Chapter Fourteen
It was the day before the town hall meeting and Bix had worked tirelessly to get everything ready. They had sample bottles
packed and ready to go, and she had her suggested recipes and mock-up labels for the other ranches. Profit projections and
every other thing she could think of.
She stood back in the old outbuilding and surveyed all the progress that had been made and felt a sense of accomplishment
so deep and true it nearly knocked her over.
Denver had trusted her to do it herself, more or less. She’d never been in such an important position. When she’d made moonshine
for herself, she supposed she’d been in charge of everything, but it wasn’t like this.
There were so many people depending on her. And knowing that what she did mattered—not just for herself, but for others—was
revelatory in some ways.
Bix had never felt indispensable.
Bix had never even felt much more than expendable.
But in this venture she’d been made into an integral part of it all and it was like she mattered. Like it was good she was here, and not just a favor to her. That was how she’d felt when she’d been doing construc tion work, because she knew there were other people on the ranch who could do the things she did.
But this was something she knew.
They could have found someone else, but not as easily. She’d always struggled with certain parts of her favorite self-help
book. She liked the ideas in it; she always had. But it suggested that to be effective you had to think ahead to an end goal,
and she was always so busy playing catch-up that she could never get to that place.
Then there was that word. Synergy. Which she’d really never understood. The way you could work with people around you and
make something bigger and better than you could alone. That had never been her experience.
But she’d felt that here. With the team she was brewing with, with the King family.
Not as much with Daughtry, who so resolutely had his own life.
But there was something she got from him too. A weird sort of stability. If she got charged up during the day, her mind spinning
with everything that came next—because that was the thing about being able to think ahead; now she did it obsessively and
anxiously sometimes—he was the calm presence at the end of the day that closed all that down.
He brought her to the moment.
He made her feel calm.
The way he made her feel was scary sometimes. He was a rock. Firm and steady. But he was also more. There was something electric and sharp she could feel radiating from under his skin sometimes, and she knew he didn’t want her to feel it. Didn’t want her to see it.
The truth was, she was really beginning to want him.
More than a crush.
Which she didn’t like or trust. Because where the hell could that possibly lead? Nowhere. And also apart from a few weird
clashes—which had felt more electric than others, like that charge inside him had escaped—he didn’t seem like he was...
hopelessly, desperately admiring her physical beauty in the way she admired his.
The truth was, she still couldn’t get the image out of her head of herself standing in the mirror looking like an escaped
prisoner. Skinny and tragic and injured.
She had been a prisoner, she supposed.
A prisoner of her own inability to imagine a life, a future, that was different and more than the one she’d have if she stayed
on the same path.
But she still felt tied to that girl. The one in the mirror. The one with the scab on her chin and the pitifully sunken-in
stomach. The one whose body had been like a bag of sticks. A body that was built just for dragging her on through life, not
enjoying things.
She didn’t let herself anticipate the taste of food in case she wasn’t going to get it.
She didn’t let herself have favorite foods because who knew when she would be able to have them.
She didn’t let herself feel lonely because there was no guarantee there would ever be a person that she could trust, a person who would care for her, a person that she would care for in return.
And she definitely didn’t let herself feel desire.
Well. Apart from reading fiction. And there was a reason she was very spare on letting herself pick up any romance novels,
because they did open up an ache inside of her that felt unbearable sometimes.
Because at the core of the ones that she had read was always this idea that love was inevitable. No matter how hard the situation
you were in, no matter how seemingly unlovable you might be, in the end, it would be there for you.
And nothing in her life had ever demonstrated that to her. Nothing in her life had ever given her any indication that could
be the case.
So she could only read them when she wasn’t tempted to trust them. When it was a nice thing to let herself hurt, because some
days it was.
She didn’t trust herself to touch that book now. Not with Daughtry so close. Not with that keen need much more focused than
it ever had been.
Because now it was personal. Now she understood what it was to want somebody.
Now that she didn’t have to ignore the feelings in her body—because when all you had was hunger, discomfort and bruises, why
would you ever focus on what you felt?—she knew that she wanted him.
And that was the other place that romance novels had helped her and hurt her. Because she had read how it could be. Because even though she had never done it, she could feel, really feel what it would be like to be held tightly by strong hands, to have a firm masculine mouth on her skin, to get lost in the sensation of being held.
She’d had a taste of it when they’d danced. The promise of all that pleasure in his touch.
Stardust.
That extra thing.
She’d only ever had survival. She had never had extra. The ability to just feel something good. To indulge in it simply because
it was there and she wanted it... That had never been available to her.
