aside from that friendship I forced on him, so this favor seemed way out of the boundaries he had established and way out of character for the man that made it known he rode that Harley of his solo.

“I need more than that, Church. You can’t really expect to ask me something like that and want an answer with no explanation.” Everything inside of me was surging and rushing, trying to catch up with this new, unexpected turn of events.

He heaved a sigh that lifted and dropped his thickly muscled chest. “When my family asked me to come home, instead of telling them I needed time, that I wasn’t ready to face them and the real world yet, I told them I was hanging out in Denver because I met a girl. I thought it would get them off my back, and it did … sort of.”

I sucked in a breath and shifted my legs under the now clammy and cool towel. “You lied to your family?” I didn’t like that one bit.

“I’ve been lying to them for years. When they wanted to know where I was, what I was doing … I lied. Every time they asked if I was safe and I told them things were fine, it was a lie. This was just one more lie that I told so they didn’t have to worry about me. I wasn’t ready to go back, now I am, but I need you to go with me. There’s an eighty-year-old woman that’s counting on me to come through for her and I need you to make that happen.” He said it all so point-blank and matter-of-factly that I was convinced maybe I was dreaming the whole thing. Maybe I was still wrapped up in bed with Dolly snoring next to me. Maybe my last date had been bad enough that I’d officially gone off the deep end.

I reached out and grabbed the taut skin above the top of his jeans. There wasn’t any fat there to trap between my fingers but I still managed to get a solid pinch in. Church swatted my hand away and took a step towards the door. “What in the hell was that for?” He rubbed the spot through his T-shirt and glared at me.

“Well, clearly I’ve stumbled into a terrible romantic comedy and Hugh Grant is going to burst through the door any second, either that or you’ve been reading too many romance novels and are using the plot that’s in pretty much all of them to fuck with me. You can’t possibly be asking me to pretend to be your fake girlfriend in real life. That shit doesn’t happen.” I kicked the soggy towel off my legs and climbed to my feet. I pointed a shaky finger at him. “You better not be asking me to lie to your family for you, Church, because that is something I won’t do and I won’t forgive you for asking me to do.”

He swore again and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not asking you to lie, Dixie. You keep telling me we’re friends, well, I need you to be exactly that. I just need you to be my friend in front of my family.”

I scoffed at him. “That’s ridiculous.”

When he was within touching distance he reached out and put one of his hands on my shoulder and used the knuckles of the other to tilt my chin up so that I had no choice but to gaze up at him. “I’m asking you because you are the only person that can help me. I’m asking you because I know you mean it when you say you care about me.” The pad of his thumb moved along the edge of my jaw and again I forgot how to breathe.

“That’s not fair, Church.” I didn’t like that it felt like he was using my inherent desire to see the people I cared about happy and whole against me.

“Never claimed to be the kind of guy that plays fair, pretty girl.”

Pretty girl.

It was like a knife in my already bleeding heart.

“I don’t know if this is something I can do.” I wanted to because I wanted him to find the peace he was obviously lacking, but I also wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror every day and not hate the woman I saw staring back at me. I wanted the fairy tale my mom talked about, the dream guy my sister managed to land, but I never wanted to be desperate or pathetic in order to get it. Love was supposed to make you better, not make you hate the person you became in order to obtain it.

His gruff voice rumbled from somewhere over my head since I couldn’t force myself to look up at him as my mind whirled and my heart thudded heavy and painful in my chest. “I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m asking anyways because I don’t have a choice.” That was probably true. He was a man that very much handled things on his own terms and in his own way. He was a creative problem solver, proven by the fact he was standing in front of me regardless of the hell he had seen and the terror he had witnessed firsthand.

“You should’ve been honest with your family from the get-go. Neither one of us would be in this spot if you had been.” I didn’t mean to snap at him but I felt a little cornered and he was still stroking my jaw, which was making my head fuzzy and my resolve weak.

“That ship sailed a long time ago.” He sounded mad about the fact, but all the anger was directed inwards, into that void of darkness that lived in the center of him.

“I don’t want you to be a liar, Church.” That wasn’t the kind of man that had made me fall so far and so fast.

“I promise on my mother that I won’t ever lie to you, Dixie.” He sounded so sincere, so earnest that my heart finally overthrew my brain’s tyranny over my common sense. He needed me, and I think we both knew from the outset that there was no way I could deny him help when he asked for it. It wasn’t in my nature to deny someone I cared about my help and there was no way I could tell the person that I was stupidly sprung on “no.”

I blew out a breath that made the floppy hair in front of my face dance. I lifted my hands so I could wrap them around his wrists. It made me shiver when I couldn’t even get my fingers to touch as I tried to close the circles around them. His pulse kicked hard under my fingertips.

“I need to make sure it’s okay with Rome that I go, and I need to get someone to watch Dolly for a few days. If I can get all that squared away then I’ll come with you.” I was convinced any kind of happy-ever-after for me involved him but I was starting to wonder if his was a different kind of happy-ever-after that had nothing to do with realizing I was the one for him. It sounded like his happy-ever-after involved closing rifts and knitting breaches that stretched far and wide. He needed me in an entirely different way than I needed him. The knowledge stung but I still couldn’t deny that I wanted to be the one that he turned to for help. I also wanted to be the one to help him even if it hurt my heart.

He stared at me without speaking for a long, drawn-out moment and then slowly nodded. He let go of my face and stepped back.

“I already cleared your time off with Rome. We had a long talk this morning when I told him I had to leave. He called Avett in to cover for you the next week or so. I told him I wasn’t sure when I was putting you on a plane back home.”

