“Tanner—” Cassidy grabs his arm.
“Where is he?”
“Would you stop?” She steps in front of him. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
“Watch me,” he says fiercely.
“You don’t get to do that,” she says. “You don’t get to show up every time I’m feeling low and… Tanner.” Her voice cracks slightly. “Please. Not again.”
Somewhere behind the mountains, thunder rolls. Low and distant, the first real warning of the storm that’s been building all evening. A breath later, lightning splits the sky at the edge of the horizon, there and gone.
Neither of them notices.
They’re staring at each other, tension sparking between them like the electricity sizzling in the sky.
Whatever this is, it isn’t mine to witness. Luckily, I’m not sure they remember I’m here.
A warm hand finds the small of my back and I don’t have to look to know.
Slade.
Standing behind me, solid and close, his lips drops to my ear. “Let’s go, baby.”
I look at Cassidy and Tanner. He’s got his fists clenched, not in anger, but like he’s desperately trying to keep himself from touching her.
“It’s okay,” Slade murmurs. “Tanner’s got her.”
I let him guide me away, his hand steady at the small of my back, and I take one last look over my shoulder at the two of them arguing in low urgent voices, the storm moving in behind the mountains.
The first drops of rain hit my shoulders as we walk.
“Are you sure we should leave them?” I say.
“A Rhodes always looks after his woman.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “‘His woman’ is engaged to another man.”
“Details.” His gaze slides to me, slow and certain. “None of us have ever let something small like that get in the way of what we want.”
He walks me to the truck without a word, rain soaking into his shirt, his hand firm and warm at my back. At the passenger door he stops.
“I heard what you said,” he tells me. “About marrying the man who thinks you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”
I look up at him. Rain dripping from the brim of his Stetson, jaw tight, eyes very green and very serious.
“You are,” he says. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I need you to know that.”
The rain comes down between us. The rodeo lights blaze through the downpour, turning everything amber and glimmering, and the crowd inside the arena roars at something, distant and muffled, a whole other world from this parking lot, this truck, this man.
“What are you saying, Slade?” I whisper.
Instead of answering, he backs me gently against the cold wet metal of his truck door.
His hands find my face first. Both of them, cupping my jaw, tilting me up toward him, thumbs sweeping the rain from my cheekbones. He looks at me for one long second in the downpour, green eyes dark and deep and serious, and then he kisses me.
His mouth is warm against the cold wet of my skin and I feel it everywhere, that contrast, the cold rain against the solid wall of him pressed against me. I grab fistfuls of his shirt and hold on.
His hands slide from my face into my hair, cradling the back of my head, and he angles me exactly where he wants me and deepens the kiss until I forget what I asked him.
