Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Campbell
Fuzz fills my mouth and my head when I wake. I groan before cracking an eyelid open. What room am I—
The mortification of the night comes rushing back, and I pull a pillow over my head. The comforting smell of fabric softener dulls the faint alcohol smell still clinging to me.
Why did I drink too much?
Stanford fucking Baldwin. The love of my life, who fucked my cousin and is now marrying her. And they want it to be a happy family adventure!
Assholes.
I peel a dry eyelid open. A bottle of water and a vial of ibuprofen greet me, along with some crackers. Who did that?
I sit up. The drumbeat behind my temples thrums impossibly harder. I close my eyes as I chug the water and down a couple of pills. Chasing them with the crackers, I study the room for a momentary reprieve from recalling how Durban watched me heave all over Bootleg’s parking lot. And myself.
“Wow,” I croak, both at my humiliation and my cozy surroundings.
Finished logs line the outer wall, and the others are adorned with nothing but a few simple pictures. One has a bear running full speed toward the camera. Another has three moose grazing in a valley. The frames are as rustic as the furniture. Nothing says mountain cabin like this room.
I like it. Daddy could do with more of this at the big house on the guest ranch, but the sprawling lodge was built to be majestic.
To be inviting while at the same time astonishing that something so grand could be in a tiny Montana town.
The aesthetic helps sell guest ranch packages worth thousands of dollars.
A little room like this makes me want to hide in it for the day. For the week. For the six weeks until the wedding is done and the bride and groom are on the Tahitian honeymoon I’d once talked about with Stanford.
I rub my eyes and wince at the pain. I need to check my phone and figure out how to get to my car without calling my knight in cozy flannel.
Durban’s mustache-scruff combo should only work on actors and country music stars.
The girls I hung out with last night kept asking if he was single.
I took more than a little glee in dashing their hopes.
That know-it-all downer is taken by some other woman I’m sure is super dull and responsible.
My purse is lying on the floor. It’s dry after my wobbly scrubbing last night. I was sober enough to do a decent job. If I hadn’t thrown up the last two beers I’d had, I’d have been a mess. More of a mess.
I dig my phone out and a groan slips free.
Jamison: Elodie said your car is still at Bootleg. Where are you?
Jamison: Hey, call me.
Jamison: Mom’s asking where you are.
Jamison: Call. Me.
Jamison: Now Daddy’s on my ass.
Avery: Why are Mom and Dad asking where you are?
Jamison: Campbell, where the hell are you did you go home with some guy are you dead in a field have you been dumped on the side of the road???
Jamison: No, seriously. If you’re not okay, I’m going to kill you. And then I’m going to cut off Can’t Stanford’s nuts and dangle them on your tombstone like a pair of steel hitch balls.
Avery: We could take turns displaying them.
I snort and prod at my aching temples. Jamison can’t stand Stanford, and she said it so often after the breakup—I can’t stand Stanford—the words slurred together and he became Can’t Stanford.
When I blink, my vision goes fuzzy. A hot tear rolls down my cheek.
If it wasn’t for my sisters, I’d have bought a travel van and found some remote camping spot to hide in for a few years.
I’d also probably have a broken-down vehicle, be lost in the forest somewhere, or dumped in a ditch. That’s how it goes for me.
Time to face my reckoning.
I text Avery first.
Campbell: I’m fine. I’m just not sitting at breakfast and smiling pretty for Stanford and January.
Avery: Nor should you be.
I take a deep breath and call my oldest sister.
“You’d better be okay,” she says instead of hello.
“Is that offer to chop off his balls still good? I’ll hang them from my fender since I don’t have a tombstone.”
“Don’t tempt me. So—spill it.”
I pick at the hem of Durban’s soft, warm sweater. I eyed this one when Elodie first opened Dee’s Sweets, but Stanford hated the blue. I thought it looked like the Stillwater River in June after most of the spring runoff flowed downstream. He claimed it washed me out.
“I, um, went to Bootleg last night.”
“Uh-oh,” she drawled. “No good decision starts with that sentence.”
“It worked for you.” She met Iverson in the bar, and he hadn’t known she was his boss’s forbidden daughter.
Daddy had made me and my sisters off-limits to the cowboys working for him, and Iverson had had no idea “Sunny” was Jamison Hawthorne.
Which she had known full well was the case.
That’s why she introduced herself as Sunny.
“Once,” she says. “Once in the history of that dive has it worked. Are you telling me that’s what happened?”
That’s the last thing that’ll happen. “I went home with a Hennessy, but I can assure you it didn’t work out the same.”
