Page 36 of Drifter’s Heart

“West!”

My name rings across the empty landscape.

I sigh. “Rand gave me permission a long time ago, Winnie. We’re fine.”

Her eyes blaze at me. Shit.

Winnie stamps a foot. “Why didn’t I know my brother owned a ghost town? Wait.” She turns in a circle, staring back at the town, then longingly at the cemetery we’ve just vacated like she’s not allowed to be there anymore. “Why does Cord own a ghost town?”

Why does your brother do any of the things he does?

I give her the corporate-safe answer. “He purchased the land about eight years ago on a Rand-style whim when there was a chance that the silver deposits weren’t as dry as was previously thought. When he worked out that they were, he asked me to catalog the history of the town.”

She frowns. “But never show it.”

I nod. “Hence the locked gate. He wants to preserve the history for as long as possible until he works out what to do with it. His headspace has been…”

Not great doesn’t come close to describing the last decade living with her brother’s fascinating quirks.

“Depressive, manic, and narcissistic.” Winnie runs through the negatives faster than I get there.

“Yes,” I say cautiously. “But he’s also intelligent, compassionate—when his head is out of his ass—and generous to a fault.”

She snorts. “It’s easy to be generous when you have the world at your feet.”

I catch her chin in a firm grip between my thumb and forefinger. “Your brother would give that world up to show you and your daughter that he loves you. Money doesn’t mean a thing to him, Winnie. It’s taken life from him, more than given him anything.”

Winnie stares up at me, her lips parting. “I thought he just kicked you out after you’ve given him years of your life. Why are you defending him?” she whispers, her eyes that match his searching my face.

Her lips are soft beneath mine when I kiss her. “Because I walked away. He didn’t kick me out. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” Communication is a two-way door. It hasn’t always been my best trait, either.

Winnie folds her arms in a single-person hug around herself, barring me from her. “If you’d told me all that, I probably wouldn’t have come out here,” she mutters, staring at the ground as the first raindrop spatters the dirt near my feet.

“I know.” I stare up at the sky. “Winnie?”

“Yeah?”

“I lied.”

TWELVE

WEST

Imperfect but Perfect

I lied.

“You’re gonna get wet.”

“I am? Sh⁠—”

I grab her hand and run. Or try to run. The borrowed jeans fit all right up until this moment. Winnie outpaces me in seconds, looking back and laughing as the wind rips up the hillside. The gusts blow her hood back off her face. Wayward curls whip around her face, the short ends tangling about her shoulders and obscuring her eyes. The laughter in them, that sparkle that’s all her, is the last thing I see before the heavens open and a sheet of gray blankets everything.

Winnie darts ahead of me, little more than a shimmering shadow through the sheet of rain. I stumble on, cursing the ghost town’s owner and his skinny ass for skipping leg day too often. The world is obscured, a snow globe decorated with rain instead of white confetti with me the floundering decoration in the center. I head for the tree line and pray that she gets there before I do.

Water drips into my eyes as I duck under a tree branch in time to avoid decapitating myself on the damn thing. “Winnie?” I call, swiping one hand across my face to clear my vision. Everything blurs as I adjust to the dim light inside the forest that’s a whole lot drier than I expected beneath the interlocking branches. “Did I lose you out there?”

A warm bundle hits me at chest height, knocking me backward a few paces. I crown myself on the branch I ducked beneath earlier and groan, remembering belatedly to wrap my arms around the pocket rocket who appears to have thrown her entire weight at me, legs and all.