Now she wondered if this was the sort of crossroads normal people stood at all the time. And if like her, they were a little
bit afraid that it was a path to ruin.
Because at some point, her father had stood there with temptation in front of him. A life stretching out before him that had
been unbearable to him in some way. Whether it was because of poverty or a lack of control, and he had decided to step over
a line. He had decided to discard the rules of the system because they didn’t serve him, and create a system of his own. To
gain power. To gain more money. What was that if not self-indulgence?
She had been caught in the middle of it, unable to make a choice. For her, it had never been self-indulgence, but survival.
In this, she had a feeling, was in some ways her own version of that.
Except it wasn’t breaking the law.
So what did you do when things were great like this, and you were trying to see the end result—that all -important tip for being a highly effective person, which she was doing well at when it came to business—but you couldn’t see where all this might go?
What did you do then?
She could see why Daughtry liked certainty. Why he took comfort in being a police officer.
Suddenly, she felt a kick of something in her breast. A burning, bright conviction.
She wasn’t Daughtry. She wasn’t her dad.
She was Bix, and she always had been.
She had carried herself this far. And no, it hadn’t been without help. But maybe she had to stop giving every achievement
away.
The Kings were wonderful. Daughtry in particular had given her something spectacular. But she hadn’t wasted it.
Suddenly she felt... filled with energy. Filled with joy. Because when standing at a crossroads, when being given the chance
to do better, she had taken it. And whatever her feelings for Daughtry meant, the real crossroads had been back there when
she’d had to make the decision to stay or go. To actually work, rather than continue to hustle in the margins of the law.
She had made good choices. Choices that had brought her here.
Because that was the real gift. The real gift of being in a place that was beyond survival, was being in a place with choices.
And when presented with choices, she had made some pretty good ones.
“Good job, Bix,” she whispered to herself as she looked around the room. “Good job.”
When Bix hadn’t come home, he felt compelled to go looking for her. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should get her
a cell phone so she would be easy to track down. But he had a feeling she would lecture him on tracking devices, and the dangers
of hooking herself up to satellites.
Because that was Bix. And he enjoyed that about her as much as he found it annoying. He heard her voice before he opened the
door to the outbuilding where they did the brewing, and he had expected to see her there with someone. In fact, he expected
to see her there with Michael, and he knew a moment of extreme irritation.
But he wasn’t there.
It was her. Standing in the dark, illuminated only by shafts of moonlight that came through gaps in the wooden planks.
“Bix?”
She whirled around. He expected her to say something threatening. Tell him that she could’ve taken his eyeball out before
she realized it was him. But she didn’t. Instead, she smiled.
“Daughtry.”
“I got worried when you didn’t come home.”
“Worried? I haven’t had a home for any number of years. It’s funny that you should be worried I didn’t come in right on time.”
“Well,” he said. “I was.”
“I appreciate that. I don’t think anybody’s ever worried about me before.”
There was something about her tonight, something joyous, but with that kinetic, untamed energy that always radiated from her.
She was glorious. A little bit wild.
Beautiful.
“I was just out here feeling very proud of myself. All of these things... I made them. I made this beer, and we actually
get to sell it. With a license and everything. It’s like being a pedigreed dog instead of a stray. I never thought... I
really never thought that I would ever get to do anything like this. I really never thought that I was going to...” She
frowned. “I never thought about the future before. Not really. And you have to, if you want to be a highly effective person.
You have to look at the end in the beginning. You have to think about your goals.”
“Is that from one of your books?”
“Yes. I used to read those books, and I used to get angry, because I wanted to do the things in them, but I didn’t know how.
I didn’t have the tools. You know, I didn’t have a brick.” She let out a breath. “But I get it now. And not only that, I’m
just really proud of myself. I did it. I made this.”
And then she did something unexpected. She twirled in a circle, her arms stretched out wide, her blond hair swirling around
her.
And he could only stare. At her joy. At her enthusiasm. It echoed inside of him. In a place where he’d once felt things that
big. That deep.
He had always focused on the ways that he recognized himself in Bix.
And this... It was an old thing. But it wasn’t anything he carried with him anymore.
It felt dangerous. To even stand this close to it.
“I think we need to try the product.”
“I didn’t think you did that,” he said.
“Normally I don’t. Because in my life, alcohol has been associated with either greed or a need to forget. But that’s not what
this is. I don’t need to forget anything. And this isn’t about greed. It’s about making something people actually like. It’s
about building something new in the ranch. And I will always have been a part of it.” She glowed with that. Her eyes luminous.
