Chapter 4
Four
Wyatt
Wood met bone, paint dust jumped from the casing, and for a moment, the cheap light in the hallway buzzed like it was considering giving up.
“Dani, what the hell was that?” Tessa hissed.
“He looked like a murderer, Tess.“ The women's voices flowed through the door like there was no barrier between us.
“He knew my name,” Tessa said. Her volume was too high; words blurred at the edges. She sounded drunk. Not tipsy, not warm and loose, but properly drunk. “Why does he know my name?”
“He probably searched you online before he came to cut you up,” Dani said. “I bet Colin set him.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. Of all the tasks I had expected to handle today, knocking on the door of a rundown city apartment to deliver a death notice to a drunk niece who wanted nothing to do with her family had not been on the list. Yet here I was.
I knocked again, and both of them screamed.
“Tessa, he is still there,” Dani hissed.
“Oh my God, do you think he can hear us?” Tessa asked. Her voice climbed higher with each word, like panic was driving it up by the inch.
“Yes,” I said, pitching my voice low. “I can hear you.” I let the irritation slide through me and settle into something colder.
I spent all afternoon managing shocked neighbours and the logistics that came with a body.
This was the last stop. I wasn’t leaving without doing what needed to be done.
I knocked again, slower, the sound echoing down the narrow hall.
On the other side, there was a flurry of movement. Something clattered to the floor. Someone cursed.
The lock slid, and the door opened the width of a finger.
A single brown eye peered out at me. “Tessa,” I said.
Hearing her own name seemed to go through her like a jolt.
Her gaze dragged over my face, my shoulders, the hat in my hand.
Mascara smudged beneath her eyes, dark crescents against red blotches.
Her cheeks were flushed from liquor. Her hair fell around her face in careless waves, half knotted, half smooth, as if she had run her hands through it too many times.
“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice landed somewhere near exhausted.
“I need to speak with you,” I said, “in private.”
“About what?”
“Open the door.”
There was a pause long enough for me to see how her fingers trembled against the edge of the door. Behind her shoulder, Dani appeared. Pink hair, wild eyes, a pillow clutched to her chest as if that would help.
“Maybe we should let him in,” Dani said.
“He is not coming in,” Tessa muttered, but it was more to herself than to me.
I felt the muscle in my jaw tighten. I’d chased cattle through ice, pulled stuck calves in the dark, and squared off with bulls that hated me on principle. I wasn’t about to stand in a hallway and argue with two drunk women who already decided I was the villain.
“Tessa,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here at this hour if this could wait until morning.”
Her eyes flicked to mine. Something in what she saw there must have cut through the alcohol, because her shoulders sagged a fraction. She glanced back at Dani.
“You said something about Ray,” she said quietly as she opened the door fully.
The apartment looked like an emotional storm went through it. There was an empty wine bottle tipped on its side, blankets in heaps, shoes in places shoes did not belong. A bra hung crookedly off a lamp, as if it surrendered mid-battle. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
“Tessa,” I said, ignoring her. “Sit down.”
She bristled immediately. I watched it roll through her, an instinctive push back against being told what to do. Under other circumstances, it might have amused me. Tonight it simply got in the way.
“Don’t tell me to sit,” she said, voice cracking. “You show up at my door in the middle of the night, and you expect me to just do what you say? Who even are you?”
I held her gaze. “Again, my name is Wyatt Hargrove. I live in River’s Edge, your Uncle Ray is my neighbor. I am here because he can’t be.”
Her lips parted. Color rushed into her face, then drained just as fast. Dani made a small, wounded sound, sank down onto the arm of the couch, and hugged the pillow to her chest.
The moment stretched. I could feel Tessa struggling under the weight of it, trying to force the pieces into a shape that was not as obvious as it was.
“Say it,” she whispered. “Don’t make me ask.”
There were a dozen ways people tried to soften this kind of blow. I heard most of them. I did not use any. “Your uncle died yesterday afternoon,” I said.
For a few seconds, nothing moved. The air felt thick, like the walls had crept closer. Then the meaning hit her all at once. Her knees buckled, and she reached blindly for the nearest surface. The edge of a stool caught the backs of her legs, and she folded onto it like someone cut her strings.
Dani slid off the couch and went to her, arms wrapping around her shoulders. She turned her face toward me with a glare that could have flayed a weaker man.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“His heart, I’m guessing,” I said. “I found him when I went to let him know I’d fixed his fence.”
Tessa stared at me like she was looking at a stranger speaking a language she didn’t understand. Her eyes were too bright, glassy and wide, as if they were trying to hold back water that had already broken through.
“If this is some sort of sick joke, I swear to God I will…” Her voice broke. The last words never made it out.
“It isn’t a joke,” I said. There was no point trying to sugarcoat anything. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours, and decided to come in person.”
She sucked in a breath that shook. Dani tightened her hold and shot me another look, full of accusation. As if delivering the news made me responsible for the death. That was fine; people needed something to aim at. I had broad shoulders.
I stayed where I was, my hat still in my hand.
The brim dug into my palm, and I focused on the pressure and not on the way Tessa’s grief cut through the room.
I had seen this before, more times than I cared to remember.
