25. Jessica
Jessica
Stephanie was on the small stage in the corner doing her second set — something slow and warm, her voice filling the room, Liam watching from the booth with his beer untouched and his eyes not leaving her.
The bar was full. Ben Alvarez was behind the counter doing the thing he did on Fridays, where he flipped a bottle behind his back and pretended it was an accident when someone clapped.
The Blackwoods were in their usual corner. Clay had his arm around Callie and was trying to steal a fry off Maggie's plate without her noticing. Maggie noticed. She stabbed his hand with her fork.
"Ow — Jesus, Mags —"
"My fries or my fork. Choose wisely."
"She'll use it," Jack said, not looking up from his beer. "She stabbed me once for taking the last biscuit."
"That was a warning stab," Maggie said. "You're still alive."
"Barely." Jack held up his hand. "I've got a scar."
She rolls her eyes. ”You do not have a scar."
"Emotional scar."
Callie leaned across Clay. "For what it's worth, I would also stab someone for the last biscuit."
"This is why I’m marrying you," Clay said.
Wyatt and Ivy were at the end of the booth.
Wyatt had his arm around the back of her chair.
Ivy was laughing at something on her phone — a photo Maisie had drawn of the family that depicted every Blackwood as a different farm animal.
Hunter was a horse. Clay was a pig. Maggie was a chicken, which Maggie had opinions about.
"Why am I the chicken?"
"Because chickens are bossy," Ivy said, reading Maisie's caption. "And pretty. And they peck people."
"I'm choosing to take that as a compliment."
Hunter was beside me. His hand on my thigh.
His beer half finished. He was quiet the way he always was in a group — not withdrawn, settled.
His thumb traced a circle on my thigh through my jeans.
Every few minutes, he'd lean in and press his mouth against my temple.
His breath would be warm on my skin, and I'd lean into it, and the world would shrink to the size of his mouth on my hair.
Stephanie's set ended. The bar clapped. She stepped off the stage, and Liam stood. She walked straight into his arms, and his hand found the back of her head and held it. The look on his face made my throat tight.
The jukebox kicked in — something with a fiddle, something bright and fast. The dance floor filled. Jack pulled Maggie up. Wyatt and Ivy followed. Clay extended his hand to Callie with an exaggerated bow, and she rolled her eyes, smiling, and took it.
Hunter stood and held his hand out to me without saying a word, and the look on his face was the small private one with the pull at the corner of his mouth that he saved for me, and I put my hand in his.
He pulled me onto the floor. His hand settled at my waist, and mine slid up to his shoulder.
We moved into the rhythm without either of us having to find it — his body taking the lead the way it took the lead in everything, no rush, no show, just the steady warm pressure of his palm at the small of my back to guide my hips.
The music was loud, but the crowd was louder.
The heat of him was through my shirt, and his eyes were on my mouth, and the safest thing I had ever felt in my life was the breadth of his hand at the base of my spine.
I was grinning so wide my cheeks ached, and he was almost grinning back, and the almost of it lit something behind my sternum that no man's full smile had ever come close to.
"You're a good dancer, Blackwood."
"You're not bad yourself, sweetheart."
"Not bad? I'm spectacular."
The corner of his mouth pulled higher, and his hand tightened on my waist. He spun me out — a proper spin, my hair flying, my laugh getting loose in the air above the music — and reeled me back in and caught me against his chest. His mouth came down to my ear, and the word spectacular moved through my body in a low, warm pull from my throat to the soles of my feet.
The song ended. We stayed on the floor. The next one was slower, and his arms came around my waist and pulled me into him.
I lowered my cheek to the cotton of his shirt over his sternum and let my eyes close.
His heart was steady under my ear. His hand was warm and broad and unmoving at the small of my back, holding me the way he held everything that mattered to him, and underneath the music, the warm bar, and the family scattered across the floor, I felt myself settle.
The smell of him — soap and warm cotton and the faint trace of motor oil that never fully washed out — was on every breath I took.
Somewhere on the floor, Clay dipped Callie so low her hair brushed the boards, and somewhere else, Maggie was laughing as Jack stepped on her boot for the third time, and all of it moved around us the way weather moves around a house. I was home.
