My heart nearly skips a beat.
I’m not ready for this.
Doesn’t matter.
No amount of preparation would have made a damn difference.
The band strikes up a fiddle-heavy line dance, and suddenly the crowd is moving, stepping and twirling, forming lines, a choreographed stampede. Jet gives Faith a nudge before disappearing into the crowd, and Boone pulls Rose onto the floor with that trademark grin of his.
Faith stands alone, near the edge, smoothing the fabric of her dress with nervous hands, looking just as unsure as I feel.
She looks like she belongs here, and at the same time, like she might bolt if someone says the wrong thing. A few days ago, she was supposed to be someone’s wife, standing under crystal chandeliers in a city that never felt like hers. Now she’s here, in Buckhorn, pretending her whole life didn’t just detonate.
I don’t know how you recover from that. I just know it doesn’t happen in a week.
Before I can talk myself out of it, before I can remind myself that getting too close to her is a mistake, I’m already heading toward her.
Her breath catches when she looks up, startled, but there’s hope in her gaze.
“Wanna dance?”
She hesitates for a beat, then smiles. "I don’t really know this one."
“Doesn’t matter,” I say, holding out my hand. “I’ll lead.”
Her fingers slip into mine. Warm. Soft. Smaller than I remember, and when her skin brushes mine, my mind goes blank.
This is a mistake.
A beautiful, reckless mistake I can’t pull myself away from.
The first thirty seconds? A total disaster.
Faith steps left when everyone else goes right. I turn too soon, and she bumps into me. Then I bump into someone else. We both stumble, laughing, trying to catch our balance in time with the twangy beat of the song.
And then she does it.
The giggle.
It’s so real, so unguarded, it catches me completely off guard. I can’t help the way my chest tightens, the way my gut responds. It's been too long since I’ve laughed like that, too long since something, or someone, made me forget everything else in the room.
The feeling scares me more than it should. Laughing like this feels like stealing something that belonged to another life, another version of me who didn’t know how fragile happiness was.
Belinda used to laugh like this. Loud. Unrestrained. And the part of me that loved her wonders what it means that I’m here now, smiling with someone else.
Yet, I join her, my own laugh spilling out, and it feels… good. Not forced, not sarcastic, not weighed down by all the things that usually sit on my shoulders. Just… laughter. Uncontrollable and easy.
She looks up at me, cheeks flushed with the mix of her giggles and the dance, her eyes lighting up as if she's never felt more free.
“Whoops,” she says, the words still breathless from the laughter, but her eyes are dancing with that sparkle I’d forgotten she had.
“I knew you were bad, butthisbad…?” I tease, leaning in just a little too close, letting the moment stretch longer than it should.
She bites her lip, then shrugs with that playful look that always drives me crazy. “I’m doing my best.”
My grin grows, and I lean in a little more. “You’re dangerous.”
Her breath catches, and it hits as a physical punch to the gut. She knows exactly what I mean. The way her gaze lingers on me for just a beat longer than necessary, her lips parted slightly, tells me everything.
