Page 6 of Drifter’s Heart

Then I remember that you forgot about me and decided your work was worth more than our life together. And I’m glad I left.

I close my eyes, black the screen, and pocket my phone without answering.

Good chat, Brad. Thanks for that.

Tears well behind my eyelids, like they always do. There’s a million reasons why he’s not supposed to talk to me and one that I can’t block him. I blow out a breath, expelling the silent conversation that rants in my head, and suck in cold night air. Repeat. Again. Until all that’s left in my mind is crystal clarity and a path home.

I charge forward and run smack into an obstacle that I swear is designed to hinder my progress.

Designed just for me.

“Ow. Sorry. Wait.” I step back and glare up at the behemoth that has stepped into my path. I know that build. And that shirt. A shirt scented like smoke and Montana dust. Specifically Coyote dust. That shit never washes out. I should know. Invoke the cowboy and he shall appear.

I toss my head and fix his slate-gray gaze with my blue one. “Dammit, West. I thought you took your sulky ass home to mope over an hour ago.”

He watches me with dark eyes that are somehow better suited to both a puppy and a grizzly at the same time. Huh. That’s too cute an image. “It was two hours ago. And I didn’t, because I figured you’d be caught out like this.”

That stalls me. You sassy ass. “Caught out like what, exactly?” My inner snark rises to the challenge on demand.

He gestures around me. “This. No date, no ride home.” The eyes that looked so innocent a moment before glitter with a predatory light as I cross my arms over my chest. A flimsy barrier between us, and much needed right now.

“Oh. And you thought you’d fly on in as my knight in shining armor and rescue me, right?”

He cocks his head to one side. “Knights don’t fly, but I think your version of what being a knight means and mine are different, city girl.”

I wave away that little bout of semantics and melded historical fact that I never expected to hear from West. “Whatever. But you do expect a thanks,” I say pointedly. Not that he’s done anything yet. Nor am I in need of a rescue.

“I can leave you here, if you prefer.” He takes a step back, but his gaze doesn’t shift from my face.

A sedate, short step for a giant of a bulky man who stands almost as tall as my brother—okay, lie, Cordell Rand is nearly six foot five inches tall. I swear no one else in reality is that big. But I also know that West, despite his bulk and six-foot-flat height, can move at speed when the occasion requires. Apparently now is not one of those times.

“Are you waiting on someone, cowboy?” I ask tartly.

Walking home is definitely still on the cards. My feet would have to ache a helluva lot more to make that call right now. Sure, it’s something I’ll regret tomorrow, but to deny West? I’ll absolutely push that limit.

West makes to turn away.

“Are you coming, Winnie?” he murmurs. “Your brother will have my balls if something happens to you between here and home, and I’m gonna get myself arrested for stalking you in my truck for the next twelve blocks.”

He counted. Huh. I hadn’t.

And suddenly twelve blocks sounds like… a really long damn way to walk between now and sunrise. The fizz of rage that suffused every cell in my body after reading Brad’s texts is replaced with a different sort of buzz.

I skip up beside him. “Why were you at the bar tonight?”

He glances at me sideways. “Fishing for compliments, Rand?”

I shake my hair back. Last time he saw me, it was styled super short, months ago. I mean, it’s still short, but now the curly ends dangle to my shoulders, rather than spiking out in a pixie cut. It hadn’t hit me that it’s been a while since I saw him at Coyote. That his absence escaped me for so long messes with my headspace because I’ve been too busy with my own crap. Then the deluge of questions I should have been asking for months—how many, exactly?—slams into me.

Where have you been? Why did you leave?

Everything I want to ask is at the tip of my tongue, but I know better. My best friend is a nomad, for crying out loud. Pushing too hard, too fast drives a drifter like Lanie or West away. Just because he dug his heels in for years on Coyote land out of some displaced sense of duty to my brother has never hidden who he truly is. Not from me.

This man has a relentless soul, the sort that won’t let him stop until he gets what he seeks. But his heart is restless. Once he’s done, he can’t stay in one place, always moving, always seeking that next challenge to soothe the disruption inside him that never sleeps.

Cord is lucky that he lives on a 350 thousand–acre farm—fine, ranch. Nearly double that if I add in the extra 200-ish thousand acres that he picked up in a bet nearly a year ago from his feral-as-fuck neighbor.

A bet that no one at Coyote talks about after the fact.