Durban Hennessy always looks at me with that slightly perplexed frown of his, the one that says he can’t believe I’m not lost in the woods somewhere, batting my eyes at the big, bad wolf.
Joke’s on him. I can’t read a map, and I wander off trails, so I don’t hike without someone who’s more adept than me.
“You went home with a Hennessy? Not Haven. Oh my God. You did not—”
“No, not Haven.”
Iverson made the comment once that I remind him of his youngest brother, who’s still older than me. Reckless. Impulsive. It’s only celebrated in good-looking guys like Haven and less desirable in a young woman.
Besides, I’m not reckless. Impulsive, yes. Forgetful? Too often. “Um, it was Durban.”
“What?” Rustling comes over the line like she’s switching ears. “You went home with Durban?”
“More like he hauled me out of the bar because he thought I couldn’t take care of myself.” I sound inane to my own ears. I wasn’t able to walk straight last night. I knew it at the time, and I figured I’d dive into my back seat and sleep it off. Silas wouldn’t care, and I’d probably be left alone.
Probably.
My gut gurgles at the odds. The likelihood that I wouldn’t be bothered had been better before my new acquaintances left, and the three guys set their sights on me. Yeah, I was irresponsible.
“You were that drunk?” she asks, shocked and concerned.
“I mixed drinks. My bad.” I also didn’t eat a decent dinner.
“Campbell.”
“I said my bad. I just wanted to forget.”
A sigh gusts over the line. “You should’ve stayed at the lodge. Then Mom and Dad wouldn’t worry about you.”
“I can’t take up a room in the garage.” Our childhood home isn’t the same as the lodge where guests stay. Doesn’t mean it’s a good hiding spot. “Mom keeps asking if I’m okay. Daddy won’t quit about the wedding.”
She makes a disgusted sound. “Can’t he see— Anyway. I guess that’s what the meeting’s for. How are you doing now? I thought Iverson was with Durban at the distillery.”
“I just woke up.” Something pricks at my brain. Didn’t he say something about being gone in the morning? To call him to figure out my car situation? Right. My car’s at Bootleg. “Hey, um, is there any chance you can give me a ride? Only if you’re feeling up to it,” I rush to add.
“Not you too.”
“What about me?”
“Treating me like I’m fragile. I swear, Iverson is afraid I’ll break into a million pieces. Durban won’t even let me open a door on my own. And now you? If I wasn’t pregnant, you’d have told me to quit prying and come pick you up already.”
The corner of my mouth tips up. “Fine. Quit prying and come pick me up already.”
I hang up, grateful she’s able and willing to rescue me from a really nice, cozy house. Iverson does fret, and he’d glare at me for using that word. Durban seems to think women are breakable creatures who need a guy like him to protect us.
I’m not doing a good job of proving him wrong, since my clothes are in his washing machine, and I’m in his sweater and in his bed. Add in that I woke up and immediately partook of the pain meds and water, and I do appear as if I need to be taken care of.
I roll out of bed and wait for any lightheadedness to make me dizzy, but it doesn’t happen, probably thanks to heaving out my last couple of drinks. I tiptoe out of the room and into the quiet house.
I blink. “Damn.”
The rest of Durban’s home is simple yet rustic and welcoming. Wooden beams bisect the arched ceilings with a rock wall acting as a mantel for the fireplace. His seating is all deep browns and mostly leather, and the bookshelves that match the wood tones are lined with impressive tomes.
There are stairs by the office, but I won’t snoop. He built this place for a family. With his PhD girlfriend?
I creep through the hallway and peek into the modest kitchen.
The house isn’t large, but it’s still roomy and cozy.
In the laundry room, my clothing is folded neatly on top of the dryer beside a stack of Durban’s clothing.
He either stayed up late or got up early to dry my stuff.
I didn’t think that far ahead last night.
I take the pile to the bathroom, which I barely recall from when I showered.
My towel is hung up. Didn’t I towel dry my hair and leave it on the counter?
Using the same toothbrush I found in the cabinet last night, I brush my teeth and clean up.
He has a spare comb too, but I finger comb my tresses, the tangles tugging at my scalp.
I have the dried, drowned-rat look going on, but at least I’m puke-free.
My skin is sallow—and it’s not from the sweater, Stanford!
After I’m dressed, I go to the kitchen. Ooh, a banana. Surely he won’t mind. With all those muscles, Durban probably huffs protein shakes and throws back steaks like they’re potato chips.
I munch on the banana. Where’s the garbage?