I scowled a little bit and started to follow him out of the bathroom. “You were so sure I was going to agree to this nonsense?” That was annoying.

He looked at me over his shoulder and his lips quirked again like he was trying to smile and he simply forgot how. “I was. You always come through for your friends, and even though I never gave you reason to, you’ve considered me a friend from the get-go. I’m gonna go clean up that mess in your kitchen. Maybe you want to put some pants on before your guest gets back with the dog.”

I looked down at my still-splotchy legs and then back up towards his retreating back with a huff. At the sound he turned around and looked at me over his shoulder with a lifted brow. “I think it’s pretty cute you’re all grumbly and scowly when you first wake up. You’re like a furious kitten looking for something or someone to put your claws in.”

I sat there with my mouth hanging open and staring at the space he was no longer in. No one thought I was cute in the morning. No one except Church apparently. I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.

I should have stayed in bed. Nothing good ever happened before noon.

Church

I should have been elated that she’d agreed to go with me, it saved me the hassle of trying to explain why I lied to my family, but all I could feel was all-encompassing relief that the good-looking redheaded man that had answered the door was family and not someone who had had the pleasure of spending the evening in her bed.

I’d wanted to rip his heavily tattooed arms off and beat him within an inch of his life with them when he pulled open the door looking understandably irritated at my early morning visit. He’d seemed far too comfortable in Dixie’s home and there was no stopping the flood of jealously and the flickering flames of rage that raced through my blood when he looked at me like I was the interloper. I’d held myself back because I didn’t want to hurt her and I didn’t want to hurt myself, but seeing someone else in the place that I knew was rightfully mine made all my good intentions burn like acid deep inside my gut. Whenever I tried to do the right thing it somehow managed to go horribly wrong.

Dixie had good timing. She’d put the fires of jealousy out and started a different kind of burn under my skin by doing nothing more than standing there looking rumpled and endlessly cute. Her hair was always kind of wild and unkempt, but straight from bed it looked like it had taken on a life of its own and was looking towards world domination. Her soft brown eyes were even darker than normal when filled with leftover sleepiness and her dusting of freckles stood out even more since she wasn’t wearing any makeup. If she looked that rumpled and messy after a night alone in bed I couldn’t keep my mind off of wondering what she would look like after hours of hungry hands and an eager mouth having their fill of her soft skin and sweet smile. It was a struggle to keep my eyes off the bare expanse of leg peeking out from the bottom of her ridiculous T-shirt because I could tell the other guy had his eyes on me and he didn’t like the way my eyes were on her at all. He was protective … and he should be. None of the thoughts I had while trying not to blatantly check her out would make him very happy.

The relief that she wasn’t hooking up with a guy who wasn’t me was short-lived as I scrambled to get everything needed for the two of us to hit the road together. I wasn’t sure what the weather was going to be like, so that meant I needed to stock up on a little bit of everything to make the long ride down south. It was almost twenty hours, most of it through the plains of Kansas and tips of Missouri and Arkansas. That meant the conditions were going to be varied across the board weather-wise and it was up to me to make sure my passenger had everything she needed to make the ride as comfortable as possible. Now that she’d agreed to ride with me I wanted to make sure there was no reason for her to back out. I’d never been on the Harley for that long of a ride either, but I figured after years of riding around in tanks and other armored vehicles and flying in and out of hot spots in cargo planes that my ass was well beyond up for the job.

Rome actually gave me a helmet he had sitting in his office that was small enough to fit Dixie. He told me it was his soon-to-be wife’s, but she hardly ever used it now that they had two kids under the age of five. The free hours they had to ride together were few and far between and with winter on the horizon he was looking at parking his bike for the next several months anyway. I took the helmet gladly but the conversation that had come before it about why I needed to borrow the headgear in the first place had come begrudgingly.

Rome knew a little about my history. It was impossible to keep from him considering he was my CO for most of my military days. When news came from home, good or bad, it was always filtered through him first. As expected he listened to me lay out my laundry list of sins without saying a word and when I was done all he did was nod, tell me I would be missed around the bar, let me know I would always have a place in Denver and a sympathetic ear if I needed to talk, and agreed with me that it was well past time I got my ass back to Mississippi. Just like I knew he would, he told me that family was everything and if I was the kind of man he knew me to be I would go do right by mine.

It wasn’t until I told him that I was asking Dixie to go with me that his demeanor changed. His dark brows snapped down, the scar that bisected his eyebrow pulled tight, and made him look like a man very capable of making me regret any bad decision I may make where the bubbly redhead was concerned. I’d been to war with Rome Archer, so I knew exactly what he was capable of and I knew things wouldn’t end well for me if I misstepped with someone he considered part of his family.

“You send that girl back here with a broken heart and we’re going to have issues, Church.” Those issues would very likely end up with me in the hospital waiting on broken bones to heal.

“I don’t plan on hearts being involved in any way, shape, or form, boss man. I need a favor and she’s the only one that can do it for me. We’re friends.” We weren’t really but be were something close to that and I knew there was no way Dixie’s affable and eager-to-please personality would let her tell me no. I needed her and she had this way about her that made it known if you were someone she cared about, someone that mattered to her, there was no way she could abide letting you down. She was also a chronic fixer and had an openly bleeding heart, so I was also aware of the fact that when I explained there was a rift that needed mending back home her desire to meddle and tinker with the lives of those she loved would automatically kick in. It worked for me, though I had serious doubts that any of this would work for her.

Rome shook his head at me and a knowing grin played around his mouth. I hated it when he looked at me like he knew something that was bound to knock me on my ass when I figured out whatever it was for myself.