“Even when I’m not here anymore, I will always have been a part of this. It’s not just... a still in the woods that I’ll
have to tear down and pretend it never happened. Do you know how much of my life I’ve spent doing that? Erasing any evidence
that I was ever there? But that’s not what I’m doing now. I just...”
She took two beer bottles out of one of the crates sitting at her feet. But then rather than handing him one, she scampered
to a ladder that extended down from the ceiling. And with the two bottles in one hand, she began to scurry up the rungs.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t say that I was going to...” He looked up after her as she disappeared, past the loft, and then
up through an opening that led out of the ceiling. “Are you kidding me?”
But his stomach tightened as he went to the ladder, and began to chase after her.
And there she was, up on the roof, beneath the starlight, beneath the moon.
Her hair was all silvery in that light, and her smile was radiant. Then she extended her hand toward him, holding out the
bottle. And he crossed the space and took it, then sat down beside her.
She fished a bottle opener out of her pocket, opened her own, then opened his. He let her do it, because it was her beer.
She tilted it back, and he watched her profile as she took a long sip of the beer. It reminded him of something. And yet,
it was entirely new also. It was an echo of what it had been like to be younger.
“I think this is freedom,” she said, resting back on her elbows. “Can you feel it? Can you taste it?” She lifted up the beer
bottle and took another sip.
“Is it that good?”
“No,” she said. “I really don’t like beer that much. But that isn’t the point. I feel like I... I did it. I did it, Daughtry.
I’m not pathetic anymore. I’m not making decisions just to survive anymore. I am something more. I am expansive.” She grinned.
“I am large. I contain multitudes.”
“Are you quoting poetry?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“How did you come to know all that poetry? Your different references to things. Free libraries?”
“Yes,” she said. “My father was never going to educate me in any way past what he saw fit. He was never a reader. He didn’t understand all the things that were contained in books. He didn’t understand that I could find secrets to all the world, to myself, on white pages with black text. To him, that was all boring. To me, the secrets of the universe. But it’s only now that I feel like I finally know what to do with them. It’s only now that I feel free. Hunger, scarcity, fear. Those are chains.”
She took another sip of the beer, then set it beside her. And she stood, there on the roof.
“Hey,” he said. “Be careful.”
“Daughtry,” she said. “You’re always so concerned.”
Her words twisted around his throat, echoed inside of him. Because it was true. He was always so concerned. Always. Because
he had to be.
And right now the thing he admired most about her was the thing he feared the most in himself. This need to be free. This
wild thing within her. He was a police officer, because he knew it was the only way to be sure that he kept an accounting
of right and wrong. Because he lived his life in black-and-white, and Bix was shades of color. All the rainbow in between.
Not gray, everything golden and bright and glittering.
He had been mistaken. Thinking she was growing more and more civilized.
She was growing more and more into herself. The woman he had met had only been a sliver of the Bix that she became. And even
all the stages after, there had been fear. Uncertainty. Insecurity. But this woman right here, this was her .
Certain and sure in a way he wasn’t entirely certain he’d ever been of himself.
But then, when Bix made mistakes, she didn’t hurt people.
When she tasted freedom, it wasn’t a sick, twisted joy in power.
And as for himself, he simply couldn’t trust it.
Then Bix scampered up to the ridgeline, and grabbed hold of a low-hanging tree branch.
“Bix...”
“I’m reaching for the stars, Sheriff,” she said, grinning at him, and then she hefted herself up into the trees, and disappeared.
“Dammit, Bix,” he muttered as he set his own beer down and went to the tree. Went up after her. Compelled to do so, even as
there was something in him that demanded he not do it. That demanded he get back down immediately.
Instead, he followed her little ass right up the tree. He looked up, and saw her a few branches above. She peered down at
him. “Well, look at you, Sheriff.”
“Look at you, you feral little beast.”
She smiled. “Born and bred. And... proud. Of where I’ve managed to get myself to.”
His heart hit the front of his breastbone. He liked hearing that. That she acknowledged her own achievements here. Her own
triumph. That she truly understood that she herself was great. That she wasn’t just saying she owed him. There was something
different about her tonight, and it was stunning.
She was proud of herself.
Bix would always be whiskey in the shape of a woman, poured out and lit on fire. A shot of something far too strong for just
anybody to handle.
She would always be this.
And he would only ever bring her down to earth. He didn’t want that for her.
More than that, he knew he couldn’t spend too much time up here with her.
He knew himself.
And what he didn’t know, what he had never known, was when you crossed the line so far that you could no longer look at the
face of a terrified little girl and feel guilt.
He had been his father’s muscle.