Garrett was across the room. I'd seen him when we walked in — corner booth, a blonde woman I didn't recognize from the next town over.
Her hand on his arm. His body angled toward hers.
They looked cozy. They looked like a couple.
He'd nodded at the table when we passed — polite, distant, the nod of a man who had moved on. He hadn't looked at me once all night.
My shoulders were down. My jaw was loose.
Weeks of nothing. Weeks of no texts, no showing up, no stares across rooms. Garrett Calloway had lost interest, and the tight knot that had been sitting in me since the hardware store had loosened, and tonight it was barely there.
I was on a dance floor with the man I loved, and his family was around.
Stephanie was about to start her third set, and the wine was warm in my blood, and I was happy. Simply, completely happy.
I went to the bathroom between sets.
The hallway at the back of the Silver Spur was narrow — wood-paneled, two bathroom doors, and the back exit at the end. The music was muffled. The hallway quiet. I came out of the bathroom drying my hands on my jeans, and Garrett was leaning against the wall opposite.
My body tightened. A reflex — shoulders lifting, stomach contracting, my feet planting.
"Hey." His hands up. Palms open. “Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I was just heading out back for some air." He paused. His face open. His voice easy. "Actually, can I talk to you for a second? I've been meaning to — I owe you an apology."
My hand was on the bathroom doorframe. My feet were pointed toward the bar. The music was pulsing through the wall.
"For what?"
"For making you uncomfortable. Before. With the texts and the showing up at things and —" He shook his head. "I was an ass, Jessica. I can see that now. And I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Properly. Not in a crowded bar."
His face was sincere. His eyes were soft. His hands were still open at his sides — the posture of a man who wanted nothing except to say his piece and go back to his blonde and his booth.
"Okay," I said. "Thank you. I appreciate that."
"Can we step outside for a second? Just — one minute. I don't want to do this in a hallway." He nodded toward the back door. "Fresh air. One minute. Then I'll leave you alone."
My gut said no. My gut said walk back to the bar. But his face was open and his voice was calm. And he had the blonde in the booth and there had been weeks of nothing that had sanded the edges off my fear, so I said, "One minute," and I followed him through the back door.
The alley. Cool air. The dumpster to the left. The security lamp above the door threw yellow light on the concrete. Garrett leaned against the wall. I stayed near the door.
"I just wanted you to know I get it," he said. "You and Hunter. I see it." He nodded. "It's real. I respect that."
My shoulders eased a fraction. "Thank you, Garrett."
"You deserve someone who sees you like that." A pause. His eyes steady on mine. "I just wish I'd had more time. To show you who I really am."
"You would have liked me, Jessica. If you'd let yourself.
" His voice dropped. He pushed off the wall.
"We're meant to be together. I've known it since the first time I saw you.
And if you'd just stop —" His jaw worked.
His eyes hardened. "If you'd just stop disrespecting me, I could show you how a woman is supposed to be treated. "
My stomach dropped. The air in the alley went cold.
"I need to go back inside."
"No." He closed the distance in two steps, walking me back into the brick wall.
His hands pressed flat on the wall beside my head.
The wall was cold against my shoulder blades.
His face was close. His eyes had changed — the softness gone, the apology gone, something frantic and focused behind them that made my skin crawl.
"You don't get to walk away from me again.
" His voice was shaking. Not with fear. With rage.
"Every time. Every time I try to talk to you, you walk away.
You dismiss me. You go back to him, like I'm nothing.
Like I'm not even worth —" His hand slammed the wall beside my head.
I flinched. The sound cracked through the alley.
"Do you know who I am? Do you know what I could give you? "
"Garrett, let me go.” My voice shook around the words.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to love you?” His face inches from mine.
His breath hot — whiskey and something sour.
His eyes wet and wild. "I am trying to show you what this could be and you keep — you keep choosing a man who fixes fucking fences over me. Over me!” His hand found my jaw, his fingers digging into the hinge.