“It’s cute that you think you can actually have a battle plan with it comes to your heart, soldier. You go ahead and let me know how well that works out for you.” He pointed a finger at me and lowered his voice. “You take care of my girl like she’s one of your men out there in the firefight. You watch her six and I guarantee that she’ll watch yours. You mark my word that this is going to be the biggest battle you’ve ever fought and you’ll never have been so happy to lose when you finally surrender.”

I rolled my eyes at him. He had no idea what he was talking about. It would only be a fight if I had something to give up and since I didn’t believe in love, or soul mates, or the kind of forever that shined so brightly out of Dixie’s dark eyes, I wasn’t at risk of losing anything.

After the lecture from Rome and securing the agreement to ride south from Dixie, as well as earning a few deadly glares from her couch surfer, I swung by the closest shop that would have women’s riding gear and picked up everything that Dixie could possibly need for the upcoming ride. The zip-up chaps that the sales guy brought out immediately had my mind diving into the gutter with all kinds of inappropriate thoughts. They were meant to be worn over jeans and zipped all the way up the sides for easy removal but all I could imagine was what they would look like on her tiny frame with nothing else. She had the prettiest pale skin, flawless and cream colored with just a few adorable little freckles across her nose and the tops of her shoulders. The idea of all black leather against all her sweetness was enough to make the fit of my pants a little tighter. The image of Dixie covered in nothing but leather and me wasn’t something that should be playing through my mind if I was going to make the effort to keep things in the friend zone but I couldn’t stop it. I never wanted her friendship, but now that I had it and needed it for my own end I knew I needed to not mess it up by letting my dick make decisions for me.

She wasn’t the type of woman that I was normally attracted to. She was too soft, both in spirit and in life experience. I tended to drift towards the women that were just as jaded and just as world-weary as I was. I’d seen a lot in my lifetime, both at home and in the far-flung places my previous career had sent me, so it was hard to look at life through anything but cynical eyes. When I first met Dixie I was convinced her “I never met a stranger because everyone is a friend” act had to be forced and fake. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that there was someone in the world that hadn’t had their spirit crushed by how truly terrible things could be. I figured she had to be working an angle, that her entire bubbly, sunny disposition was nothing more than a front to work the customers for bigger tips, but as time went on, as days turned into weeks and weeks bled into months without the slightest falter or crack in that brilliantly bright faade I realized Dixie really was that upbeat, unflappable, and positive all the time.

Being the cynic that I was I told myself that the only way she could be that happy, that cheerful day in and day out was because she had lived a life where she didn’t have to witness what a ruthless bitch fate could be. I figured she’d never had to live through loss or fight through all the things that came after. I convinced myself she’d never seen a struggle or had to battle hardships but one night after closing the bar down I’d had a few too many cocktails and let my theory slip to Asa. The other southerner had shut me down before I finished spewing all those bitter accusations.

He’d pointed out that it was much easier to let life beat you down, to put up a shield and hide behind walls when life kicked you around, than it was to keep on smiling. More truth that seriously hurt just like he’d intended it to.

I tended to think that all I had endured during my time serving my country and all the tragedy that had come before it made me invincible, and unbreakable. I’d taken the worst that fucking fate had to throw at me and I was still ticking. I told myself I was stoic and knew that the only things in life I could actually control were myself and my reaction to the things happening around me, but after Asa’s harsh, behind-the-bar truth I wondered if I’d taken my emotional lockdown a step too far and had simply stopped allowing myself to react to or feel anything altogether. Being numb served its purpose when you were in the middle of hostile territory but I was home now and that numbness and coldness weren’t getting me anything other than a lonely bed and an estranged family that I still needed to beg forgiveness from. I wasn’t stoic, I was scared and that made me feel pathetic and weak.

I wasn’t the only member of my family that had been kicked in the heart and stabbed in the guts by tragedy, but I was the only one who’d decided a war zone was an easier place to be than home. I tucked tail and ran. I purposely chased after danger and disaster because I was positive that if I made it a point to put myself in the heart of conflict and peril whoever was in charge up in the great beyond would finally leave the people that I loved alone. It made no logical sense but to an eighteen-year-old kid without many options and with way too much loss in his life, it seemed like a brilliant plan. I was surrounded by death, I might as well go to a place where all of it made sense, where there seemed to be some kind of rhyme and reason to the loss and letdown. As asinine as my thinking might have been it worked … at least it had until Elma Mae took her tumble down the stairs.

As I guided the big chromed-out bike to the curb in front of the brick apartment building I had to admit that it felt a little like I was poking fate with a stick by heading down south. Things weren’t exactly sunshine and roses after I left but no one else had been taken from this Earth too soon while I was overseas. Jules didn’t have to put another woman he loved in the ground and my younger brother didn’t have to weep over the loss of another mother while I was away. Things were good for them, and then they weren’t. It logically couldn’t be tied to my return from the desert but man, it sure felt like someone out there really had it in for me and those that cared the most about me. Six months after my boots hit American soil the woman who was our de facto matriarch, who was our guiding light, and who took care of all the Churchill men when we were unwilling and unable to care for ourselves, had gone down when nothing else in this life had been able to level her. I wouldn’t say I was a superstitious man, but I had to wonder if that was some kind of cosmic reminder of how drastically I managed to fuck things up. I got a little bit of good and I destroyed it effortlessly. It kind of felt like the universe was warning my family of how destructive love could be when I was around. That also didn’t bode well for the perky redhead that was standing on the edge of the curb tapping her booted toe as she talked to another young woman I vaguely recognized from my nights watching over the bar.