He had thought that they were smarter than everybody else. That they were better. That they inherently deserved the money
that they had because they had outsmarted the idiots who had agreed to do business with them. The arrogance that came from
something like that was astonishing. If you had too much confidence in your own moral compass, it could be pointing due south,
and you wouldn’t even know anymore.
Wouldn’t know that you’d lost north so many miles ago that you were off course so damned far you were about to walk into the
sea.
The water would be up over your head before you ever realized it. Before you ever admitted that you had taken a wrong turn.
Bix had a compass inside her that worked just fine.
He admired it.
She had said something about him. That he was innately better than her or something because he hadn’t followed in his father’s
footsteps the way that she had.
But Bix had only done what she’d done because of her own fear. Her own insecurity.
What he had done had been about power.
Those were poles apart. North and south.
Bix had been following her true north. She had just needed to keep herself going. To keep herself alive.
And so she had moments where she dipped and weaved off course just a little bit. East or west. But never completely contrary
to what was right.
There were justifications. There were reasons.
The King family had never been on the verge of being down-and-out. The King family had no such excuse. And neither did he.
He and Denver had handled coming to terms with their part in their father’s games in different ways.
But it amounted to the same thing.
They kept themselves on short leashes.
They kept themselves focused on what was right in front of them.
And even if Bix was right in front of him now, he knew she wasn’t anything he could reach out and grab. Not for keeps.
Freedom. That’s what she’d said.
He never wanted freedom. He had to keep himself in chains. But he didn’t want to spoil her moment by talking about any of
his nonsense.
“I never dreamed. Not really,” she said. “It was too hard. And then, right at first when I was here I just felt like I was never going to be able to leave who I was behind. But I don’t have to, do I? Because who I am got me here. She was scrappy. And she was strong. I think I can be grateful to her.”
“You should,” he said. “Because you’re right about that. That’s what got me. From moment one, Bix. You have to know that.
I didn’t look at you and see somebody different than you could be. I didn’t look at you and see only potential. I looked at
you and saw somebody strong, right then. I looked at you, and I knew they were something. Special. Strong. Spirited. I admire
the way that you lied to me, right to my face.”
She laughed. “I still do that. I lie first, don’t I? Captain America.”
His stomach went tight. He climbed up another couple branches, bringing him to eye level with Bix, his elbows rested across
a branch about three feet away from hers. They had a healthy amount of space between them, but still, he felt drawn to her.
Like there was a magnet between them.
“Sometimes a lie isn’t such a bad thing,” he said.
“When?”
“When it’s constructed to protect something.”
Wasn’t that his whole life? His uniform. It was a lie. In many ways, she hadn’t been wrong about the Captain America thing.
He put on a costume every day, trying to make himself into a superhero. But whether or not it was true, he couldn’t say. He
wanted it to be. But it was the gaps, the unknowns that got him. His inability to be entirely certain when his father had
simply embraced that villainous part of himself. When he had gone completely off the deep end into something that you couldn’t
come back from.
Bix would never be that.
She might not have a brick, or at least, she didn’t think so. But she had a compass in her soul. And it didn’t take a genius
to see that. At least, not in his estimation.
“Right,” she said softly. “To protect a little pocket of happiness, I suppose. Because if you change things, who knows what
will happen?”
Maybe she did mean them. He wanted to change it. He wanted to wreck it. Destroy it. To kiss her until neither of them could
breathe.
Because she wasn’t untouchable. She wasn’t a fey, golden creature. She was a woman. Wholly and completely. And she held an
indomitable spirit that sparked something in him he had forgotten ever existed.
Something he had forgotten about on purpose.
But with her, it was easy to tell himself that maybe he didn’t need that anymore.
That leash.
Short and sharp, keeping him contained.
So he would just turn Bix into his compass? That wasn’t fair.
She had already been dragged down by too many terrible men.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You know, you could set me up in another house.”
“I could,” he said.
“You like having me around.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an accusation, just more of an observation.
“I do,” he said.
She was the only new, lovely thing he’d had in his life for a very long time.
She had become the focus of everything. Over the last two months, there was very little in his life that didn’t orient around Bix.
He was obsessed with her. That was the truth of it. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t, not anymore. He had tried.
He had tried to keep the truth of his feelings for her held at bay. And now they were here, laid bare in front of him. He
wasn’t sure that he liked it. Hell, he knew he didn’t.
Because it would be a mistake. He didn’t make mistakes anymore. But the truth was, he hadn’t wanted to make one in a long
damned time. He hadn’t felt anything for a long damned time. Everything had been dampened down. Everything had been muted.
Not with her.
That riot of color shone through.
It colored all that black-and-white in brilliant, glorious prisms. And it made it hard to tell what was right and what was
wrong.