His thumb pressing into my cheek. "Just let me — just —"
His mouth crushed mine, hard and unrelenting. His tongue pushed against my closed lips. The taste of whiskey and the smell of his cologne had my stomach heaving. My hands came up between us and shoved — pushing at his chest, clawing at his shirt, my palms flat against him trying to get space.
He didn't move. His grip tightened on my jaw. His other hand grabbed the front of my dress — the strap ripping, the fabric tearing, the sound loud in the quiet alley. Cool air on my bare shoulder. His mouth still on mine. His body grinding me into the wall.
I wrenched my face sideways. His lips dragged across my cheek. I got my mouth free and sucked in air.
"Get off me!” I screamed, but there was no one around to hear. Just me, and this monster.
Searing heat flared through my cheek, Garrett’s open palm knocking my head sideways. The crack echoed off the walls of the alley. My vision went white for a half-second. My ear rang. Copper flooded my mouth.
"Why do you have to be so fucking difficult?" His voice cracked. Raw. Unhinged. His hand was back on my arm, holding me against him while I sobbed. his face close again, his eyes streaming and furious. "I'm giving you everything and you just —"
My knee drove upward as hard and fast as I could send it. He folded — his hands releasing, his body jackknifing, a guttural sound ripping from his throat. He staggered sideways into the dumpster and doubled over.
I pulled the back door open and ran through it, only to hit him.
Hunter.
He must’ve been coming the other way. Probably came to check on me. His body filled the narrow hallway. His hands caught my shoulders when my legs buckled. I grabbed his shirt, clinging to the only safe thing I knew.
"Jess — what —"
“Garrett,” I sobbed. “He followed me…took me to the alley. He kissed me — hit me when I tried to get him off.”
His eyes dropped to the torn strap, the red mark blooming on my cheek, the swelling on my jaw where Garrett's fingers had dug in. His hands were on my shoulders, and his eyes moved across my face.
And then he left.
Not his body. His body stayed. But the man behind his eyes went somewhere I couldn't follow.
His face emptied. His jaw locked. The tendons in his neck stood out.
His hands dropped from my shoulders, his fingers curling into fists.
He stepped around me and walked down the hallway toward the back door.
“Hunter, don’t,” I wept, tugging on him.
He pulled his arm out of my grasp, kicked the back door opened. The alley light spilled in. Garrett was by the dumpster, straightening up. One hand on the wall. He saw Hunter in the doorway, and his mouth curved with a smirk.
"Your girlfriend's a fucking whore, Blackwood. She was gagging for —"
Hunter's fist connected with his jaw before he finished.
The sound of bone on bone filled the alley.
I screamed. Garrett's head snapped sideways.
His body hit the wall. The smirk was gone.
Hunter stepped forward and hit him again.
I saw it from the hallway — Hunter's arm drawing back, the knuckles driving into Garrett's face, Garrett's legs buckling.
I ran. Back down the hallway. Through the door into the bar. The music loud. The crowd warm. My eyes swept the room until I found the Blackwood booth.
Clay’s face went from laughing to stone in a half-second — his eyes on my cheek, the torn dress, my hair wild where Garrett's hands had been in it. Callie's hand went to her mouth. Jack stood up so fast his beer tipped.
"Jesus Christ.” Clay was already moving toward me. "What the fuck happened? Where's Hunter?"
"The alley — Garrett — Hunter went out — he's going to kill him, Clay.”
Wyatt was on his feet. His eyes swept me and his face went dark. “They still out there?”
I tugged on his arm, pulling him to the hallway. ”Go before they kill each other!”
Clay flew past me through the hallway. Wyatt and Jack behind him. Liam stood from the booth — his hand finding his phone, his jaw set, his eyes holding mine for one second before he followed after.
Then everyone moved. Maggie was up. Callie grabbed her jacket off the booth.
Stephanie was already on her feet. Ivy. The whole table emptied — the Blackwood women following the Blackwood men, nobody asking, nobody waiting, the family moving as one body toward the back of the bar.
Half the bar turned to watch. Chairs scraped. Heads craned.
I stood in the doorway of the hallway with my torn dress and shaking hands.
And from the alley — through the open back door, through the hallway, muffled by the walls but unmistakable — the sound of Hunter's fist hitting Garrett's face.