The young Hispanic woman was probably the most objectively beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. Everything about her seemed like it had been handpicked by the keepers of beauty and grace. The long waves of her caramel hair belonged in a frilly shampoo commercial and her skin was perfectly golden and so flawless that she almost looked like she couldn’t be real. She was too skinny and way too fragile for my particular taste. She looked like she was ready to bolt back into the building the second I turned the engine off and leaned the bike to the side on its stand. She had to know there was no way I would hurt her, I’d spent the last several months making sure any female that crossed the threshold of the Bar knew they were coming into a safe space, but her eyes still got big and her hands still fluttered like nervous birds. Some of that gold went white in her face and I could see it was an actual struggle for her to stay where she was next to Dixie’s side as I approached.

Dixie gave me a lopsided smile and handed the leash she was holding over to the other woman. She crouched down in front of the big pit and gave the animal a kiss right in the center of its furry forehead. The dog looked up at her with sad eyes, like it knew she was getting ready to leave it behind, and I felt the beast’s pain. When Dixie got on a plane back to Denver I knew it was going to be the last time I saw her face always smiling, always laughing, always looking at me like I was something more than I was. It hurt. The good things in my life always seemed to.

“So Wheeler is going to be in my apartment for a few days until he figures out what to do with my sister. For now, he’s letting her stay at his house because he doesn’t want to fight. If your boss doesn’t want you to bring Dolly with you during your shift you can just leave her with him. If you need anything just hop next door and Wheeler can help you out.” Dixie rose to her feet and reached out a hand and put it on the younger woman’s shoulder. I watched as she flinched at the touch. It made my back teeth grind together. No one as soft and as dainty as she was should have that reaction from a simple touch. It made me want to injure whoever had made her afraid.

The pretty brunette slipped away from Dixie and laid a hand on the top of the big dog’s head. “Other vet techs bring their pets in all the time. As long as Dolly doesn’t get aggressive with the other animals or the staff it will be fine.” She shifted her feet nervously and darted her tongue out to lick across her bottom lip. She was so pretty it was impossible not to stare at her but I could tell the attention made her even more anxious than she already was so I reached for the bag at Dixie’s feet and turned back towards the bike without a word. “I shouldn’t have to bother … Wheeler.” Her already quiet tone went even softer when she mentioned Dixie’s couch surfer.

Dixie let out a soft sigh and shrugged. “Well, if you do need him he won’t bite. He’s actually one of the best men I’ve ever met in my entire life and my sister is a complete jackass for royally screwing things up with him. Speaking of which, don’t be surprised if a tall blonde shows up creating a racket. I know you hate other people’s drama but Wheeler pulling out of the wedding is going to make Kallie lose her damn mind. Call me if she won’t take the hint or better yet call the cops. Maybe a night in jail will finally force her to grow the hell up.” Dixie sighed and bent to pet the dog one last time. “Thanks again for offering to take Dolly. I’ll shoot you a text when I’m on my way home.”

The soft-spoken woman tucked a piece of that honeyed hair behind her ear and forced a smile. It was obvious she wanted to mean it, she just wasn’t in a place where she could yet. I really wanted to do some physical damage to the person responsible for stomping all over such gorgeous terrain.

Dixie made a move like she was going to try to hug the other woman but thought better of it when the brunette tugged the leash so that Dolly was placed firmly between them. With a strained good-bye and one last reminder to call if she needed anything, my traveling companion finally turned to me with cocoa-colored eyes filled with obvious sadness for her friend.

I tilted my chin in the direction the woman and the dog had taken down the block. “The person responsible for making her so twitchy still in the picture?” Dixie sighed again and took her bag from me.

“No, he’s dead. Took his own life right in front of her after kidnapping her and torturing her for two days.” She stiffened as the words rushed out. “The worst part is I don’t think he was the first person to knock her around, he was simply the one that made her determined to keep everyone at an arm’s length. If you can’t get close enough to touch her then there is no way you’re close enough to hurt her. That’s a lonely way to live.”

It was. I knew that intimately because I was living pretty much exactly the same way. I cleared my throat and gave my head a little shake to get my thoughts out of that particular gutter and back into the one that involved Dixie dressed in leather and wrapped around me pretty much nonstop for the next few days.

“You ever been on a bike before?” She was dressed like she was ready to ride. She had on jeans that were tucked into the tops of black boots that had heavy soles and laced up to right below her knees. She was also wearing a fitted plaid shirt with a white tank peeking out the top under a lightweight denim jacket that had shearling at the collar. Her mass of bright curls was tamed in a poofy ponytail at the back of her head and it made my fingers itch to set them free. I liked her wild and uncontrollable hair. It made her look like a pussycat with a lion’s mane as she gave me attitude and promised me everything I didn’t deserve with nothing more than a look. Keeping her tresses tied as we screamed down the asphalt made sense but I knew without a doubt before the day was over I was releasing them from their little rubber captor. That was absolutely not a friendly thought to have but I had it anyways.

Dixie rolled her dark eyes at me and reached for the helmet that I held out to her. “Of course I’ve been on a bike. Do you think Brite would have hired me back in the day if I couldn’t talk shop with his clientele? The bar used to be one of the biggest baddest biker hangouts in all of Denver. I think that was the first question he asked in the interview. Darcy made him clean the place up when Avett started getting old enough to come hang out in the kitchen with her.” She smirked at me and slapped the borrowed helmet onto the top of her head. I knew the history of the place that Rome now called his but I guess I never really stopped to think about the integral part this little spitfire had played in all of it before now. “Plus, before the accident my dad used to ride, not a Harley, but still. I was on the back of a motorcycle a lot when I was younger.”

