15
F allon scowls the minute I step into the corner store.
“Davis dropped the leash?” she asks snidely. She’s in a worn jean jacket, her long caramel hair in a fat fish-tail braid. She looks frazzled and annoyed and entirely too beautiful.
I sigh and tuck my purse under the front counter, shaking off the chill of the winter wind. After a second thought, I keep my parka on. My stomach being the talk of the town is not on today’s agenda. “He’s parked at the station. He gave me this.”
Grudgingly, I show her the tracker.
Amusement dances in her hazel eyes. “Looks fancy. Better not lose it, or you’ll have to deal with your babysitter.”
Babysitter.
I don’t like it either, but it looks like I’m stuck with it. And Davis.
Turning the dog tag between my fingers, I glance down at the tracker. Its red light pulses like a heartbeat.
A thousand emotions run through my veins.
Davis cares.
I felt the hard heat of him pressed up against me. Growling filthy words in my ear that only turned me on even more. He’s a stubborn man. I’ll give him that. But he’s the best man I have ever known. The tracker’s a reminder that I am safe. That Davis and Aiden are completely different species.
Aiden would find me because he wanted to hurt me. Davis wants to find me to protect me. There’s a difference. One I should have realized from the beginning.
Aiden was never one to take no. He asked me repeatedly for a date when I refused the first time.
Waited for me after my shift to bring me flowers.
At the time, I thought his persistence was charming.
A beautiful man with money who looked like he stepped off the pages of a magazine.
Bright white teeth. Tailored clothes. In his perfection, he hid his red flags like bodies.
I blinded myself to what was right in front of me until it was too late.
The anxious knot in my gut swells. Aiden .
Goosebumps pepper my skin. I remind myself Davis is parked across the street at the sheriff’s department. The scare today already scrambled my brain enough. It was only Charlie, but it showed me how much I need to relax.
Although, I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to Ruby’s cake. It was like a dare. I couldn’t say no, and now all I feel is panic.
Fallon, wiping down the deli case, says, “Face looks better.”
“Not so busted?” I ask and she looks away, avoiding my eyes.
I glance around the store, itching to do something. Then, remembering Fallon’s cold shoulder when I offered to help our father, I ask, “What can I do?”
If I have to walk on thin ice to get back to my sister, so be it.
“Stock the shelves.” Straightening up, Fallon’s gaze falls to my arm. “Think you can handle that?”
“I dressed myself one-handed, think I can fill a cooler.”
“Well, get on it, smart-ass,” she says dryly.
I make my way to the storage room and grab a cart filled with soda cans and cracker boxes. I push it down the aisles to stock the shelves.
My memory banks swim, high on nostalgia.
The vibe of The Corner Store is a cross between a cowboy bodega and a saloon.
It’s been in our family for four generations of McGraws.
Tucked away in an ancient brick building, it hugs a street corner on downtown Main Street.
It operated as a bootlegging still, a mercantile, and then a bank, before becoming the Corner Store.
The tin ceiling still bears bullet holes in honor of its wild past.
Nothing’s changed. It smells like pastrami, dark dirt earth from bait and tackle, and tobacco.
The scene of my wayward youth. Sweeping floors and stealing candy bars with Fallon.
Playing tag in the aisles when it was slow.
Writing recipes on notepads while Fallon read those cowgirl books she obsessed over.
I peer over the edge of a shelf. Fallon’s sharpening a knife at the front counter.
“How long have you been working here?” I ask, remembering what Davis told me. I want to hear more of her story.
“Since you left.” Her tone’s neutral, but her eyes flame.
I flinch. “But the rodeo—”
She keeps her gaze on the knife. “Dad gets someone to fill in when I’m gone. As long as I’m riding, he’s good. Then I come back after the season.”
Silence stretches through the corner store and I bite my lip.
I’ve never seen my sister so still. Calm and order doesn’t suit Fallon.
She was born wild. She’s a cowgirl. No one and nothing can rope her.
Every weekend she was in the field, skinned knees, no tears.
She accompanied our father to auctions, while I filled my notebooks with recipes and perfected my take on cinnamon rolls and croissants.
Cooking was therapy. It’s always been my out.
A way to make me different from my sister.
A way to take me away from Resurrection.
A wave of guilt sweeps me up.
Going after my hopes and dreams tanked my sister’s.
I thought by putting culinary school on hold until I was twenty-five that Fallon would be okay.
But she isn’t.
The rodeo is Fallon’s life. Not the store. It should never have been like this.
Just one more thing I’ve made a mess of.
“And you’ll keep working here until…?” I ask, tilting my head, wanting to drag an answer out of her.
“Why do you care? Not like you’ll be around anyway,” she says dryly.
Ouch. Fallon: 1, Dakota: 0
I sigh and go back to the shelves.
We work together in silence for the rest of the afternoon. I avoid the kitchen, preferring to refill coolers with beer and soft drinks. We barely get any customers. Most come for the food—our signature pastrami and fries. But the store stays empty.
“It’s slow,” I venture, wedging a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew behind another. My attention drifts to a muted Dateline episode playing on the corner TV of the dining area.
Beside me, Fallon lets out a slow, withering sigh. Like conversation is slowly pulling at the threads of her sanity.
“It’s the off-season.”
