"Is he bothering you?" the rider asked. When she didn't reply, he turned a hard-jawed glare in my direction. If I wasn't busy being furious at Audrey, I'd appreciate him squaring up on her behalf. "When a lady says she isn't interested, we don't hang around and make them uncomfortable. We move the fuck on."
"Heard." I held my hands up as I took a step toward Audrey. "But you should know that's my fiancée you've been dancing with and she won't be leaving here with you tonight."
"Oh my god. Would you stop it?" she snapped, shrugging away from the bull rider. "I wasn't going home with him, you fuck mollusk. We were getting some air." She waved a hand at her face, damp and rosy from dancing. Her shirt clung to the dip between her breasts. I had to wrench my gaze away before Ilet myself drown there. "Because it's hot in here and some of us aren't sitting in a corner and chewing on glass."
The rider glanced between us several times like he wasn't sure what to believe. To Audrey, he asked, "Is this a safe situation for you? I think some of the barrel racers have space in their trailers over at the campground. If you'd be more comfortable there tonight, I could ask around."
Audrey dropped a hand to the center of his chest. "You're such a sweetheart," she said. "And it's good of you to worry about me, but if there's one thing I know how to do these days, it's looking after myself. I'll be all right. Thank you for checking."
She anointed him with a loving smile and a lot of truly unhinged thoughts moved through my mind but the worst of them wasMine.
The sick truth was that I'd do anything to carve that instinct out of me. To free myself from her, once and for all. Because I'd never stopped loving her, not even when she walked down the aisle and gave herself to someone else. I didn't know how to stop loving her any more than I knew how to stop my heart from pumping blood. And there was a part of me that always wondered whether I even wanted to stop. Whether I liked tracing my fingers over the scars I couldn't see but still felt. Whether I wanted every thought to circle back to her in one way or another, simply because her fingerprints were on every inch of my life.
"If you're sure," the rider said to her, still raking me over with a glare.
"Thanks for the dance," she said.
He tipped his hat at her. "Thankyou, ma'am. It was a lot of fun. You're a damn good dancer."
"It's nice of you to say so." Then she swung her gaze in my direction and I found unbound fury waiting for me. "Now,if you'll excuse me, I need to have a conversation—with myfiancé."
She turned on her heel and stormed away. I knew it was wrong to enjoy riling her up but I loved it when she was too pissed off at me to be anything but real. I loved all her reactions, even the ones I had to mine for the truth, but especially when she dropped the filters and hit me with her worst.
"This is none of my business but I don't think that girl's gonna marry you," the bull rider said.
"Probably not," I said, watching the door slam shut behind her. "Still worth a shot."
chapter twenty-one
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: strike
I followedAudrey outside as lightning streaked through the sky. The storm would be here within minutes. "You're going the wrong way," I yelled after her.
She stopped and turned in the other—also wrong—direction. "I'm going where I want to—away from you!"
A small chorus of laughter sounded nearby and I noticed a few groups of smokers gathered on the side of the building.
She must've decided she wanted to holler at me more than she wanted to be alone because she stomped up to me, her hands fisted at her sides. "What the hell was that, Jude? I mean,what the hell?" Before I could respond, she continued. "In case you've somehow lost your own plot, we're only engaged to keep your mother happy. I'm not your fiancée anywhere but immediately in front of your mother, and even that's due to end in short order. Everywhere else, we're just two people who used to mean everything to each other."
"What do we mean to each other now?"
She let her eyes close for a second as she ran a hand through her hair. "I don't know yet."
Raindrops began to spit around us. "Yes, you do."
"No, I don't, and yelling at me in front of a bunch of people isn't going to change that."
We stared at each other for a long, brittle moment where all I could see was her dancing with those cowboys and her head on my pillow and the way her lips moved when she told me her husband was finally out of the picture. Through it all, my mind rang with the same questions as always. The ones I didn't think I'd ever be able to ask because the answers had the power to end me.
I stared off at the bruise-dark clouds instead. When the silence pulled too tight, I asked, "Why did you agree to this?"
"Because you—" She shook her head, sighing as her shoulders sagged and she closed in on herself. "It doesn't matter. I'm here."
"Don't start lying to me now, princess."
"I'm here because you needed me. Because you asked for help. Happy? I wasn't able to make it right between us before but I could do this, and now you're being a complete shitpickle about it." Her eyes sparkled as she pushed past me. "Thanks so much for that."
