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But maybe it would help.

I slid into my truck, gripping the steering wheel the way I hoped I’d be gripping a throat later, and smiled at the dark beyond the windshield.

Soon.

CHAPTER 15

SIENNA

Iwas halfway through my second muffin—okay, third—when someone started pounding on my motel door like they were trying to evict me from life itself. I groaned, crumbs raining down my shirt and leggings, and dragged myself upright.

Another round of pounding. Harder this time and leaving no doubts about who it was.

I shuffled across the room, wiping my fingers on the hem of my shirt, already preparing to lie about whatever I needed to so she’d go away.

When I opened the door, though, Hattie barreled straight into the room like a tornado of perfume, bouncy hair, and unholy cheer. “You need to change!” she announced at full volume, spinning to face me like she was unveiling a national holiday. “It’s Rodeo Night.”

I blinked at her, already shaking my head. “I’m not emotionally ready for any more men with hats,” I mumbled, thinking about Sterling’s chest as I turned back to where the muffins were waiting for me. “Or hats in general. Or men in general. Or general anything.”

“Too bad,” she chirped. “Put on jeans.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.” She began to raid my suitcase.

I groaned. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know how to rodeo. I know for a fact that I don’t yee or haw.”

Hattie shoved jeans into my arms. “Well, tonight you do.”

In two minutes flat, I was somehow changed, and she was herding me toward her old, bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a confidence only a woman who’d wrangled goats could muster.

The car coughed to life like it was rising from the dead, and Hattie floored it before I even got my seat belt buckled. The Beetle rattled down the street, every loose screw in its body harmonizing with the engine.

“I don’t think this car is supposed to make that sound,” I said, tightening my grip on the door handle.

“That’s just her war cry,” Hattie replied. She cheerfully ignored a stop sign. “She only screams when she’s happy.”

A mailbox flashed past the window in a blur of questionable clearance.

“So she screams a lot?”

“She’s a passionate woman.”

The Beetle lurched over a pothole big enough to qualify as geological trauma, and I smacked my palm against the ceiling. Hattie just hummed along to a country song I was 80 percent sure was about a man falling in love with his cousin’s ex-wife’s sister.

Small-town radio was…a journey.

The closer we got, the thicker the traffic grew. Trucks lined both sides of the road—mud-splattered, their tailgates down like welcoming arms. People wandered between them with plastic cups and dogs and babies that were awake past their bedtime.

A line of teenage girls darted across the street, every one of them wearing glitter that suggested this rodeo was doubling as a mating ritual.

“Does the whole town show up for this?” I asked.

“Honey,” Hattie said, leaning around a tractor that had decided to take the road hostage, “the whole state shows up for this.”

Lights from the fairground flickered through the windshield, warm and bright and alive. The smell drifted in through the open window, a swirl of fried dough, dust, hay, and something sweet and smoky I couldn’t name but immediately wanted to rub on my face.

Hattie whipped the Beetle into a parking spot that was definitely not legally a parking spot, turned off the engine, and patted the dashboard like she’d tamed a wild beast.