Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
KRISTIN
“Where are we going?”
My voice came out smaller than I intended, thin and shaky, like it didn’t belong to me.
My hands wouldn’t stay still on my lap, my thumbs worrying the hem of my sweatshirt until the threads started to fray.
Every time headlights flickered across the dash, I jerked my head toward the window, terrified they were following us.
Him. The bastard I’d finally managed to escape.
“Don’t ask, don’t question, just do as I say.” Linc’s voice was low and steady. The kind of voice people trusted, even when they shouldn’t.
I huffed out a laugh, though it was humorless. “Yeah, that’s worked well for you over the years.” I rolled my eyes, but the gesture was weaker than usual. Usually, I’d lace my sarcasm with bite and confidence. Tonight, it was just defense, something to keep me from unraveling.
I shouldn’t be like this. He came for me without hesitation, without asking why, without reminding me of the three years between us. He’d shown up, fists first, like some avenging cowboy out of a movie. And what was I doing? Snapping at him. Ungrateful. My stomach knotted with guilt.
“Just this once, then.” His eyes cut toward me, brief but weighted, before flicking back to the road. His knuckles were white on the wheel. I nodded, sinking into the passenger seat. Just this once.
The highway stretched endlessly and was dark ahead of us. The hum of the tires filled the silence that always existed between us, thick and heavy, full of everything we’d never said.
When he pulled onto the strip, neon lights washing the night in pink and green, I sat up straighter.
My heart stuttered. We weren’t slowing down for a diner, a gas station, or a motel.
We were pulling into the parking lot of a wedding chapel.
One of those gaudy twenty-four-hour ones with fake palm trees, peeling stucco, and an Elvis impersonator painted on the sign out front.
“No.” The word ripped out of me before I could stop it. My hand flew to the door handle like I’d fling myself onto the sidewalk if I had to. “Linc, no. We can’t do this. You’re with someone.”
“I wasn’t with her.” His jaw flexed, his eyes locked straight ahead. “She was just a chick.”
I wanted to laugh or scream or both. “I can’t get married then.” My chest felt too tight, like my ribs were squeezing in.
“Look,” he said, throwing the truck into park and finally turning to face me, “people saw that man with you. When someone finds him, there’s going to be questions. Who was the only other person there with me?”
My throat went dry. “Me.”
“Right. You know what you don’t have to do if we’re married?”
I shook my head, confusion clawing at me. None of this made sense. My brain was still back in the trailer, still hearing fists and blood and his voice breaking when he shouted my name.
“Testify against me.” His words dropped heavy and final. “They can’t force you to do it if we’re married. So, baby, looks like your last name is changing tonight.”
“Linc.” I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he was insane, reckless, impossible. But my voice was nothing but a whisper.
“It’s about time, don’t you think?”
He shoved his door open and circled, opening mine like this was a real date, like this was the proposal I’d dreamed about before life broke me in half.
His hand was there, palm up. Big, calloused, steady. My treacherous fingers slid into his without hesitation.
“Your proposal needs work,” I muttered, flat and shaky.
“Just wait to see the ring I got you.”
I froze. “What do you mean you got me a ring? This seemed to be a last-minute plan.”
“This plan might’ve been last-minute,” he said, eyes softening in a way that shredded me, “but I’ve had a ring for three years.”
He held out his bloody hand, and as I got a closer look at him under the lights, he had a fat lip and an eye that was quickly turning a god-awful color.
My breath caught. My name fell from my lips like a prayer. “Linc.”
There it was in his face. Honesty. Regret. Love. He’d been my protector, not just tonight but always. As much as I liked to pretend, I was alone out here for the last three years, he was always close by. Watching, waiting for me to need him.
And just like that, walking into that stupid neon chapel hand-in-hand felt less like drowning and more like breathing for the first time in years.
Inside, the chapel smelled like dust and cheap cologne.
The carpet was worn thin, the velvet curtains faded from red to pink, but the lights above the altar glowed soft and golden.
It should have felt ridiculous, laughable even, but somehow it didn’t.
Somehow, it felt like the only thing keeping me upright.
The officiant looked like he’d been awake for three days straight, his rhinestone blazer catching the light in all the wrong ways. “You two look like you’ve had a night,” he said with a grin that showed too many teeth.
Linc just nodded once. “Let’s get this done.”
The ceremony was over in minutes. The officiant rattled through the words like he’d said them a thousand times that week.
No music. No flowers. One witness, the chapel’s receptionist, who’d been halfway through a crossword puzzle before we’d interrupted her night.
Just Linc and me, with a pair of cheap gold bands from the glass display case.
When he slid the ring onto my finger, his hand trembled. Just slightly. Enough for me to see that maybe this wasn’t all practicality. Perhaps this meant something, even if he didn’t dare say it.
I looked up once, just as he said I do. His gaze caught mine, dark and steady, and for a heartbeat, everything stopped. The hum of the fluorescent lights, the murmur of the officiant, and even the ache in my chest.