She strapped the chin strap in place and hefted the backpack that was loaded down with whatever she had packed for the week over her shoulders. She was so goddamn cute it made everything inside my chest feel too tight and had all those naughty thoughts about what could happen once it was just me and her and the road roaring back to the forefront. It also made my blood heat up and dick twitch in a way she was bound to notice if she bothered to look in that direction.

I cleared my throat and reached for my own helmet as we moved to the bike. “Your dad was in an accident?” That was the thing about separating yourself from the people around you, they didn’t get to know me, but I also missed out on really knowing anything about them. Typically, I thought that distance and indifference were for the best but as I swung a leg over the bike and settled in, waiting for Dixie to climb on behind me, I really started to resent the fact I didn’t know anything beyond the superficial where she was concerned.

The leather creaked as she wiggled into place with her legs clamped around the outside of mine and the soft press of her breasts into my back. Her hands slipped around my waist like she had held on to me a thousand times before when in reality today was the most we had ever touched. I knew why I was compelled to keep my distance. Once her palms flattened onto my abs under the material of my open leather jacket and the soft whoosh of her exhaled breath hit the back of my neck I knew I would never be able to sit on this bike again and not feel her there behind me. She was going to be a memory I couldn’t shake.

“Yeah.” She breathed deep and low, her chest rising and falling where it pressed into me. I had to bite back a groan as her fingers curled into my tense stomach muscles. “The summer right before I started high school he got into an accident on his motorcycle. A truck changed lanes and didn’t see him. He was thrown over a hundred yards and had to be airlifted to Denver General. He was fortunate he had his helmet on or else he wouldn’t have made it.”

I could feel a tremor move throughout her tiny frame as she recounted the story. I turned to look at her over my shoulder and noticed the corners of her mouth pulled into a frown. “He’s lucky, then.”

She lifted a shoulder and let if fall. “He survived, but he’s been in a wheelchair ever since. So yes, he’s lucky, we all were because he’s a great dad, he was before and he continued to be after the accident, but our family was changed forever.”

We stared at each other for a long, silent moment. Sometimes it felt like it was easier to communicate with her through a look than it was through words. It wasn’t lost on me that she had survived something horrifying and life changing at the hands of the very machine she was currently propped up on. The amount of trust and faith she had to have in me in order for her to agree to ride for days on the back of something that had almost taken a parent from her was humbling and terrifying. I hadn’t done anything to earn that kind of conviction from her but now that I knew I had it I was going to do everything in my power to live up to it.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you on this trip, Dixie. I promise that you will be safe with me.” I meant it. I would keep her safe from everything, including me and the way it was impossible to ignore the heat of her pressed against the plane of my back.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to go with you if I didn’t believe that you would take care of both of us, Church.” Her voice was quiet but I heard the truth in her words loud and clear.

I cranked the key in the ignition and let the growl of the V-twin motor drown out the sound of the taunting voice in the back of my head chanting the word “friend” over and over again. I might have to tattoo the damn reminder on my forehead before we crossed the state line.

She was cute. She was curvy. She was sweet and sunny … What she wasn’t was a chick I could take to bed and walk away from no harm no foul, and I needed to keep that in mind even as she flipped me a nervous grin in one of the mirrors that jutted off the handlebars. Everything about Dixie Carmichael screamed forever, and I knew probably better than anyone on this planet that forever wasn’t something that was real, no matter how good you had it. Forever was an illusion that soft hearts and warm brown eyes built dreams around. It wasn’t something a man that knew how quickly everything could be ripped away and shredded to pieces put much stock in.

It also surprised me that Dixie had been through something that very easily could have crippled someone else and she was still nothing but sunshine and roses. I on the other hand took life’s unexpected misfortunes and let them mold me into a man I could hardly stand to face most days.

I wanted her because she was Dixie and there was something about her that shed light on all the dark places I’d been living in for so long, but I knew with every fiber of my being I didn’t deserve her and that if I wanted what was best for her I wouldn’t let either of us believe for a single second that I could keep her.

Dixie

It was late afternoon by the time we got on the road. The fall sky went dark early as we headed out of the city and into the endlessly flat landscape that was everything east of the Rockies. When the sun went all the way down Church stopped at a truck stop a few hundred miles from the Kansas border and ordered me to put on a pair of leather riding chaps that zipped up the outside of my legs and buckled around my waist. It wasn’t that cold, but there was definitely a nip in the air as the wind rushed past us on the highway. I didn’t think I needed the leathers but there was something about the look in his eyes as he ordered me to go put the stiff garment on that made me swallow any argument I was going to give him. The blue in his eyes burned and there was heat in his eyes that wasn’t from the air slapping across his stern face. I never considered myself a leather kind of girl but apparently Church had different ideas about that.

I took the leathers from him as he turned to top off the tank. The truck stop was busy enough that it took me a few minutes to maneuver my way across the parking lot and around to the side of the building where the sign indicated that the restrooms were. I found myself quickening my pace as a couple of truckers leaning against the side of the building tracked me under the bills of their stained hats. I didn’t like the way they looked at me and I really didn’t like the way they looked over at Church.

I could have pulled the chaps on while standing in the parking lot but all that vibration and rumble underneath my backside meant Church was going to have to get used to stopping every few hours so I could use the restroom, just like I was going to have to get used to the questioning and not altogether friendly looks that were being fired his way. If he was one of those guys that was determined to make the best time from point A to point B with as few stops in between as possible, he was in for a rude awakening. And I may have stretched the truth a little bit about how recently I had had my rear end planted on the back of a motorcycle.

