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 beallowedto 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.
Five
Tessa
Iwoke up on the couch with my face stuck to a tortilla chip, which honestly summed up my life. A low groan rattled out of me as I peeled the chip off my cheek; it made a faint tearing sound, like it had fused to my skin through sheer force of tequila and sadness.
I blinked at the blurry room, my eyes protested the light; my brain protested existence. Two empty bottles sat on the coffee table. A bra hung off the lamp like a flag of surrender. Half a lime lay on the floor.
