Prologue #2
My heart stutters, and I follow her gaze.
He’s sitting alone in a corner booth, with a glass of amber liquid in front of him.
His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, revealing scarred forearms. Dark hair, longer on top than the sides, falls across his forehead.
Even from this distance, I can see the sharp line of his jaw and the way his shoulders fill the space.
I can’t see them from this angle, but I know his eyes are an icy blue that seem to burn when he looks at you.
He looks devastating.
“Don’t stare,” Allie hisses, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen him around town and at church sometimes, but not this close since I got hurt. Never where I could actually talk to him.
“Your turn,” Allie prompts, but I barely hear her.
I take another long drink of beer, liquid courage burning down my throat. Maybe tonight could be different. Maybe I could actually talk to him. Maybe he would see me as more than just the preacher’s daughter.
Allie’s phone rings, cutting through my thoughts. She frowns at the screen. “It’s Ryan. Give me a second.”
She walks toward the bathrooms, phone pressed to her ear, leaving me alone at the pool table. I lean against the edge, watching the door where she disappeared, willing her to come back quickly.
“Well, look what we have here.”
The voice comes from behind me. I turn to find two men approaching, both wearing faded jeans and flannel shirts. The taller one has a beer gut and thinning hair. The shorter one grins, showing yellowed teeth.
“Hi,” I manage, taking a small step back.
“Playing by yourself?” Beer Gut asks, moving closer. “That’s no fun.”
“My friend just stepped away. She’ll be back any second.”
“We can keep you company till then.” Yellow Teeth circles around to my other side, effectively trapping me against the table. The scent of stale beer and cigarettes rolls off him in waves. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“I should go find my friend.” I try to move past them, but Beer Gut steps into my path.
“Now hold on. We’re just being friendly. No need to run off.”
My pulse hammers in my throat. The bar feels too loud, too crowded, yet somehow no one seems to notice what’s happening. I grip my beer bottle tighter, searching for an escape route.
“The lady said she needs to find her friend.”
The voice cuts through my panic like a blade. Cold. Sharp. Unmistakable.
Calder.
He’s suddenly there, standing just behind the two men. I hadn’t seen him approach. His icy-blue eyes lock onto Beer Gut first, then Yellow Teeth. His expression is unreadable, but something dangerous radiates from him.
Beer Gut straightens, squaring his shoulders. “We’re just talking to her.”
“And now you’re leaving.”
It’s not a request. The words carry weight, authority, threat. Yellow Teeth glances at his friend, uncertainty flickering across his face.
“We didn’t mean anything by it,” Beer Gut tries again, but his bravado crumbles fast. “Just having a conversation.”
“Beat. It.” Calder’s voice drops lower, colder. “Now.”
Beer Gut holds his gaze for maybe two seconds before looking away. “Jesus, man. We didn’t know she was yours.”
The words hang in the air. Yours. Like I’m property. Like I belong to him. I should correct them, should say something, but my voice won’t work.
Calder doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t confirm it either. He just stares at them until they back away, muttering apologies as they disappear into the crowd near the bar.
My hands are shaking. I set down the beer bottle before I drop it.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Calder’s gaze shifts to me, and the intensity of it makes my breath catch. For a long moment, he just looks at me. Reading me. Assessing.
“Where’s your friend?”
“Bathroom. She got a call and...” I’m suddenly aware of how young I must seem to him. How foolish. Standing here alone, tipsy, unable to handle two drunk men on my own.
His jaw tightens. His gaze flicks toward the bathrooms, then back to me. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. Allie was right here, she just...” I fumble for my vibrating phone, pulling it from my dress pocket with trembling fingers. The screen shows a new text message.
Ryan had an emergency. Had to leave. I’m so sorry!! Call me when you get home safe. Allie
The words blur slightly. She left. My best friend left me here at a bar on my eighteenth birthday. The betrayal stings worse than it should.
“She’s not coming back.” I show him the screen because I don’t know what else to do.
Calder’s expression darkens as he reads the message.
He glances back toward the bar where the two men watch us, whispering to each other. His hand moves to my elbow, not rough but firm. I look down at it, and my skin burns where he touches me.
“Come on. I’m taking you home.”