In high school I’d dated a wannabe rebel without a cause that rode a busted up Victory that he swore would be worth a fortune when he fixed it up. It hardly ever ran and when it did it crawled rather than roared, but other than that I tended to avoid anything that drove on two wheels instead of four. I’d let Brite take me home after work a few times when my car was in the shop and I’d ridden with Rome a time or two when he wanted me to go with him for stuff related to the bar. My dad’s accident hadn’t exactly put me off of motorcycles, but I was very cautious and careful about getting on one, and my willingness to do so was directly related to who was driving the machine. I had never done a long road trip on the back of a bike before and so far I was a fan, but that might have been directly related to the fact that I got to spend hours upon hours clutching Church like my life depended on it, because it kind of did.

I’d wanted to have my hands on the man in a totally inappropriate way since the first time I laid eyes on him, so there was no way in hell I was going to squander the opportunity to touch all the places that I was supposed to be touching as I curled into him and held on for dear life. He felt just as hard, just as hot, just as heavenly as I always figured he would, and I was really starting to resent the soft cotton of the long-sleeved T-shirt he had on for keeping all that golden skin from my fingertips. I wanted to scratch my initials into his abs and rub my palms all over the carved ridges that flexed and bunched under my hands every time he changed lanes or looked over his shoulder to check on me. I already knew Church was built like a mythical deity, but having the fact confirmed for hours upon hours as muscle moved against me was making me twitchy and damp in places that weren’t exactly comfortable against rough denim.

The truck stop bathroom wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen but it was far from the best. It was obvious women’s comfort was low on the priority list as I took in the cracked mirror and hanging door on one of the two stalls. I gingerly picked my way across the stained laminate floor, careful not to step in any of the unidentified puddles of liquid marring my path, and slipped into the stall with the working door.

I handled my business while reading the endless amount of graffiti carved on the wall—apparently there were a lot of women available for a good time if called—and used my foot to flush because there was no way I was touching anything more in this bathroom than I had to. I found a relatively clean spot in front of the mirror to wiggle into the leathers and wasn’t surprised at all when I went to wash my hands that there was no soap and barely a trickle of water leaking out of the faucet. Thankful I never went anywhere without a stash of hand sanitizer, I gave myself one last once-over, decided that I might be able to pull off a little bit of badass biker babe after all, and made my way to the door.

I gave it a tug and groaned when my fingers touched something sticky. I shook my head when nothing happened thinking that I needed to push instead of pull to escape the nastiness. I frowned when changing tactics didn’t release me from Satan’s bathroom either. I pulled harder and then resorted to using my shoulder and shoving with my entire body weight in the opposite direction but still the door remained shut. I gave a shudder and wiped my hands on my leg.

“I wonder if it’s stuck.” There wasn’t a response because I was the only soul brave enough to enter this hellhole and my voice echoed off the broken tiles that surrounded me. I heaved a sigh and tried again to pry the door open, this time putting a foot on the wall and pulling back with my entire weight. There wasn’t even a creak or a groan to indicate I was making any kind of headway.

Swearing, I patted my pockets futilely looking for a cell phone I knew good and well was in the front pocket of the backpack I had left sitting next to the bike. I didn’t want to risk it falling out of my pockets and shattering on the highway but now, trapped and getting more and more panicked every second, I wished I had thrown caution to the wind and kept the thing on me.

After a few more minutes of pushing and pulling to no avail I started looking for another way out of the bathroom. I figured that was my only option for escape unless someone else was in desperate need of the toilet and managed to Hulk the door open from the other side. I assumed Church would wonder where I had disappeared to and eventually come looking for me, but just in case he didn’t get curious fast enough to suit my now racing heart and sweaty palms I wanted to make sure there was another way out. There was a small window in the stall with the broken door that I wasn’t sure I was going to fit through. I was fairly petite, but my ass was not. I was round in all the places a woman was supposed to be round so even if I managed to get my head and shoulders through the opening I doubted the girls and my back end could squeeze through. It didn’t matter though, if someone didn’t come and set me free in the next minute I was going to try to force my way through the too-narrow opening even if I got stuck. Someone was bound to see my head sticking out of the side of the building.

“Hey! The door is stuck!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted in my best “last call” voice. “Someone come and let me out of here!” I used the side of my fist to pound on the door and winced as my shout bounced off the walls around me.

I kicked the door with my boot and swore again. This was actually the perfect way to end a day that had started off too early and kind of crazy.

I pulled the hairband out of my hair so I could tug on my curls. It was a nervous habit I’d always had. There was something soothing about watching the ringlets go straight and then immediately bounce back into their spiral as soon as I let them go. I started to pace anxiously back and forth in front of the door, eyeballing the window like a junkie eyed a fix. I told myself one more minute then I was climbing through regardless if I fit.

I called for help one more time and let my shoulders fall in defeat when there was no response. I was starting to really freak out and I was honestly annoyed that Church didn’t seem to find it at all odd that I had been gone for well over fifteen minutes at this point. I wanted to believe that there was a part of him that cared about me, at least a little bit, but now with his obvious lack of interest in my whereabouts it was pretty clear I was searching for affection and feelings that simply weren’t there. He kept an eye on me when it was his job and when my safety was in his hands, but when I was out of sight apparently I was also out of mind.

“Fuck this.” Throwing my hands up in the air I marched to the broken bathroom, far less careful about the goo on the floor than I was before. I was going to need an hour-long shower to even feel remotely clean after my time stuck in this craphole. I had one foot on the toilet seat and a hand on the back of the tank when I heard my name being called from the other side of the door.

There was no mistaking Church’s southern twang or the annoyance that was clear in his impatient tone.

I wilted with relief that I wasn’t going to have to climb out the window and rushed back over to the door. “It’s stuck. I’ve been in here forever!” My tone was just as irritated and annoyed as his. He should have come looking for me long before now. I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned when the door didn’t immediately swing open.

