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I scoff. "Doubt it's more humiliating than spending the night with a newly engaged man on New Year's Eve."

"That wasn't your fault," she insists.

"Tell that to his fiancée," I state.

"It's not your fault," she repeats, more adamantly.

"Still embarrassing. So fill me in," I order.

She sighs. "Fine. The minute we walked into Red Dirt, I saw him. He gave me the look he always does when he knows I'm in the room but doesn't want anyone to know he's into me. So when Troy came up to us when we first got there, I leaned into it." She wrinkles her nose, disgusted.

"Wait. I thought you were into Troy?"

She groans. "Ewe. No. I just gave him attention to make Mason jealous."

"Did it work?"

Her voice wavers despite her effort to steady it. "Yep! But I kind of snapped last night. I…I took it too far."

"What do you mean?"

She lets out a short, humorless laugh. "Troy's liked me forever, and he was around. I was angry. Mason cornered me when I came out of the bathroom and told me to meet him at his apartment after the bar closed, and I just…I wanted—" She pauses and takes a few deep breaths.

I put my hand on her thigh. "What did you want?"

Tears fill her eyes. "I wanted to feel like someone actually wanted me for more than a booty call. And maybe, if I'm being honest, I wanted Mason to hear about it. I wanted it to sting." She quickly wipes the corner of her eye.

I give her a minute, then ask, "Did it work?"

"I don't know. Probably not. Guys like Mason don't get jealous. They get bored and move on to whoever's next." Her voice cracks again. "I just know that this morning I woke up next to Troy, feeling worse than I ever have. So no. It didn't fix anything. It just gave me one more thing to feel like garbage about." She glances at me, daring me to judge her.

I don't. I offer, "You're not garbage."

"Tell that to my moral compass."

I wave my hands in the air and chirp, "Hey, moral compass! You're a beautiful piece of art!"

She lets out a short laugh.

"Forget about him. You're moving to Houston with a whole new set of cowboys!" I remind her.

She sniffles and nods. "Yep. And I texted you my new number. Figured the best way to get rid of Mason was to not give him any way to contact me again."

"Good idea. I'm glad Jagger doesn't have my number. Not that he'd call when he has a fiancée, anyway," I add.

Carla grunts. "Who knows with those pigs."

"Well, we're free of them. We never have to mutter their names again, and it's their loss," I point out.

She slowly smiles. "Yeah. You're right."

"Of course I am!"

She grins, reaches over, and turns the radio up. A country song about getting out of a small town and never looking back blares out of the speaker. We sing at the top of our lungs, laughing when we're done.

I spend the rest of the drive trying not to feel guilty I slept with an engaged man and hoping to forget all about Jagger.

CHAPTER SIX