“Dallas, you need to knock it off. I know you blame yourself, but you can’t keep go—”
“Enough.”
He scowls at me, clearly pissed off by my dismissal – he always is. This is not the first, and likely won’t be the last time he scolds me for how I’ve chosen to live since Sam. I pick up the shirt that’s been lazily discarded on my bed and throw it at him. “What happened to you that night anyway?” I ask, my attempt at changing the subject.
He chuckles to himself as he says, “Ella needed bloke advice.”
Colt and Ella hit it off the second they met. She recently opened her business, which happened to be a bar. And she is a woman. So, Colt, being Colt, couldn’t wait to befriend her. I’m certain the fact that she’s the definition of ‘his type’ probably contributed to his sudden interest in the logistics of business ownership, not that I’m one to talk. I’m currently wondering how the fuck I’m going to not let myself thinkabout my daughter’s music teacher, for fucks sake.
Last I heard, Colson and Ella had drifted apart when she started dating a bloke that worked for the Ballantine’s over in Blackridge. The Ballantine twins run the biggest cattle station in Flame Tree Flats. They themselves are alright at times – when one of them isn’t spending the night in jail. I’ve only met the twins a handful of times, and that’s enough for me. They’re wankers who employ a bunch of meatheads that are always starting pub fights and putting their dicks where they don’t belong. Ihaveto be civil, that doesn’t mean I like them, or that I approve of any of the shady shit those two get up to.
“Didn’t work out with the bloke from Blackridge then, I take it?”
“Nope, found him in bed with a buckle bunny. Then another one, and another, and well, you get the drift. Guess she finally put an end to it. It happened not long before Annabeth moved here, actually,” he replies, his expression softens.
Colt’s always had a soft spot for Ella, but he missed his chance with her years ago, although I still maintain he had a shot last night. I will never know how Colt let Ella slip through his fingers the first time. She was always there, following him around, giving him free drinks at her bar, with Colson none the wiser of how she clearly felt about him, despite it being obvious to everyone else. They broke each other’s heart the day she started dating that dickhead from across the bridge, if you ask me.
Despite everything – his annoyingly good looks included – my brother is the absoluteworstwhen it comes to expressing his feelings. Colson does have feelings – big ones. He’s a hopeless romantic who wears his heart on his sleeve. It’s just a damn shame he inherited Dad’s shitty way of expressing them. It drove Mum crazy. She was alwaystelling us that she was ‘raising her sons so they knew how to talk to women.’” Colt seems to have missed that memo, because he gets so nervous around women that half the time he’ll just avoid talking to them entirely, or he’ll be an over-flirtatious jackass so they’d think he was slick and avoid him. Me on the other hand, I’m more like Mum than I give myself credit for. Everything from how I treat my workers to how I raise my daughter is all because of Mum.
“Fuck those assholes. They’re not worth the shit in Finn’s stall.”
With a silent nod, Colt agrees. “They sure fucking aren’t.”
“You gonna be okay? I’m going for a drive,” I tell him, before standing and picking up the shirt I’d thrown at him and sliding it on before marching out of the room.
I kick the engine over and tear-ass out of the driveway. I don’t know where I’m going, or what my plan is, but I can’t sit inside the house and listen to Colt yap on about shit.
Music blares through my speakers, the windows are down, and the country air fills my lungs as I sing along to the radio. I’m conquering the open road, one pothole at a time.
What the hell am I doing?
I’m sitting in my ute, staring at my steering wheel, cigarette hanging from my mouth, parked two doors down from Annabeth’s house.
That’s what the hell I’m doing.
My mind races over the possibility that if I just go and knock on herdoor that one of two things is likely to happen.
One: she’ll punch me in the face. Don’t know why, but she could.
Two: she’ll punch me in the face. Why the hell do I keep going there?
I’m sitting here trying to sort my shit out and figure out exactly what my plan is, when I hear a gentle tapping on the window. My eyes dart up and meet her piercing green ones. Annabeth’s perfectly manicured fingers trail the outline of my window as a smug smile spreads across her face. I crank open the door, her body moving seamlessly as she slides out of the way, making her way around the bonnet before propping her hip against my bullbar.
“Couldn’t stay away, cowboy?” she taunts. That nickname is going to unravel me one day, I’m sure of it. More so the mouth it’s coming from, rather than the name itself, but it’s driving me crazy.
I lift myself from the seat, rounding the door and moving in closer to her. Our chests are almost flush; I can almosthearher heartbeat thrum as her breath hitches ever so slightly. I raise my hand slowly until it connects with the underside of her chin just enough for me to lift her gaze to mine. Our eyes lock, and with a wicked smirk I speak, “From you? Not a chance.”
Fucks sake. Stop flirting with her.
She cocks her brow in my direction, a soft crease forming in her forehead as she looks me up and downwith a subtle smile.
“You hungry?” she asks.
I half-shrug my shoulders and do the weird head tilt thing you do when you’re agreeing with someone. She responds with a satisfied smile and says, “Good, we’re going to Maverick’s.” Then she skips around the front of my ute and collapses into the passenger seat.
The drive over to Fires Creek doesn’t take long, but I reckon Annabeth sung every song that played over the radio. Fuck, that girl has pipes. Her voice is both deep and melodic, I can’t explain it. I could listen to her sing for the rest of my life. Just as she belts the final verse ofWagon Wheelby Darius Rucker, we pull into the car park of the diner.
Annabeth leans in, tilts her hat back, and plants a gentle kiss on my cheek, before kicking open the door, and then she’s gone. Heat rises across the spot her lips touched, and I find myself cursing my dick for twitching at the thought of those damn lips. I linger in my seat for a moment, watching her whirl around and scowl at me, as if I’m taking too long.