“It’s not stuck. There’s a piece of pipe shoved through the handle.” I heard the sound of metal scraping across metal and then there was a whoosh as he pulled the door open. There was a scowl on his face and a rusted metal pipe in his hand as I rushed past him and towards freedom. “Why would someone jam the bathroom door?” He tapped the pipe against his leg and looked at me like I had the answer to that very strange question.

I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him. “Why did it take you so long to come looking for me?”

His eyebrows snapped down over his eyes and his mouth tugged down into a frown. He looked like he was going to give me attitude right back, but then his eyes traveled over me, taking in the curls that were now everywhere from my nervous fingers and my legs encased in all that black leather. Whatever he was going to say died and the gold in his better than hazel eyes sparkled and shined with something that made me want to blush and shift my weight on my feet. I knew I was all right to look at, hell, on the days I put effort into it I could be better than all right, but I’d never had anyone look at me like I was the best thing ever before, especially not someone who really was the best thing ever. It made my heart flutter and all those dreams he’d willfully crushed pulsed with new life.

Church gave his head a hard shake and cleared his throat. He tossed the pipe towards the side of the building and motioned that we should head back towards the Harley. “I was headed over here to check on you when some guy stopped me and asked me if I could help him with his car. There was smoke billowing out the front of it, so I couldn’t exactly ignore him.” He lifted his hand and rubbed his knuckles along his jaw. “I told him it was a busted radiator hose and then I came to find you.”

I huffed and moved to follow him, some of my anger dissipating since he had a reasonable excuse for not rushing to my rescue and he actually did sound sorry. “Probably just kids that thought it would be funny. It wouldn’t have been so bad if someone bothered to clean the restroom at least once this millennium.” I didn’t want to think about the truckers with their narrowed eyes and tight mouths as they watched me walk away from Church. Suddenly getting locked inside the devil’s restroom alone didn’t seem as bad as it might have been.

He grunted and turned to look at me over his shoulder. “I should have been paying closer attention. I told Rome I would watch your six, and so far I’ve done a piss-poor job of it. You shouldn’t be walking around a truck stop after dark without my eyes on you. Anything could happen, and getting locked in a dirty bathroom is the least of it.” His words mirrored my nervous train of thought to a T.

I wrinkled my nose at him as I wrestled my hair back into a band so I could fit the helmet back on my head. Some of my panic was fading and it was replaced with a healthy dose of self-recrimination. “I work in a bar, Church. I don’t get off shift until three in the morning. I know how to watch my surroundings, and I know how to take care of myself. I should have paid closer attention or waited for you to walk with me.” I swore I could feel him whenever he was close by. The air felt different, heavier, and thicker. My skin tingled while my heart raced. I would know if he was missing without even having to look for him. I would elementally know it, that’s how attuned to him I was.

He stopped at the side of the bike and turned to face me. There was a muscle ticking furiously in his jaw and his hands flexed like he couldn’t control them at his sides. “I told you I would take care of you, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you on this trip. I know you can take care of yourself, pretty girl, but for the next few days it’s my job to take care of you. Not happy that I dropped the ball right out of the gate.”

He was mad.

I could see it in the set of his wide shoulders and in the way his mouth tightened. His gaze swirled angry and furious with a riot of clashing colors as he took a step towards me, looming and glowering as we stared at one another.

I couldn’t function. All I could do was blink up at him slowly because it was exactly like the time he asked me if I was good. I was so used to being on my own and handling whatever I was handed all by myself that it made me forget how to breathe and made my knees weak when I thought about being able to lean on his strong shoulders and to have someone else there to carry the burdens I was often loaded down with.

“Oh.” The word squeaked out, too high and too thin. I didn’t want him to give me hope that there could be more when he snatched that option away every chance he got, but his words, those beautiful words, they made all those fantasies that centered on him and I together forever pulse and pound hard in my blood.

He reached out a hand and used the tip of one of his fingers to tuck a loose curl back behind my ear. “I will do a better job of keeping an eye on you while you’re in my hands.”

I wanted to turn my face into his palm and let him caress my cheek but it was all too much for my tender heart to take. The only thing I’d wanted since I fell for him was to be in his hands and for him to find a place for me inside of his heart. I’d wanted all the things he was saying to me from him when I thought there was the possibility of a future for us. He was going home to a life that didn’t include me and I was going back to Denver and a life that wasn’t going to be nearly as satisfying without him. Him giving all of this to me now felt wasted and trivial. He could throw pretty words and sentiment at me because he knew we were going to head our separate ways soon and he wouldn’t have to live up to them for very long.

I took a step away from him and tugged on the end of my coat so that I didn’t reach for him. “It was just a prank gone wrong. I’m sure it will be smooth sailing from here on out. We’d better get going if you want to make it into Kansas tonight. You said you wanted to ride at least a few more hours as long as the weather cooperated.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more to me but instead he gave a jerky nod and moved to strap his own headgear on. He swung a long leg over the bike and waited for me to situate myself behind him before starting the motor back up. I didn’t hold him as tightly as I had the first part of the ride and I didn’t lean as close to him as I could. My body wanted the contact but the rest of me couldn’t take it. He had my emotions on overload and my hormones battling against common sense. This favor felt like it might be the death of me and we hadn’t even crossed any state lines yet.

