Chapter 7
Benji parked outside of The Drifter and turned off his truck.
The bar was a watering hole on the outskirts of Santa Ynez.
Unlike the little town, with its neat streets and quaint buildings with their faux western aesthetic, The Drifter was barely a shack.
The roof sagged. The porch paint, which may have been white at one time, was chipped and faded.
There was no sign, only a neon light that leaned against the inside of the window, facing out, and simply proclaimed: Beer.
While the town’s hotel and restaurant bars, which could whip up any sixteen-dollar cocktail for the city folk that filtered down for the weekend, were designed with tourism in mind, The Drifter was a place where locals came to get drunk. Not to drink. To get drunk. There was a difference.
Benji and Sierra had started meeting at The Drifter when she’d come home between her Junior and Senior years of college.
They didn’t agree on it because they liked the ambience or the sticky bar top.
They agreed on it because they had wanted to keep their relationship casual and, therefore, secret, and because nobody they knew ever frequented the dive bar.
But over the years it had become their place.
Whenever they had wanted to get away from the bubble that was Hunt Ranch, they’d taken a night off and driven to The Drifter.
They’d huddled in a booth or sat side by side at the bar and talked beneath the Eighties rock pumping from the old jukebox.
Back then, it hadn’t mattered that Sierra was underaged; nobody cared.
It hadn’t mattered that the white wine came from a box or that the beer wasn’t craft.
Both were cold. And when he and Sierra were alone, neither of them noticed anyway.
Now, Benji opened his truck door and stepped into the cold night. He noted Sierra’s car parked outside, and shot a text to Mav, telling him not to worry.
With one last deep breath he pulled open the door and stepped inside.
It may have been a long time since he’d frequented the establishment, but nothing had changed.
Under the dim light, the bar top was the same dark, scarred wood.
The seats were covered in the same cherry red leather.
Even the pool table, sitting forlornly across the room, had the same long scratch on its green felt top.
The smell – stale cigarettes and booze – greeted him like an old friend.
Benji didn’t have to look hard to find Sierra.
She sat at the end of the bar, several empty shot glasses in front of her.
Her long legs, clad in that same sexy pencil skirt she’d worn that morning, were crossed.
The red turtleneck she wore beneath her blazer matched her lip gloss exactly, and Benji knew she would have put it on at home and then slipped the tube into her purse to have it with her throughout the day.
Three cowboys, probably seasonal ranch workers, crowded around her, vying for her attention. And Sierra did not disappoint them.
She tipped her head back and laughed at something one of them said, and when the eldest man, a grizzled bear old enough to be her father, signalled the bartender, Tammy, for another round, Sierra placed her hand mock-flirtatiously on his arm.
Benji leaned against the far end of the bar, away from the trio. ‘Tammy,’ he greeted the wizened bartender.
‘Long time, kid. How’s the baby?’
‘Dead.’
Tammy didn’t bat an eye. ‘Sorry to hear that.’ She cast a slow look in Sierra’s direction. ‘Explains that, I guess.’ She wiped the bar in front of him with a rag that was just as dirty. ‘Get you anything?’
‘I’ll take a Stella. Thanks, Tammy.’
Tammy pulled a Stella from the fridge and opened it. She slapped the beer on the bar top without offering a glass and then ambled off to pour the shots for the cowboys.
Benji sipped his beer as he watched.
He waited until the fresh round of shots was placed in front of the group, let his anger grow as Sierra clinked her glass to the cowboys’ before shooting the tequila.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Even though he knew she was an adult woman with the right to do whatever the fuck she wanted, it hurt. It hurt to watch her drowning in all that pain.
He had almost talked himself into leaving when the youngest cowboy made his move. He pushed closer, crowding Sierra’s body with his own, and though the man was too drunk to notice, Sierra tried to shimmy away from him.
The cowboy clamped one hand on her arm.
Benji sighed. He downed the rest of the beer, put the empty bottle back down just as Tammy reminded him, ‘No blood in my bar.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
He approached the group, and although he knew that Tammy was serious about actually spilling blood, the two older cowboys took only one look at his face to know that he’d do it anyway. They stepped away immediately, and by the time Benji had reached Sierra they were gone.
It was the youngest, a brown-haired kid with baby blue eyes and a cocky grin, that opened his fucking mouth. Every time. ‘Can I help you, friend?’
