Entwined Hearts (Cowboys of Wild Creek #2)

Prologue

SAVANNAH

Thirteen years ago…

The stars twinkled above in the night sky, blinking at me like some kind of mockery; shining brightly while I felt like I was fizzling out.

I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning against the porch railing while I looked to the sky for the answers I didn’t have. Answers I needed, but like usual, the sky was quiet.

I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.

I wasn’t a barrel racer like my big sister, Claire.

I didn’t want to serve my country like my brother, Emmett.

I didn’t adore animals as much as my best friend, Delilah.

And I never developed any special aptitude like my little sister, Tess, did towards computers and math.

All I did was worry. My mind felt like a tornado or a never-ending spool of yarn. The thoughts never stopped. The chaos never ended, which was why I was wide awake at one in the morning. It was exhausting.

“Shit.” The hushed curse carried over the land that stretched between mine and the McLeod’s house.

It was hard to live so close to them after we stopped being friends six years ago, but our dads hated each other because of some merger that never happened when they were boys, and Claire said we couldn’t hang out anymore.

It was confusing and didn’t make sense, and I didn’t do well with things I didn’t understand and couldn’t get answers to. And since nobody would tell me the real reason, I just listened.

There was a low, raspy laugh. A boy’s laugh. It had me straightening off the railing, squinting into the darkness.

That’s when I saw a figure stumbling near the fence line like a newborn foal. He was tall, lean. Moonlight filtered through the glass bottle he brought to his lips while nearly draining the amber liquid inside.

That had to be Weston; Colt would never do something as dumb as drink somewhere Mr. McLeod could catch him. Weston, on the other hand, was always getting in trouble at school and in general. Just last month, he got suspended for gluing all of Mrs. Montgomery’s desk drawers shut.

It reminded me of the pranks we used to play on each other as kids.

Weston and Delilah were the masterminds behind most of them, while Colt and I were always scared of the fallout.

Leave it to the two sticks in the mud to befriend the wild ones.

But those days were long gone, buried under decades of tension and resentment between our families.

I went down the porch steps as Weston stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet, before he caught himself on the fence that divided our properties. He held onto it like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth.

What the heck was he doing?

The grass was slick under my bare feet as I neared him, and the wind carried a chill that my pajamas didn’t stand a chance against.

“Weston?” I called out as he drank more from the bottle. “What are you doing out here?”

He jerked his head up, squinting at me like he couldn’t tell if I was really there or not. “Savannah?” he slurred.

“You know that’s illegal, right?” I nodded towards the bottle that hung from his hand.

He looked down at the bottle like he’d forgotten it was there and laughed. “You gonna write me up, Sheriff Hayes?” I gasped. He laughed more, shaking his head. “God, you haven’t changed one bit, have you?”

I scowled, putting my hands on my hips. “Neither have you, by the looks of it,” I snapped, feeling defensive. Last time he spoke to me, I was ten. All gangly limbs and buck teeth. Surely, I’d changed since then. Right? I took a step closer. “What are you doing out here anyway?”

He took another sip from the bottle. “What’s it look like? I’m celebrating. You?”

My eyes narrowed, confused. He didn’t look particularly happy. “Couldn’t sleep. What are you celebrating?”

“Why can’t you sleep?” he countered, deflecting.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Weston.”

“Savannah.”

I turned around with a huff. “I’m leaving.”

He let out a long sigh as I started to walk away. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion as he said, “Four years ago today, my parents bailed.”

I stopped walking then. Our group had broken up before that happened, but I remember hearing about it at school.

One day, he was just a thirteen-year-old boy living his life, and then boom, his parents were gone.

I didn’t understand how they could do that to him, how any parent could do that to any child.

I turned to find him staring at the ground, swirling the liquid in his bottle.

He looked lost, broken. Nothing like the carefree boy I knew, or the rowdy teen I passed in the halls.

He was the one who was always smiling, always laughing or cracking a joke, not whatever this was. It shocked me how much I hated it.

“I’m sorry that happened,” I said.

He shrugged a shoulder like it didn’t matter. “Don’t be. It was a while ago.”