We walked back out into the neon glow the same way we’d walked in, side by side, not touching, not looking at each other. Married but not tethered. The silence between us was louder than any argument we’d ever had.
The cool air outside hit my face like a slap. I hadn’t realized how hot it was in there until I stepped out. The neon sign flickered, humming faintly. My new ring gleamed against the cheap light, too big and too bright, like it didn’t belong on my hand.
Back at the stables, the night air was sharp, filled with the scent of manure and diesel. Normal. Blessedly normal. I breathed it in like medicine.
“Horses are in Kristin’s trailer,” Wilf, the owner, said, tipping his cap. “Your man’s been and gone.”
“Thanks, Wilf. I’ve got one more favor to ask.”
Linc handed him the truck keys along with a thick wad of cash. “Get this truck back to the rental company tomorrow. For your troubles.”
The man whistled low, nodded. He didn’t ask questions. No one ever did with Linc.
“What does she owe?” Linc asked, his voice all business now.
They talked numbers while I stood a step back, silent, pressing my thumb against the band on my finger. The ring was too big, too shiny, too strange. It wasn’t even the one he’d mentioned; it was the chapel’s stock band. But it was still a symbol. Still a weight.
My weight. His weight. Ours.
My head was light, my body sore, my thoughts spiraling. Married. To him. After everything.
“Let’s go,” he said finally, his voice strained but controlled. Always controlled. He wrapped his hand around the steering wheel and the ring he was wearing caught the light, and damn it, it was sexy.
The diesel engine roared to life beneath us, vibrating through my bones as he steered us out of the corral.
“Where are we going?” My voice was softer this time, hesitant.
“Home.” He gave me half a smile, small and devastating.
He shifted into drive, the truck slowly crept ahead, and we were silent as we left the lights and the noise of Las Vegas behind us. The glow faded in the mirrors, replaced by open desert and endless black sky. The road stretched ahead like a ribbon, leading to whatever came next.
Nobody would expect me to run tomorrow after my fall today, so I will email the committee tonight to inform them that I am pulling out. I was already a national champion; I didn’t need another buckle to add to my collection. But damn, I wanted another one.
“Your business in Everton, it’s been doing well?” he asked, probably to fill the silence.
I turned to look at him, sure my face was a mix of how did you know and oh no you know. “You knew?”
“Of course, I knew. I wasn’t kidding when I said I knew where you were and what you were doing.”
“That’s creepy, Linc.”
He snorted. “Don’t think about it too much, and it doesn’t sound that bad.”
“It’s still bad,” I said flatly, “it’s been going well, the storefront isn’t as busy as I’d like, I’ve been considering closing that and just using a warehouse.”
“We’ll get it all transferred to the ranch. There’s a building more than big enough at my place for it.” There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation in his voice. He had a plan, and it was the only option in his mind.
“You don’t have to do that. I can keep renting the store.” I looked down at the email I was composing. I jerked around to face him. “Oh God. Did you tap my phone too?”
“No. That would be too far.”
I barked out a laugh, incredulous. “Trackers and tracers are acceptable, but phone tapping is too far?”
“What do you take me for?” He gave me a look like I was the unreasonable one.
Before I could retort, he pressed a button on the dash and suddenly there was ringing, echoing through the cab.
“Holy fuck, you better be half dead to wake me up at three in the morning.” Ryder’s voice filled the truck, groggy and sharp.
“Just wanted to let you know I’m coming home,” Linc said.
“This couldn’t have waited until morning?”
“No. Had a bit of trouble. It should be fine, but we’ll be coming in hot and need horses taken care of.”
“Who’s we?”
“Kristin and I.”
“She let you in her truck? What the fuck happened?” The sound of bedsprings creaking carried over the line. He was awake now, fully.
“Not only did she let me in,” Linc said, lips twitching, “I’m driving it. We’ll explain when we get there, but heads up, we got married.”
“You what?” Ryder’s voice cracked, sharp with disbelief, before Linc thumbed the call off.
My phone buzzed immediately. Lexie. Of course.
“Hello,” I said, voice sugar-sweet, as if nothing at all was wrong and it wasn’t the middle of the night.
“You got married? You got married to Lincoln?” she screeched, and I jerked the phone away, wincing. I hit the speaker and set it in my lap.
“Yeah. Surprise.”
“This isn’t funny, Krissy. What’s going on?” I glanced sideways at Linc. He shook his head once. No details. Not over the phone and not to a lawyer.
“Well,” I said, forcing a laugh, “let’s just say a bit too much alcohol and a wedding chapel don’t mix.”
Linc smirked, smug as hell, his profile etched against the glow of the dash. His bruised face looked worse in the light, one eye already swelling shut, but that damn smirk made something inside me uncoil.
The desert wind whistled against the cab. The road hummed under us. The stars stretched wide and sharp above the windshield, endless and indifferent.
And even though my world was upside down, even though fear still lingered in my bones, for the first time in three years, I felt like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t alone anymore.