Page 28 of Slow Hands Cowboy

This, in his estimation, was practically a good deed.

Magnanimous, even. And if his stomach didn’t get tight when he looked at her, he might have been able to freely smile and pat himself on the back for what a good person he was being to Addison Carey.

Chapter Six

When Addison woke up the next morning, her eyes were practically glued shut. Probably because she hadn’t bothered to take her makeup off when she had fallen into bed at the unreasonably early time of seven thirty and shut the blackout curtains in the cabin she was staying in.

A whole cabin.

It was really too generous and too lovely. The cabins were up against the river, beautifully appointed, and spacious. Not that she had been thinking about that too deeply when Walker had moved her into the space last night.

She had been numb by the time she had changed out of her wedding dress and he had given her a ride over to the cabin, where her things had been waiting for her.

He had told her that he would even have her wedding dress taken care of.

It was white-glove treatment in the midst of some pretty horrible treatment.

Today, she actually needed to call her dad, probably her mom, definitely Anna, and Lydia and Denisha.

It made her tired just thinking about it, but everyone had been so gracious and so helpful yesterday.

Though, when she looked at her phone, she wanted to die.

He had told her not to watch the video. He had told her not to doom-scroll, but how could she not?

She opened the app she thought she was most likely to find the video on and typed in cowboy, which auto-completed to Cowboy Lassoes Runaway Groom.

A slow rising horror filled her body as she clicked on the auto-completed result.

And pulled up several different videos from several different angles of the event itself.

She had been right. The worst part was her own face.

She had experienced it, she had lived it, but she hadn’t watched herself live it.

There she was standing in the center of the aisle looking like a shattered marshmallow, staring as her groom ran away.

She clicked on one video that was a supercut, a montage that took the most advantageous angles of every moment and spliced them together. Whatever enterprising soul had done this had even added effects, music, slow motion moments to increase the drama.

It was cinematic, her heartbreak having been viewed millions and millions of times.

The original video was now at fifteen million.

But there were so many more videos besides.

And in all of them, she looked dumbfounded. In all of them, Alan was running away from her like she was a monster.

And in all of them, Walker looked like the hero in an old western movie. He had that classic Hollywood handsomeness, that laconic leading man ease, and it seemed scripted, it really did. And in fact, when she clicked open the comment section, she saw that many people were saying that it had to be staged.

But it was her face, her face should be the giveaway. She was no actress, and if she had been acting during all of that, she would’ve been a shoo-in for award season.

She obsessively watched the video, while she made coffee in the coffee maker and went back to bed, holding the phone up to her face as she pored over the expressions on every person visible in the video, and her eyes kept going back to Walker.

Most especially the moment when he scooped her up off the ground like she weighed nothing and rode her away from the wedding, leaving her shoes behind, like some kind of Western Cinderella.

She scrolled through the comments.

I would’ve run too. Fat ugly bitch.