“No, it’s okay. I can walk. It’s not that far and—”
“You’re not walking.” His tone leaves no room for argument. “Let’s go.”
I should refuse. Should insist I’m fine, that I don’t need his help.
But those men are still watching, and Allie is gone, and the beer has made everything feel slightly off-kilter.
It’s probably better if I just let him take me home.
I drop the pool cue on the table and let him lead me toward the exit, leaving a half-full beer behind as well.
Outside, the night air kisses my cheeks cold and sharp, helping to cut through the fog in my brain.
I look up and notice the stars scattered across the black Montana sky.
It’s beautiful, and terrifying, the sky that is.
Gravel crunches beneath my feet as we walk across the parking lot.
His truck looms in the darkness. It’s massive and black, exactly as I remember from when I was seventeen.
He opens the passenger door for me like a gentleman, and my stomach does this strange somersault.
I climb in, my heart hammering against my ribs.
This is it. My one chance to be close to him.
The seat feels both foreign and somehow right.
Calder slides behind the wheel, his presence filling every inch of the cab.
He smells of leather and whiskey and something woodsy that makes my head spin worse than the alcohol.
The radio hums low, another country song I don’t recognize.
The buzzing in my veins makes it difficult to focus on anything but him.
We drive in silence, and I steal glances at him from my seat.
Calder is sin dipped in danger, and I want to taste that danger. Once. Just once.
I take in his clenched jaw and the way his knuckles whiten as he strangles the steering wheel in his grip. He seems angry, but I can’t tell if it’s because of me or the situation or something else entirely.
“Thank you,” I say again, breaking the quiet, “for helping me back there.”
“Don’t mention it.”
His clipped words are dismissive. Like what he did was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing, not to me. He saved me.
“Those guys were...” I swallow hard. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“You should’ve called someone. Should’ve gone with your friend to the bathroom. Shouldn’t have been drinking at all.” Each statement is a slap of disappointment. “How much have you had?”
“Just like two beers. I’m not drunk.”
His eyes flick to me briefly before returning to the road. “You’re drunk enough.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “I can handle myself.”
“Is that what you were doing when I found you? Handling yourself?”
His sarcasm stings because he’s right. I couldn’t handle those men. There was no way I could have escaped on my own. He swooped in like a knight in shining armor.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For messing up your evening.”
He expels a long, frustrated sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Saintlyn, you didn’t mess up anything.”
I’m mesmerized by the movement. Then I freeze, and it finally hits me. He knows my name. Can I salvage this at all? Probably not. I do the only thing I can do when I’m nervous. I babble.
“Do you do this often? Save girls from drunk men in bars?”
The question comes out sharper than I intend. I blame the beer, the humiliation, the confusing mess of emotions churning in my chest.
“No.”
Just that. Nothing more.
“I don’t understand. Then why’d you do it for me?”
He doesn’t answer, and the truck slows as we near my street. The porch light glows in the distance, warm and welcoming.
Home. Safety.
Everything I should want.
Everything that’s slowly killing me.
Sitting here in the dark with Calder, slightly tipsy, my thoughts swirling, I know I need to make a move. I don’t want to go home yet.
“I remember something,” I blurt. “From before. When I was seventeen.”
Those cold blue eyes cut through me, and something dark flashes in them.
“I fell off a horse at the Parks’ ranch during the harvest festival and broke my wrist.” The words tumble out faster now, the beer loosening my tongue.
“You were there. I don’t even know why you were there, but you were.
I was on the ground crying, and I thought I was going to die from the pain.
And you just appeared. Like you knew exactly what to do.
” I’m off the rails now, but I can’t stop.
“You were so calm and gentle. You carried me to your truck like I weighed nothing, and you drove so carefully over every bump, and you kept asking if I was okay. I was afraid to be alone, and you stayed at the hospital until my father got there.”
“What’s your point?”
“You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to help me, but you did.”
“Saint.” His voice is a warning.
“Now that I’m thinking about it, I never thanked you properly.
My father rushed me out so fast after he arrived, and then later he told me to stay away from you.
That you were dangerous. That the Bishops were.
..” I trail off, realizing what I’m saying.
“It doesn’t matter what my father thinks.
