Page 98 of Slow Hands Cowboy

It wasn’t. It was all anxiety and defensive wounds.

He hadn’t expected that.

But she was a much more interesting person than he had ever given her credit for. Maybe she would say the same about him.

They both did a lot to make people assume that they were shallow waters that weren’t worth taking a deep look into.

Hell.

Just hell.

“Yeah, sorry about everything,” Cody said. “But honestly, we owe you. The increase in our business has been exponential. And I really hate that we’re profiting off of something that traumatic for you.”

Addison laughed. “Honestly, I’m fine. Walker and I are having a great time, and Alan was the wrong man for me. I think I needed this to happen in order for me to see that.”

She was good. Didn’t put a label on the two of them, which anyone at the table who wasn’t in the know about what they were doing wouldn’t have believed anyway, and brushed Alan off like the tertiary character that he was. Not worthy of thinking about too deeply. No speculation on his motives, no concern about what he was doing, no sign of regret.

“Well, that’s good,” Marlowe said. “I can tell you firsthand what happens when you marry the wrong guy. It’s bad.”

“Spoiler alert!” Lila said. “I haven’t had my mistake marriage yet.”

“And may you never have that,” Cody said. “Because I’ve made it this far without committing any murders, and I don’t want to have to do it now.”

“Oh, please,” Lila said. “I can commit my own murders. I’ve got a pre-dug hole, and a bag of lime. I’m not afraid to dissolve my own corpses.”

“You are terrifying,” Walker said.

“I am what you made me.”

She was teasing, and he knew that. But given that he had just been excavating his childhood, that made him feel just a little bit regretful. Lila was what they had made her. They had done their best. She was fearsome and feral, and maybe that was a good thing. She was tough, anyway.

She was also happy. He wasn’t sure that she’d ever had the sense of how much peril they were in.

Nolan had known, of course. He had hung around quite a bit, because there was strength in numbers, and he was otherwise by himself. Lived with a grandmother who never looked twice at him, and often came over while she was watching soap operas during the day, or rather napping in front of them.

His clothes always smelled of cigarette smoke, the whole apartment was permeated with it.

They started letting him keep clothes over at their place, so he could change for school. Have some things that didn’t have that permanent nicotine imprint on them.

They had done their best for each other. They had always done their best, it was just that it hadn’t been good enough to get any of them out of it without some trauma.

“So what’s running a mayoral campaign like?” Cara asked from down at her end of the table. “I’m genuinely curious. I don’t know anything about small-town politics.”

“Most of it is just connection,” Addison said. “Though that’s easy for me to say. My campaign manager would probably have more technical terms for all of it. She’s spearheading a lot of fundraising. I support it with my social media, though I’ve been a little bit more offline than usual recently. Of course, consequently, I’ve had a lot of donations and traffic anyway. Anna set up a bot to leave a link to our donations for the campaign underneath videos that talk about me.”

“Wow,” Pike said. “You can do that? Make a robot do comments for you?”

“Oh, yeah. A lot of people have heard of astroturfing, which is when there’s a big campaign to leave negative comments about something, but positive astroturfing exists too. You can spread your message around pretty easily that way.”

“That feels cynical,” Marlowe said. “I mean, no offense. I guess you have to play the games you have to play.”

“I agree with you,” Addison said. “I feel a little cynical about it all. I grew my social media presence organically. But once the whole wide internet started talking about me and my collapsed wedding, I started to feel a little bit differently about it. It feels like I deserve to profit off of being a focal point of conversation. Maybe profit off of is a bad way of putting it. But at least have the campaign be front and center. Even if people don’t donate, they’ll be more aware of the campaign. And obviously, it’s a very local campaign, and it’s all just Mustang River, but even people here need to have extra oomph to get engaged in the process. A lot of the time I think people don’t really want change.”

“I’ll be honest,” Nolan said. “I am not even sure who’s running against you. Until you took this as your wedding venue, I didn’t even really know you were running. I just fill in a bubble on the ballot.”

“And that’s a lot of people. Particularly in small towns. But particularly in a small town, the person running can make a difference.”

“All right,” Lila said, leaning in. “And how are you going to make a difference?”