Parents, siblings, friends. The first moment when reality slammed down, and they realized the world changed, and nobody asked their permission.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have to get home. I shouldn’t have left; he needed me. I should’ve been there.” She pushed off the stool too fast. Her legs wobbled. The room tilted for her. She staggered sideways toward the counter, reaching for balance.
I moved without thinking about it. My hand closed around her upper arm before she could hit the floor. Even through the thin cotton of her shirt, her skin was hot. Her muscles tensed beneath my fingers, electricity jolted through my hand. Annoying. Unwanted. I let go as soon as she was steady.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
“You can barely stand on your own,” I said.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, although her voice slurred on the last word, and she had to curl her fingers into the counter behind her to stay upright. “I can pack a bag. I can call for a ride. I can get a flight. I can…”
“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” I said. Her eyes snapped to mine. There was fire there now, banked under the grief. The kind that burned and didn’t know what to do with itself.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” she said. “You don’t know me.”
“I know you’ve had too much to drink,” I said as I glanced over at the coffee table.
“I can smell it from here, and I know you nearly fell on your face twice in the last ten seconds. And I know you would be a danger to yourself and anyone unlucky enough to share a road with you if you went anywhere right now.”
“We can call a cab,” Dani said from the stool, voice small but stubborn.
“You’re not putting her in a car tonight either,” I told her, not taking my eyes off Tessa. “You want her home in one piece, you wait until morning.”
“You can’t force me to stay here,” Tessa said. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She was shaking, whether from anger or shock, I wasn’t sure. “You’re not my father, you’re not family, you’re some ranch hand my uncle hired.”
The corner of my mouth moved, but it was not a smile. “I’m the neighbor, not a ranch hand.”
“Then get out of my way.” She took a step toward me, chin lifted.
The room was small enough that there was not much space to close before she was right in front of me.
She had to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.
Her pupils were still too large, breath still smelled like tequila and lime and something sweet.
Her t-shirt hung off one shoulder, exposing the soft curve of her collarbone.
Attraction slid through me again, slow and unwelcome, wrapping itself around old resentment. I didn’t like that combination. It felt unstable, like a spark in a dry field. So I held my ground.
“You’re not driving,” I said. I kept my voice low, not gentle. “If you push it, you’ll make a bad night into something worse. If you want to honor Ray, you show up tomorrow with enough sense in your head to stand at his gate without collapsing.” God, this woman was stubborn, just like her uncle.
“He wouldn’t want you out on the highway,” I said instead. “He’d want you alive. You can hate me all you like. You can call me every name in the book. But you’re not leaving this apartment tonight.”
She stared at me, chest heaving, eyes shining. For a second, I thought she might actually hit me. Part of me almost wanted her to, to bleed some of the pressure off.
Behind her, Dani whispered, not nearly as quietly as she thought, “Tess, I kind of hate that he is right. Also, he is terrifying. A hot, terrifying authority figure. Like a cowboy probation officer.”
“Shut up,” Tessa hissed without looking back.
Silence settled over the three of us. The fridge hummed. Someone above us stomped across their floor. The city outside kept moving, unaware that one small world just cracked.
“I’m never going to be able to sleep,” Tessa said finally, voice hoarse. “Not after this.”
“You don’t have to sleep,” I said. “You just have to stay put.”
Her shoulders slumped. The fight went out of her all at once, leaving her looking hollow. She leaned back against the counter and covered her face with both hands.
“What am I supposed to do until morning?” she asked, voice muffled. “Just sit here and think about him lying in some freezer while I wait to be allowed to go home?”
“You can sit,” I said. “You can cry. Maybe drink water instead of whatever is still in that bottle. Pack a bag if you can manage it without falling over. Tomorrow you’ll have enough to deal with.
I’ll stay in the city and take you home tomorrow.
” Where this idea had come from, I’ll never know, and I was sure by morning I’d regret it, but I made the offer.
The resentment was still there, but so was something else, something like wary curiosity. She looked like she was trying to solve a puzzle, but the pieces weren’t cooperating. Now, I didn’t fit into the story she had clearly written about me when she first saw me at the door.
“You’ll come back,” she said, but it wasn’t really a question.
“Yes,” I said. “Eight in the morning. Be ready. I’ll drive you to the ranch.”
Dani scrubbed at her own face with the heel of her hand. “Eight is so early.”
“You can sleep all the way there,” I told her.
Tessa’s gaze dropped to my hand on the doorknob, then lifted back to my face. For a moment there was naked fear there, not of me exactly, but of what was coming. The funeral. The house. The memories. The debt she owed, and had no idea how to pay.
“Was Ray alone when it happened?” she said, voice so quiet I almost missed it.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I got there shortly after.”
A single tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Fine. “I’ll be ready.”
I put my hat back on and opened the door.
Behind me, Dani said, in what she must have thought was a whisper, “He smells annoyingly good for someone I was ready to fight with a couch cushion.”
I didn’t dignify that with a reaction. “Get some water,” I said over my shoulder without turning. “Try to lie down, even if you only stare at the ceiling. Morning’ll come either way.”
Tessa didn’t answer, but I felt her eyes on my back.
Tomorrow I’d come back and take Tessa Callahan home. Whatever she thought was waiting for her at that ranch, she was wrong.