I found myself going back to the fence and leaning against it just like he was. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

He let out a sound that wasn’t exactly an agreement, but not a disagreement either. After that, it was silent. The only sound was the chirp of crickets and the million questions in my mind.

“Want to talk about it?”

He looked at me then, his face in half light and half shadow. He looked…handsome up close like this. He’d always been cute, objectively speaking, but he looked grown up now. Sharp jaw, thick brows, light stubble, pretty eyes. They were as blue as I remembered them.

“Why would you care?”

The snarky question pulled me out of my perusal. “Because you look like you could use someone to talk to, and I’m a nice person,” I replied, and the corner of his mouth curled in a small smile.

“Our families hate each other in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I never hated any of y’all,” I said honestly.

His eyes searched mine as if he were trying to see if this was a trick. But when I didn’t budge, he swallowed roughly and nodded. “Okay.”

He lowered to the ground, his back resting against the fence post. He stared out into Circle M’s pastures as if he were trying to convince them to speak for him.

“They told me they were going to the casinos in Dallas for the weekend,” he started, his voice low, soft.

“Told me to stay here with Colt and the rest of the McLeods. And then they just…never came back.”

He took a long pull from the bottle like he was trying to drown the pain, and my heart broke for him in that moment.

It broke more when he told me about Mr. McLeod getting custody of him, how his parents had still never reached out to him, how people around town gave him pitying looks he despised.

We kept talking for hours. He told me about how he loved bull riding, but hated school.

How he resented that everyone in town knew his “sob story” and felt sorry for him like he was some “dog left at the pound.” He told me he wanted to be a professional bull rider because it was the only thing that ever made sense to him, and he loved the adrenaline rush.

I told him how I loved school, but had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.

How my brain never shut off, and I worried about things that hadn’t happened yet or might never happen, and how exhausting it was.

But he didn’t laugh; he just nodded like he got it.

Like maybe he had a tornado in his head, too.

When he told an especially sad story about winning his first buckle and searching for his parents in the crowd because he had forgotten they had left, I climbed to his side of the fence and sat with him, placing my hand over his.

He stared at it as if it were a grenade with the pin pulled. But he didn’t pull away, and I didn’t either.

I’d never been able to just sit and pour my heart out to someone the way I had with Weston. My parents always told me I worried too much, and my siblings didn’t understand. Weston listened to me and didn’t make me feel crazy.

He made me feel seen.

The first rays of sunlight covered him in a soft, pinkish glow, highlighting the subtle wave in his blonde hair and the various shades of blue in his eyes. He really was handsome. Especially with the way he was looking at me now, as if I were something special, something worthwhile.

It made my heart race in a way it never had before.

He leaned forward, and I jerked back, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

He let out a gentle chuckle. Reaching forward, he tucked my hair behind my ear, and my breath caught in the back of my throat. “Trying to kiss the girl who let me spill my guts all night.”

I blinked quickly. “You want to kiss me?”

His eyes lowered to my mouth, and he nodded slowly. “If you’ll let me.”

“But why?” I didn’t understand why a guy like Weston Tate, popular and attractive with the whole cheer team falling at his feet, would want to kiss a girl like me. I wasn’t even in his grade.

“Because I think you’re beautiful and I’ve been wanting to for hours.”

The honesty was startling. “You’re not drunk still, are you?”

He laughed for real this time. His smile was luminous. “Define drunk. On whiskey? No. On the way you look right now? Definitely.”

My mouth popped open, stunned into momentary silence. “That just might be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He shrugged, unashamed and still smiling. “But you’re thinking about it.” His eyes lowered to my mouth, his voice softer, huskier as he said, “Aren’t you, Sav?”

Sav. Nobody had ever called me that before. I was always Savannah or Savvy. I liked it. I liked him. And I realized that I wanted him to kiss me, too.

I swallowed roughly and let out a shaky breath, forcing all the doubts away. “You can kiss me.”

His brows raised a fraction. “I can?”

I nodded and leaned in towards him. He smelled like whiskey and his too-strong cologne. And when his lips brushed against mine, the noise in my head went completely silent for the first time in my life.

The only thing that existed was me, Weston, and this moment. A moment I’d remember for the rest of my life.