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When I moved to Nothing, North Dakota, I’d wanted out of the limelight. A low profile and a chance to remake my life away from California and any gossipy asshole ready to flash a camera in my face.
It was easy to get that here.
I just wish it didn’t come with a metric fuck-ton of winter.
Tobin and I have been cooped up at the ranch for months going stir-crazy. Even the biggest, sleekest places you spend a pretty penny having tailored to your specifications start to feel like prisons when there’s only one person to talk to.
After hearing another storm was due tonight, I’d insisted we go to town, stock up on supplies, and visit other human beings while we can.
Ideally, human beings who don’t spend their Friday nights with an ironing board and Russian lit novels bigger than my head.
Hell, it could be two weeks before we even get mail again.
Not that I receive a lot that escapes being fed to the fireplace, but the whole rain, snow, sleet, or hail brag isn’t true. Not when it comes to postal deliveries in rural North Dakota.
A junk letter offering a chance to win a million bucks in a sweepstakes isn’t worth a mailman sliding off the road and turning up frozen solid in the spring thaw.
I’m only slightly exaggerating. Without a plow, those drifts outside could swallow a person whole until summer.
“Need I remind you, we have groceries,” Tobin says, lifting his eyebrows.
I laugh, loving that predictable and endearing face he makes when he’s really had enough of me for one night but can’t bring himself to tell me off. My eyes wander the bar.
Banter, beer, and good company aside, I can’t shake the sense that something’s off with the vibe here tonight.
Not with me, but with someone close by. It’s not Grady or the oil guys, or even that married couple in the corner enjoying a quiet dinner.
Call it a sixth sense. An instinct I should thank the Army for helping me develop. It saved us more than a few times when enemy combatants decided to make our lives a little more interesting than the monotony of patrol.
Turning, I see the other couple, the girl and the older guy.
She’d caught my eye like a fly in a trap when she walked in, red-faced and bundled up and drumming her boots off. I know I’ve been cooped up in a Dallas winter too long when a country girl who’s a hot mess just looks…hot.
Fuck me.
I know how it sounds.
Desperate, outlandish, probably a little borked in the head. My buddy, Grady, might be the first to tell anyone I’m all of those things, and I might tell him where he can shove it.
The woman was magnetic.
Two pale-blue eyes set in a shapely face, framed by a wavy mane of golden blonde hair she tugged free from her hat.
The cute kind of oval face that makes any red-blooded dude want to stare a little longer.
Long legs made for sin, supple frame, a little extra cushion in all the right places.
I’ve seen enough scrawny supermodels for this lifetime back in L.A.
She wore a puffy white coat, tight blue jeans, and insulated rubber boots that came up to her knees. Black ones. They were so coated with snow when she’d walked in she had to damn near dance on the mat to pry it off.
Seems too snow-packed to have just walked across the parking lot. She hadn’t come inside until later, several minutes after the old man.
I couldn’t even get a clear view at her goods, which tells me right now I’m more buzzed than I should be.
Like hell I’m admitting anything to Tobin, though.
I also can’t decipher the weird look she gave me.
It had its own gravity. This desperate fencing stare that had me pushing my toes into the ground, ready to jump up and approach her if she’d let it linger a few seconds longer.
She didn’t.
Doesn’t mean I stopped keeping an eye on her between doling out plenty of crap to go around for Tobin and Grady.
Magnetic Girl isn’t alone anymore. There’s a third person at their table, a punk with a face tattoo who joined the old man and young woman.
I don’t like it. Can’t shake the sense that this visitor who walked in from the cold earlier isn’t quite welcome.
I don’t recognize them, though. For all I know, they might be locals, or just travelers unlucky enough to be passing through on a stormy night.
I’ve only lived here since late last summer, and due to being snowed in at the ranch, I don’t know that many Dallas folk.
Surveying the scene, I replay what I remember. They’d ordered coffee after walking inside, but she’d gone to the restroom before drinking hers, nearly knocking over Tobin in her rush back. The old man sat alone for a while, fighting back a cough between sips of water. Then came the prick who’s hunched over, glaring across their table at them.