I give her a look. “More than that.”
Fallon smashes a pack of cigarettes onto the shelf behind the register. “We’re a mom-and-pop place at the end of the damn block, Dakota. No one cares about us. Locals go to Billings to stock up at Costco. And now there’s the Little Prairie Market just off of Main.”
I perk up. “What’s that?”
“Some fancy indie grocery store from Colorado. Opened in January.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “They have a little bit of everything. Clothes. Natural foods. You’d think the World’s Fair came to town.”
I laugh.
A hitch of her slender shoulder. “We’re small potatoes. We have all-day pastrami—Dad’s recipe. And breakfast. That’s probably all that’ll save us.”
Then why. Why are we still here? I want to ask. But I know the answer. It’s all over my sister’s face. Guilt.
Fallon’s a good girl, a good daughter. She won’t leave like our mother did.
I turn to her. “Do you ever think about talking to Dad about closing it?”
The look she gives me could burn fire. “Closing it would end our father.”
“I know,” I say, feeling chided.
Thoughts spin through my head. I hate the unknown. The ingrained need to game-plan and fix has always been a constant cycle inside of me.
The soft jingle of the door chimes has both of us looking up.
A man about the same age as my father enters the store. He booms a hello.
“You wanted a customer,” Fallon says wryly. “You got him.”
I smile at the familiar voice. Waylon Wiggins, the local American Legion president and owner of the world-record-setting buck displayed at the Cabela’s in Billings, waddles down the aisle to the register. Tall and heavyset, he sports a salt-and-pepper beard and a laugh as big as his belly.
“Wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes. Little Koty McGraw, come home to roost.”
“Everyone’s coming to see the runaway girl,” Fallon mutters under her breath.
“Here I am,” I say, ignoring the sting of my sister’s words. “In the flesh.”
“You finally come home to help your daddy?” Waylon booms as he bellies up to the register.
I fight a groan. Even the compliments are backhanded insults.
“Something like that.” I move behind the counter to avoid his weighted stare.
“You miss Resurrection?” he asks, scanning the shelf to his left.
“Oh, yeah,” I shoot back. “Go Bobcats.”
Waylon adjusts his suspenders, sucks at the chew tucked in his corner cheek. Then he swivels a fat finger between me and Fallon. “Now, isn’t that a sight to see? McGraw sisters back together. Pretty peas in a pod.”
Fallon rolls her eyes and disappears into the kitchen.
“How about that bakery of yours? Daddy’s pretty proud of you.”
Everything inside of me wilts. The last thing I want to talk about is my bakery.
Still, I give the man what he wants. A cheerful smile, a voice that reflects excitement.
Grown up, successful Dakota McGraw. A woman who’s come home to help her father.
Not a woman on the run from an abusive asshole who knocked her up and broke her arm.
A woman with passion, a woman who got out and is still going places.
“He’s told me. Thanks, Waylon.”
“He said you make huckleberry pies that make the world stand still.” Waylon lurches his large frame to peer behind me. “Ain’t got any ‘round here, have you?”
I chuckle. “Nope. No pies.” Time for a subject change that doesn’t involve me. “What can I get you?”
“Pack of Copenhagen.” He grins down at me. “And toss in a lotto ticket for good luck. And these.”
I flinch when he throws a bag of old-fashioned cinnamon barrels on the counter.
Aiden’s favorite. Especially when he was angry. He’d put one in his mouth and suck on it, considering all the ways he could hurt me. Like some sick, fucking waterboarding torment. I hated the sound. I kept hoping he’d choke to death, but no such luck.
“You got it,” I say, turning away to the back shelves. Quickly, I make sure my CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA hoodie is loose around my belly. No one in Resurrection knows my business, and I want to keep it that way. Until…
Until what?
Until I make a clean getaway?
Until I figure out what I want to do with my mess of a life?
My back to Waylon, I pinch my eyes shut and try to breathe like a woman who isn’t having a mid-life crisis in her early thirties. The urge to give in and palm my stomach, to keep it protected, is a hollow ache in my chest. And yet, I don’t touch it.
I don’t deserve this little baby and it sure as hell deserves better than me.
“Koty?”
I jump at the boom of Waylon’s voice and spin around. “Sorry. One pack or two?”
“Two. But don’t tell my wife.”
Waylon and I both look over when the door chimes.
Waylon’s jowls quiver as his smirk widens. “Well, if it isn’t the Wild Witch of West Street.”
Amusement and dread grips my chest. Clea Lou Bauer, and her bouffant red hair, hustles through the aisles. She’s a local busybody who hosts Monday night book clubs at the library as a secret front for a neighborhood watch program.
I needle my temple. Cast eyes at the sheriff’s department across the street. What I wouldn’t give for Davis to come charging in and muscle me out the back exit.
But he can’t rescue me every time I need him.
I have to do it myself.
“Dakota McGraw, I’ll be good and goddamned!” the shrill voice screeches. I force a smile. “What are you doing home? Oh, lord, honey, what happened to your arm?”
Life , I think and inhale a steeling breath as Clea bulldozes my way. Get it the fuck back together.
One day, I’ll look back at all this and laugh. I truly will, but right now, it’s hard to believe that I’ll ever fit back into Resurrection, Montana.
Home suddenly seems very far from where I long to be.