Page 30 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“Kind of not on purpose,” she said. “I was functionally kidnapped.”

“Do I need to call the police?” her dad asked, as maddeningly calm as ever.

“No.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m still at the ranch. They gave me a complimentary place to stay.” Which wasn’t really kidnapping.

Though, she wasn’t sure that it had been them so much as Walker. But it was hard to imagine that Walker was being nice to her voluntarily. While she had imagined, before this week, that the thing she had done had bounced right off like he was Teflon, there had been that moment on the trail ride when she had realized that he just didn’t like her.

And it forced her to think about her most shameful memory.

The time that she’d asked him to prom with no intention of going with him at all.

When she had ghosted him and brought somebody else instead.

Her stomach twisted. Hard.

“Anyway, I had all of my obligations taken care of for the week because I was supposed to be on a cruise, so I thought I would take the opportunity to lay low, let the storm die down a little bit.”

“Well, be aware that that means we’re managing some of the storm.”

For some reason, that made her stomach go tight, made her shoulders tense.

“I do know that. But you can also just not. You can ignore it all.”

“I don’t think it would be for the best.”

“I just… I need a little bit of time.”

“I understand that, Addison, I do, but I was the mayor when your mother left me. There was no taking a break to deal with it.”

Guilt ate at her.

“I do know that, Dad. I’m sorry. But you didn’t have to tell everybody right away either, and in my case, the entire world doesn’t just know; they’ve all seen the video. In 4K. And it’s really humiliating. I don’t have control over how this gets out or who finds out, because pretty much everyone in town saw it in person, and now a bunch of strangers are watching it through their phones.”

Her dad sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it. I can see why you might need to lay low until there’s a new viral moment.”

“Anna is working on the campaign, and Walker is going to do some media outreach, because of course having a wedding of this magnitude fall apart at a wedding venue isn’t necessarily great business for him either.”

“Well, I could certainly see how that would be true.”

“I think it’ll be okay.”

That’s what she told everybody, on every phone call.

She decided to call her mom last. She couldn’t guess what her mom’s reaction would be, honestly. She didn’t know her well enough.

“Oh, Addison. I was so worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Addison said.

She found herself biting back comments that weren’t going to help anything right now.

About how her mom hadn’t worried over much about her as a child, and as a result Addison and Jackson had had to deal with everything that had happened to them without her. So, they both were self-sufficient enough to figure it out now.

Certainly Addison was.