Chapter 13
Callie
The handover point was a gas station parking lot off the interstate.
Neutral ground. The kind of place where you bought bad coffee and ended worlds. I'd dressed Maisie in her favorite outfit — the stripy leggings, the pink boots, the cardigan with the stars — because armor comes in all sizes and my daughter needed hers today.
She'd been quiet for the last twenty miles. Knees together, shoulders curled in, stuffed horse pressed against her chest, her pink cowboy boots hanging still six inches off the floor. Taking up less space than a kid that small should be able to.
But she was still negotiating. "If Starlight has a baby, can the baby be mine?"
Clay glanced in the rearview. "Starlight's a yearling, Mais. She's not having babies for a while."
"But when she does."
"When she does, we'll talk about it."
"That means yes."
I made a sound beside him. Not a laugh — my jaw was too tight for that today — but close. A breath through my nose that acknowledged my daughter was a pint-sized contract lawyer, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.
"It means we'll talk about it," Clay said.
"Oliver at school says 'we'll talk about it' is what grown-ups say when they mean yes, but they don't want to say it yet. Just like when Mommy says ‘we’ll see’ she always says yes later.”
"Oliver sounds like a real authority."
"He put glue in Sophie's hair. He's not an authority. But he was right about this one s-pifc thing."
I pressed my lips together and looked out the window. My shoulders shook once. Clay caught it. On a day like today, I'd take any fraction of lightness I could get.
Preston's car was already there — black, German, polished to a shine that looked aggressive — and the second I saw it, my hand moved to the armrest and gripped.
Clay parked. I unclipped Maisie with steady hands and crouched to her level. "You're going to have a great time, baby. I'll be right here Sunday, okay?"
Maisie studied my face with those enormous blue eyes. Then she leaned forward and whispered, "Don't be sad, Mommy. I'll come back. I always come back."
My composure flickered — just a flash, there and gone — and I kissed her forehead and stood.
I walked her across the lot. Preston stepped out — suit, no tie, the casual that rich men rehearse — and took the overnight bag without looking at it.
He said something about traffic. I didn't respond.
He crouched to Maisie with a smile that looked right from twenty feet and probably felt like nothing up close.
Maisie got in the car. She didn't look back. Five years old and she'd already learned not to look back.
The black car pulled away.
I stood in the parking lot for exactly three seconds with my arms wrapped around myself. Then I walked to the truck, climbed in, closed the door, and bent forward with my hands over my face.
No sound. My whole body shook, but my mouth stayed pressed shut, every breath trapped behind my teeth. I'd perfected this. A woman who could cry without making a single noise that would carry through a wall.
Clay's hand found the back of my neck. He didn't pull me toward him. Didn't say it would be fine. Just kept his hand there, warm and steady, and let me have it.
When the shaking slowed, I sat up. Wiped my face with both palms. Stared straight ahead.
"I fucking hate this," I said. "I hate every single second of this."
"I know."
I breathed. Rolled my shoulders back. Lifted my chin.
"I've got forty-eight hours," he said. "And I plan to use every single one of them making you forget how much this hurts. You in?"
"I'm in."
He put the truck in drive. "Then buckle up, darlin'."
Darlin'. I'd heard him use it before — casually, easily, the way cowboys spend words like loose change. This time it sat in the air between us like something solid.
My breath caught. Just once. Like I'd heard it too — the line between the old word and the new one.
I didn't say anything. But my hand found his on the console and stayed there.
The Silver Spur on a Friday night was Copper Creek in its natural habitat.
String lights in the parking lot. A band that knew three speeds — slow, slower, and one Garth Brooks cover that shook the rafters. Ben Alvarez behind the bar pouring generous and Rosie running the floor like a five-foot-two general. The smell of sawdust and cold beer and perfume worn with intent.
Clay had called ahead. Corner booth, the one with enough shadow to feel private. I slid in, and within thirty seconds, I was watching the band and tapping my thumb against the table in time with the bass line. I didn't realise I was doing it until Clay's mouth twitched.
"What are you drinking?" he asked.
"Something strong."
"That bad?"
"That necessary."
Two whiskeys appeared. I picked mine up and clinked it against his.
"To forty-eight hours," I said.
"To every minute of them."