I had my hands low on Church’s ribs, but kept a pretty tight grip on him with my legs. It didn’t feel as intimate as curling myself into his back and even though the distance was minimal it felt like we were miles apart. His big body was just as stiff as mine was as he muscled the motorcycle through some heavy traffic the closer we got to the border of Kansas. It was semi-truck after semi-truck whizzing by making air rush around us and provoking me to be even more alert and tenser than I normally was when riding. Being on a motorcycle was already dangerous, being on a motorcycle surrounded by twenty-ton trucks seemed even more hazardous. If Church lost focus or got distracted at all, things weren’t going to go well for either of us. Luckily he drove the bike like he did everything else, with single-minded determination and unwavering intensity. There was nothing casual or relaxed about him as he zipped around the big rigs. I wasn’t sure that was how he normally handled the bike or if he was simply being extra cautious because of my history but either way I was grateful for his palpable concentration and consideration.

It took us another hour to hit the very flat and, even in the dark, very boring landscape of Kansas. We had the entire state to drive through tomorrow and I knew from a previous road trip that I had taken with my family when I was younger that we were in for a lot of corn and cows. I was ready to call it a day. My backside was starting to get numb and my spine hurt from sitting so straight so that I could keep some breathing room between me and Church’s leather-clad back. I was also hungry and still needed that hour-long shower to wash away the grime and gunk from the truck stop bathroom. Not to mention I’d been pulled from bed way earlier than I was used to, so I was struggling to keep my eyes open and to stay alert to what was happening around us.

I was leaning forward in order to holler into Church’s ear that he should stop when we got to the next town that looked like it might have a decent hotel or motel for us to crash at for the evening. I was jolted from my position when all of a sudden an engine revved, tires squealed, and headlights cut across the black asphalt far too close to us for any kind of comfort.

I couldn’t stop the shrill shriek of terror that ripped out of my throat as the massive machine I was perched so precariously on rapidly veered to the right. I felt a wobble and heard the motor protest underneath me.

Pride be damned. I threw myself into Church’s back and wrapped my arms so tightly around his middle that I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to struggle to breathe. I squeezed my eyes shut and sent a silent prayer up to the sky just in case some divine being wanted to cut me a break today. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes but everything that could be did.

The family of my own I would never have.

The perfect wedding that I’d dreamed of ever since I was little looking at the pictures that hung in my house from that magical day my mom and dad shared.

The guy … who wasn’t perfect … but still made my heart flutter and my knees weak. The one that I wanted more than anything I had ever wanted before … the one who felt cold yet refused to let me warm him up.

And the sex … good God the sex. The mind-melting, soul-stopping, heart-healing, and body-bending sex. The sex that would make all other sex meaningless and forgettable. The sex that would make everything old feel new again. The sex that would be unforgettable and extraordinary. The sex I was never going to have because the man I wanted to have it with didn’t know what I knew.

It made me want to cry for what could be and for what should be. It made me hurt for both of us because even though my heart was invested and his wasn’t I knew Church deserved more than a life spent alone staggering through the dark.

By some miracle the bike stayed upright and neither one of us went flying off the seat and into a field of corn. Church pulled the motorcycle over onto the shoulder of the highway and propped the heavy machine up on the kickstand so that we both could climb off and catch our breath. Big trucks continued to zoom by oblivious to the near-death experience that left us both shaken and rattled.

Church ripped his helmet off and glared down the highway like his fury alone was enough to stop the reckless driver in his tracks so that vengeance and quite possibly an ass kicking could be doled out. He shifted his furious gaze to me and put the helmet on the seat of the bike so that he could catch me when I started to wilt to the ground. My legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore and my spine felt like Jell-O as I folded towards the asphalt.

I was shaking so hard that he had to struggle to find a good grip on my arms to keep me upright. “It’s okay, Dixie. I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

I couldn’t do it anymore. The space was too much. I needed his strength and his quiet confidence to keep me from falling apart on the side of the road.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face into the center of his chest. I could hear his heart beating just as fast as mine was but while I quaked and quivered, struggling not to cry, he stood sturdy and strong, unruffled and as cool and calm as always. He was like a tree standing tall and unmoved after a terrible storm. There was so much comfort in that steady self-assurance that my legs quit trembling and my lungs remembered how to work.

I breathed him in and exhaled the terror and panic out. I thought he was going to stand there immobile and immovable but his hold shifted from my upper arms so that one arm wrapped around my shoulders clutching me to him almost as tightly as I was clinging to his waist, while the other moved so that one of his hands was cradling the back of my head, helmet and all. He held me to him letting me know that if pieces started to break off if I did indeed shatter, he was there to catch them and put them back in place. It was singularly the most important and most impactful hug of my entire life.

After a few minutes of headlights hitting us and exhaust fumes choking us I gave him one last hug for good measure and pulled back enough that I could look up and barely make out his features in the shadows.

“I totally believe that it’s in your best interest to keep me alive, Church. I’m having serious doubts other motorists feel the same way. That was way too close for comfort.” My voice was slightly shaky and the humor I attempted was forced at best.

He gave a little nod of agreement. “Way too close. If I hadn’t been paying attention that would have been bad … really bad.” I appreciated the fact he didn’t sugarcoat things for me. I hated the fact that he seemed to be taking some sort of responsibility for the poor driving habits of someone else when he told me, “I shouldn’t have asked you to take this trip with me. I should have just bought you a plane ticket and met you at the airport. I’m used to the risk and I was being selfish and shortsighted as usual.”

I lifted a hand from his waist to the side of his face. His cheek was warm despite the chill from the night air around us. He also had the start of a golden scruff that made him look even more attractive … if that was possible. His jaw felt like steel under the tips of my fingers but the curve of his bottom lip was soft as I ran the pad of my thumb over it. The touch must have startled him because his lips opened on a soundless sigh and his breath whispered out to touch my fingers.

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