Benji didn’t reply. He tipped his head towards the door in a show of arrogance that any sober man would have recognized – and feared. Benji might have been forty, but he had over twenty years of ranch brawn on his side, and the boy he was facing down was barely out of high school.
The cowboy just grinned. ‘Or what?’
‘I’d strongly recommend that you left now,’ Sierra informed the kid and turned back to the bar, dismissing him and any drama he might instigate.
The cowboy’s face turned red with embarrassment. He grabbed Sierra’s forearm and pulled her close to his face, just so that he could hiss, ‘You’re just a two-bit cock tease.’
Benji sighed.
‘Benji—’
But Sierra’s warning came too late. Benji’s fist ploughed into the kid’s face. He only had to hit him once.
The cowboy dropped to his knees. He didn’t move to stand, only stared at the floor dazedly before plopping backwards onto his butt.
‘Why did you have to go and do that?’ Sierra demanded. ‘I had it under control!’ She cast a disgusted look at the young cowboy, who was still trying to figure out what had happened. ‘You’re driving him to the hospital.’
‘The fuck I am.’ But because he wasn’t a complete asshole, Benji hollered, ‘Tammy! This kid’s gonna need some ice!’
With a lot of muttering, Tammy scooped ice out of the nearby trough with her hand. She put it in the same rag she’d been using to wipe down the bar, tied the ends in a knot, and then slid it to Benji, who caught it and plopped it into the cowboy’s lap.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Benji said.
As if to prove his point, the kid picked up the ice bundle and pushed to a stand. He wobbled a bit before hobbling off without a word.
All around them, people had stopped what they were doing to stare.
‘Let’s go.’
‘I’m not ready to leave yet,’ Sierra argued.
‘Sierra,’ he said slowly, quietly. ‘Do not push me right now.’
‘Or what?’ she demanded hotly. And when he didn’t reply, she flung her arms open and shouted, ‘Or what, Benji?’
And then she did the one thing neither of them could ever have expected.
She burst into tears. And they were not quiet tears either.
They were those aching, grief-filled sobs that he had only ever heard her make once, when she’d found out her parents had died in a car accident almost a decade prior.
They were those heaving, broken sounds he’d been waiting over a year to hear again.
Benji’s anger died immediately.
He pulled out his wallet and put a hundred on the bar, pushed Sierra’s purse into her shaking hands, and said, ‘Come on, Si.’ He lifted her into his arms, cradled her like he might have cradled a child, their child, and walked towards the door as she buried her face against his chest and broke.
Tammy scurried around the bar to open the door. ‘You take care of each other now,’ she told him.
‘I’ll fetch her car tomorrow, Tam.’
‘It’ll be here.’ The bartender closed the door behind them.
It said something about how long he had been without her that it pained him to put her down just so he could open the passenger door of his truck. Benji did it slowly, reluctantly, excruciatingly aware of every pocket of air that refilled the spaces between them again.
Sierra swiped at her face. She didn’t look at him, only swayed on her feet, drunk as a sailor, and stared inside the truck as if contemplating whether she was going to get in or turn and run away.
It was Benji who whispered, ‘Please, Si. Don’t make me leave you like this.’
Her shoulders rounded. Her entire body shook as she fought fresh sobs. She gripped the door as if to hold herself up. There was one moment, as Benji stood behind her, waiting, where he thought she’d turn and walk away. But she used her grip on the door to climb into the truck instead.
Relief flooded him. He waited for her to settle before he reached across and pulled the seatbelt around her. He took his time buckling her in, covertly taking deep inhales of her perfume beneath the tequila.
Her signature scent was Dior and aptly named ‘Pure Poison’.
Smelling it again had his sensory memory in revolt.
As it entered his bloodstream, he remembered everything else.
The softness of the skin beneath her breasts.
The exact hammer of her excited pulse against his lips.
The taste of her mouth and her body. The feel of her writhing in his hands.
Reluctantly, he stepped back, and when Sierra huddled further into her thin blazer, he shrugged out of his jacket, draped it over her, and then closed the door on the scent and on his memories.
Benji walked around the truck slowly, letting the cold air nip under his shirt and along his skin, settling his body as he internally berated himself. Pull it together, asshole.
It helped. A little. And when he opened the driver’s door and climbed in beside her, the perfume settled around him rather than kicking him in the gut.