I drank. Set the glass down. Kicked off one heel under the table and tucked my foot beneath me. My hair was falling out of whatever I'd done to it in the truck's visor mirror. I let it fall.
"You're staring," I said.
"I am absolutely staring."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"For me? Yes. Major problem. Catastrophic, even."
I bit my lip against a smile. "Catastrophic."
"I may not survive this evening."
"You've ridden bulls."
"Bulls are predictable. You in that dress is a threat to national security."
The laugh came — real, surprised, the one that crinkled my nose and showed my teeth. I shoved his arm across the table. "That is the worst line I've ever heard."
"And yet you're smiling."
"I'm smiling because it's so bad it's circled back to charming."
"That's my entire strategy. Always has been." There’s that sexy smirk I love.
I told him about a deposition where the opposing counsel accidentally called the judge “Mom," and he laughed so hard he choked on his whiskey.
He told me about the time Liam tried to ride a bull at sixteen and lasted exactly one-point-seven seconds and blamed it on the wind, and I wheezed into my drink.
"One-point-seven," I said, wiping my eyes. "That's not even a ride. That's a sneeze."
"I'm telling him you said that."
"Please do." I leaned forward on my elbows, chin on my hand. "So. World champion bull rider. What else are you good at?"
"I make excellent pancakes."
"I've had your pancakes. They're adequate."
"Adequate. She says adequate." He pressed his hand to his chest. "I'm critically wounded."
"You'll survive." I reached across the table and straightened his collar, my fingers brushing his neck. I left them there a beat too long. Knew I was doing it. Let him know I knew. "You seem like a man who survives things."
He swallowed. I watched it happen — the bob of his throat, the way his eyes darkened. Six months ago, I wouldn't have believed I could do that to a man. Make him forget what he was about to say just by touching his neck.
"Dance with me," he said.
"I don't dance."
"You do tonight."
He pulled me onto the floor, and I went. The band was playing something slow — fiddle, steel guitar, a song that was really just an excuse to hold someone close — and he put his hand on my waist and I pressed against him, and the rest of the Silver Spur evaporated.
His hand found my lower back — the bare skin where the dress dipped low, open to my mid-back, and I heard his breath catch.
His thumb started tracing slow circles against my spine, lazy and deliberate, and every pass sent heat spreading across my skin.
My hand found the back of his neck. We swayed more than danced, and I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, fast, faster than the music.
He ducked his head, and his mouth brushed my ear. "This dress is going to be a problem for me."
"That was the idea."
When I looked up at him, he kissed me right there on the dance floor. Slow. Thorough. His thumb still drawing those circles on my bare back like he couldn't stop touching me.
"People are watching," I murmured against his mouth.
"Good."
I smiled into the kiss. My fingers tightened on the back of his neck.
The woman appeared between songs.
Tall. Blonde. The kind of confident that came with a push-up bra and a plan.
She materialized at the edge of the dance floor with a margarita aimed at Clay like a guided missile.
Margarita Barbie. That's what my brain filed her under. Instantly. Permanently.
"Clay Blackwood." She drew it out, all vowels and cleavage. "How have you been?"
Clay, because he was Clay, didn't miss a beat. "Hey. Good to see you." His hand stayed on my lower back. Stayed. "This is Callie." The woman's eyes flicked to me. A brief, clinical sweep — hair, dress, heels — and then she turned back to Clay like I was a lamp. Dismissed. Filed under irrelevant.
"I haven't seen you around in forever," she said, stepping closer, tilting her chin up. "Where have you been hiding? We missed you at the Henderson’s last month."
She was touching his arm now. Light. Familiar. Her fingers resting on his forearm like they'd been there before.
"We've been great, actually."
I turned and smiled. The smile I'd perfected at Dallas fundraisers — warm enough to pass, sharp enough to cut. "It's so kind of you to ask."
Margarita Barbie looked at me. The smile stayed on her face, but something behind it recalculated.
Then she turned back to Clay, angling her shoulder toward me — a move so deliberate it might as well have been captioned I wasn't talking to you, sweetheart — and parted her lips to try again.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't think I was finished."
She turned back. The smile was gone now.
I stepped forward. I was shorter than her by three inches, even in heels, and I didn't care.
Something was coursing through me — not anger, not jealousy, something hotter and cleaner than both.
Certainty. The bone-deep, Clay-Blackwood-given certainty that I was allowed to take up space.