You weren’t dangerous that day. You saved me. ”
“Anyone with a brain would have helped. You were hurt.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not anyone. Not like you did. You were kind. And even a year later, I haven’t forgotten that kindness.” I turn toward him in the seat. “I’m just confused. Why were you so kind then, but now you’re acting cold and mean?”
He’s clenching his jaw so hard I swear I can hear his teeth grinding. “I think it’s best if you listen to your daddy. You should stay away from me.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Something in his voice makes my chest ache. There’s a finality to his statement that feels like a door slamming shut. I can’t let that happen. I have to reach him. The truck rolls to a stop, and he shifts into Park but keeps the engine running.
The air is thick between us, and he’s looking anywhere but at me.
No. I want his eyes on me. I need his eyes on me.
“Thank you,” I say again softly.
He doesn’t respond and just stares straight ahead, jaw locked tight.
Before I lose my nerve, before I think about all the reasons this is a terrible idea, I move. I shift onto my knees on the bench seat and climb into his lap. Squeezing myself between the steering wheel and the hard lines of his chest, I force his arms off the wheel with my movement.
“Saint.” His voice is strangled. “What are you doing?”
“What I should’ve done a long time ago.” My hands shake as I cup his face. His skin is warm beneath my palms, rough with stubble. “This. My birthday present.”
“Don’t.”
It’s too late to stop me, though, because I’m already leaning in. Already pressing my lips to his.
For one perfect, fragile second, he kisses me back.
His mouth moves against mine with a hunger that ignites a fire deep in my soul. A fire I haven’t felt since my mother died. He grips me by the hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. It feels good. Like I’m alive.
The noise that rumbles from deep within his chest, something between a groan and a growl, vibrates through my core. I need to hear him make that sound again.
The moment shatters when his entire body goes rigid beneath me. He tears his mouth from mine, and the look in his eyes is pure fury. Fear ripples through my belly.
“Get the fuck out.” The sharp words are cutting.
“What?” I’m still in his lap, still close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. “I don’t—”
“Get. Out.” He’s not even looking at me, more like through me. A vein pulses in his temple, and if I were smart, I’d say that’s the warning before all hell breaks loose.
“I don’t understand. What did I—”
“Jesus Christ.” Grabbing me by the arms, he physically lifts me off his lap, depositing me back on the passenger seat with enough force that I bounce.
Finally, he turns to face me, and the look in his eyes is ice-cold fury. “Get out. You’re a fucking child playing dress-up in a bar you shouldn’t be in, drinking beer you can’t handle, throwing yourself at men who don’t want you.”
Each word sliced through me, sharp and serrated. My eyes burn with tears before I even think about stopping them.
“I saved you from those men because I’d do it for anyone. That’s it. There’s nothing else here. No connection. No history. Nothing.” His voice drops lower, crueler. “And that kiss? That meant nothing. Less than nothing. You’re a stupid little girl who doesn’t know when to quit.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“I don’t care what you were trying to do.
” He leans across the cab, reaching past me to shove open the passenger door.
The movement brings him close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath, see the barely controlled fury in his eyes.
“Get out of my truck. Walk to your door. And never speak to me again unless you want your father to know exactly where you were tonight and what you were doing.”
The threat hangs between us. He’s weaponizing my father’s trust, using it to hurt me. To push me away.
My hands shake as I try to gather my dignity. “I thought you were different. That you might be worth more than this darkness, worth saving.”
“You thought wrong.” He’s still leaning across me, one hand on the open door, his body a wall of leashed violence. “Now get the fuck out before I do something we’ll both regret.”
There’s something in his voice in those last words. Something that sounds almost like desperation beneath the cruelty. Yet his face shows nothing but cold dismissal.
I scramble out of the truck, nearly tripping in my haste and close the truck door behind me. I stand there in the cold, watching him through the window.
He grips the steering wheel with both hands now, head bowed, shoulders rigid with tension. For a moment, I think he might look at me. Might take it back. He doesn’t. He throws the truck into Reverse and tears out of there, gravel spraying.
The taillights disappear around the corner fast, leaving me alone in the dark. Maybe this is how it needs to be. Perhaps this is my sign to stay away from Calder. It doesn’t matter what I think or want. I know that after the way things ended tonight, nothing will ever be the same between us.