Page 51 of Drifter’s Heart

SIXTEEN

WEST

Pillow Forts and Wolf Ears

Coyote Falls comes up faster than I expect after I stopped for coffee. Winnie didn’t make it through Valiant Peak without topping up on her vice, and my soft spot for her grew every time she gave me puppy eyes. Getting her alone for the first time in a day—it feels a whole lot longer than that—is a luxury I want to last forever. But that’s not on today’s schedule, so when I pull into the well-used drive at the top of my best friend’s property, my hand still wound around hers, where it’s been for the last thirty minutes, my grip tightens to cracking point. I loosen my hold and tug her toward me.

“Winnie, I know you’ve got your heart set on Cord and me reconciling⁠—”

“Because you’re both stubborn as hell?” She stares out the front windshield, though her mouth twitches. It’s hard to tell if she’s amused or frustrated in advance of our showdown.

Hell, if I thought we’d have the place to ourselves for a bit, I’d do that and more. But with the setup for the rodeo all week, Cord’s driveway is likely to have the turnaround of a main road, not a billionaire hermit’s getaway like Coyote Falls traditionally is for the rest of the year.

I lean across the cab, tucking hair behind her ear. It’s grown long, and I like having length to play with. “Maybe I’m bringing hell to him for once. Not that I haven’t earned it.” I stroke my thumb across her jaw and drop my hand back to the gear shift.

She giggles at the reversal and slides back into her seat, pressing her fingertips to the side of my thigh. “Are you ready?”

I put the truck into first and roll through the open gate. “If you are.”

The yard that should be full of people is empty when Winnie and I pull up in front of the oversized homestead that Cordell Rand built to home a family. Well, that I did.

Instead, he spent the last decade in it living alone and roaming the halls like a too-tall wraith out here once his legs did manage to work again, after months of therapy, operations, and more cussing than a hooker on a Friday night in Whore Alley. He’s wandered about in that big homestead during the night. During sunlight hours, Cordell bled sweat and dust with the rest of us like a mere mortal. In the last months before I left, his ego doubled back to the size it had been before he met Lanie, and I finally had enough of his brand of bullshit.

“Typical.” Winnie slips from the cab of my truck. A puff of dust rises around her as she hits the ground.

I round the front of the vehicle. “They’re busy with the Invitational. The rodeo is a lot to set up.” But even as the words leave my mouth, stained with a sense of ancient loyalty to the dust of this place, I look around, tapping my fingers on the hood. Where in the hell is everyone? “You wanna do your thing, badass mama?”

I don’t need to look at her to know that she’s smiling.

“Sally!” Winnie yells without drawing breath. “Where are you?”

She takes a few steps toward the homestead, with its wraparound veranda and double glass doors etched with the falls that are Coyote’s namesake. It’s all Cord’s style, and ostentatious as fuck.

“I’ve always hated this house,” she mutters.

I slide an arm around her waist, tugging her back into me. “I built half this house, you know that?” I nuzzle her ear. I designed it too, but mostly under Cord’s direction. My style was different back then. I’ve learned beauty in simplicity over the years, and beauty in strength. Like the woman I hold now.

“Yeah, I know.” Winnie doesn’t back down, not even with me when I’m trying to intimidate her just to be an asshole because I’m feeling what she’s feeling right now.

Coyote Falls is dead.

“Sally!” I join the chorus for the hell of it, listening to my echo fade beyond the house. The switchbacks frame the homestead, their distant purple haze today prettying up the brutal mountain range from their usual spectrum of grays.

Footsteps pound the floorboards somewhere inside the house. Despite her earlier declaration about despising the house, Winnie darts through the doors and disappears inside the shadowy hallway, kicking her boots off as she runs. I’m not half as coordinated, stopping at the doorway to toe off my work boots that aren’t suitable for the black sassafras floors I helped to cart in and lay. No way am I trashing those.

“—alone. I swear, when I find him—” Winnie fumes. Her raised voice filters back to me from the wing of the house that Sally usually stays in, alone. The kid has no idea how good she has it. Or maybe, coming from the tight walls of the cramped townhouse that she and Winnie share, she does.

“I’m fine, Mom. Uncle Cord is around somewhere. Check his office? He’s always busy.” Sally’s utter disdain for formality plays off against her mom perfectly.

I smirk. The smart-ass probably passed us while we were in Valiant picking up on Winnie’s coffee habit. Still, when Winnie finds her brother, I’d better be in the room to watch her rip him a new one.

“He’s supposed to be looking after you. Where’s Lanie?”

I don’t get to hear the tail end of that conversation, heading across the large living and kitchen area to where Lanie used to host poker nights when she first arrived. Back when everything was normal. Before everything changed.

Again.

I close my eyes and rest my hands on the counter. Everything about this place has left scars on each of us. The man I was when I first agreed to work here is not the same man I am now. That man had hope. He gave hours of his life—thousands of them—in an effort to help a friend who he hoped would one day become a better man.