He couldn’t afford that.
But he wanted her close.
Because being near her, being near her like this, it reminded him...
The truth was, he hadn’t been truly happy in years. He hadn’t been truly angry. Truly sad. Not really much of anything.
But he had been righteous. And didn’t that count for something?
Being near her was like being close to happiness. It reminded him of all the things that could be.
Of the capacity he had to feel.
But he had made the decision to stop feeling very intentionally.
That she was a temptation was ample evidence that he needed to stay the hell away.
“I spent all my life being untethered. And in many ways, it kept me from freedom. But I don’t know that that’s any different
than anyone else. I mean, we are all essentially what our parents want us to be. At least right at first, right?”
“I suppose that’s true,” he said.
“And then we grow up, and we have to decide what we are going to be. And some people get to start out with... you know.
All those bricks. And some of the bricks are very fancy. And they help you build something really nice really fast. But at
the end of the day, we all have to decide who we want to be. I feel like I finally get to decide that.”
“Good,” he said.
“I think I want to go to college,” she said. “You asked me that. A while ago. If I ever thought about going to school. And
I asked you if you had ever thought about going to the moon. It doesn’t feel like it’s on the moon anymore. Thank you. Because
yeah, I give myself a lot of credit for this. But I owe you too. In a good way. Not a bad way. Not in the way that I think
my dad or your dad would look at owing somebody.”
She didn’t know. Not really. That he had looked at it that way at one time too. And maybe that’s why he was so resistant to
it now. Why it made him feel wary of the growing connection between them.
“Is there a good way to owe somebody? In my experience a debt is only bad.”
“Gratitude, then,” she said. “I guess I don’t have very much experience with that sort of thing. Not any more than you do.
I don’t think. Or maybe I just like you, Sheriff. And I’m free to do that. And that feels pretty magical all by itself.”
He wanted to touch her. In that moment, looking at her felt like moonlight had burned through a gap in his own chest, and
shone a light down on his soul. Right now, in the dark, with stars above them, it almost felt possible.
Almost.
Except he thought about what she had said. Looking at the end, right at the beginning. And the truth was, there could only
ever be an end. And if he hurt Bix, he would hate himself for the rest of his life. He wasn’t his number-one fan as it was.
But...
If he hurt her...
Well, there would be no point to much of anything.
“When you leave, promise me you’ll go to college,” he said.
“I will.”
“Promise me you’ll go on a lot of dates. Go to parties. Dances. Get a library card.”
She laughed, but it was trembling. “Sheriff...”
“I mean it. Check out every book you want.”
“What if I don’t want to kiss a lot of guys?” she asked him, her expression going serious.
She didn’t have to ask the rest of the question.
“You don’t have to, but you could. I think that’s more the point. You can do whatever you want. Hold on to this. Feeling free. Trust herself.”
“Okay, thanks. I will.”
They sat there, up in the tree, in silence. He looked at her, his body on fire. But it was more than that.
She set him on fire in a very specific way. An all-encompassing way. It didn’t just make him want to kiss her. It didn’t just
make him want to touch her. He wanted to be like her.
“We should probably go,” she said. “I have to give a speech tomorrow and all of that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You do.”
“I’ve never been the authority on anything. It’s weird, to be the authority on this. But I actually feel like I am. Like it’s
real.”
“It is,” he said.
She had said that she was doing something permanent here. Something good. And he realized then he could too. He could do something
good, something permanent for her. Before he sent her on her way. He wanted to be part of the good things that happened to
her here. And he definitely never wanted to be a bad thing. Which was why he didn’t move nearer to her now. It was why he
didn’t touch her.
Why he didn’t kiss her.
Even though he wanted to. It would be tempting to believe that meant he had found north in him.
The only north he’d found was her. The direction she was going. He was just a stop along the way.
But that reoriented him. Grounded him. Gave him purpose.
Gave him black-and-white back.
And it might not be the magic that he felt a moment before, but it was more important. It was something.
They climbed down from the tree. Collected their beer bottles and climbed down the ladder.
She had two more steps to go, and he couldn’t help himself. He reached up and grabbed her by the waist and lifted her down.
Turned her toward him.
She looked up at him, her eyes glittering, her lips parted.
He wasn’t going to kiss her.
So he just reached out and put his thumb on her chin, traced a line along her jaw and back to the center again. “You’re something
else, Bix. Don’t ever forget that.”
After that he took a step back, and turned away from her. Because he had to leave quickly. Before he lost the intention he’d
just set.
Tonight had been something different. A little step off the straight and narrow. It had been a little bit magic too.
But magic was for other people.
And Bix was magic entirely.