Page 23 of Drifter’s Heart

Neither expanse of dirt beneath my feet was mine, which means today’s clusterfuck is just as shit as any other day on a calendar bearing a different year.

Men skitter about me as hands join mine on the rope already fraying in my hands. Fuck, this better come together fast or we’re all headed into the drink. Hesitant at first, the slack slowly tightens. Feet dig in around me, and when the ground begins to collapse beneath mine and I can taste that feral river water well before I hit the surface, someone grabs my shirt and pulls me back.

The rope has tension. The arc forms and my ass hits the bank.

“Done, sir.” A familiar accent twangs in my ear.

I glance sharply sideways, but the silhouette doesn’t belong to any man I know. “You’re a regular at Rand?”

It still feels strange to say the name and not be talking to the man himself nearly a year after leaving Coyote. Separating the business conglomerate, the pristine CEO who never sweats, and the rancher, the rodeo rider I’ve personally trained who eats dirt, has always been that way for me. A different problem to what everyone else here probably experiences, never having met Cord in their life or likely having ever seen a picture of the reclusive billionaire.

I stare at the bridge that looks exactly like the technical drawing I created when I lived back at Coyote. The paper rolls past me, mud-smudged and ruined. I clamp my heel on the rubbish, sinking it into the clay at the foundations of its to-scale likeness, an epigraph that will never be discovered. “You ever head up north?”

The man plants his butt in the mud and stretches his shoulders. “Nah. I’m from Texas. You’re a helluva way from home, then.”

I laugh softly. “You have no idea.” I push my heel into the soil, completing the plan’s journey into the custom-made sinkhole. The mud closes over the paper, sealing it inside. A sucking sound releases my boot as I clench sore hands, knowing my palms will blister or worse before I hit home turf again. “Are you on latrine watch later?” We have hours before the sun sets.

Either we keep on moving along, or we’re all gonna get real wet when the weather finally closes in.

He snorts. “You mean am I digging shit holes? Why not. That’s what we’re here for before the rain starts. Isn’t some rich asshole paying us to be here?”

I grin. That describes Cord to a T. “Nothing like breaking your back for a damn good reason.”

Winnie’s replies to my messages dwindle into nothingness after she tries to stick it to me. The single mom might be my best friend’s sister and off-limits, and the world’s biggest flirt, but she’s also hurting. I should probably head back to my apartment the moment I’m back on home turf, but the need to see her, check that she’s okay, is stronger. Silence isn’t Winnie’s strong point, after all.

At least, that’s the story I’m sticking to as I pull up out the front of her semi-darkened town house in Cloakton at an hour late enough to screw her night right up.

The burst blisters that ripple my palms are the least of my troubles after my skin frayed thin like the rope that day on the bridge. No matter how much I want to forget the ache in my chest as well as my hands, I can’t ignore the woman who has made an island of herself in the midst of the chaotic life that surrounds her.

Winnie’s door is shut when I knock on it, dressed in pink board shorts and a floral shirt. My arms are sunburnt and sore. At least the mud has washed off. That took a whole lot longer than I expected and got into places it really shouldn’t have gone. My brand-spanking-new attire that I purchased at the airport might not be my usual, but it’s cleaner than what I left the site in after the rain started and the clay turned to slop.

“Cord? I said you could have her for three days. It’s only been… one.” Winnie peers at me through tired eyes. One hand disappears into her towel that rubs her mid-length hair. Water droplets spray us both. Her pink lips part as she focuses on me. “What are you doing here?”

“You offered a booty call.” I jam my foot between the doorway and doorframe.

“Hell no, cowboy. That was a⁠—”

“Joke. I got it.” I brace an arm on the door to stop her battering my foot. “Give me five minutes for proof of life, and I’ll be out of your wet hair. Ten,” I add when she gives up and heads back inside. I follow her and she sinks onto her sofa arm without sticking it to me this time at all. Her body slouches into the pillows. “Winnie?”

She shakes her head, letting the towel drop to the floor from a listless hand. Winnie doesn’t bother answering me.

Shit. Is she drunk? I kick the door shut, glad Sally doesn’t seem to be about. “Rand,” I murmur, taking her smaller hands in my ruined ones. “What the hell happened in the last two days while I wasn’t here?” Sure, I had a flyby-night job to do, but I can still be here for her if she lets me.

She shakes her head but doesn’t pull away. There’s no scent of alcohol on her. After the amount of drunk ranch hands I’ve dealt with over the past decade at Coyote Falls, I’m a fair judge. Which means that my bouncy, sassy little brat of a flirt is just…

Depressed.

There’s no “just” about it.

“Come on, gorgeous. Tell me who hurt you.” My knees hit the floorboards through the threadbare carpet of her rental, but I don’t give a shit.

Especially when she looks at me through hollow eyes and dark circles that tell me just how many hours those eyes haven’t seen sleep for.

My jaw locks. Before she says his name, I know.

“Brad was here,” she whispers, her voice dull and flat.

“Do I need to call the police?” Keeping my own low and smooth is a vicious war with my internal moral compass. One half of me wants to scoop her up and carry her to her bed, wrap my arms around her, and hold her until she falls asleep. Not that I think the fight will last long, considering how exhausted she looks.