by Dahlia West
Walker wanted to. And everyone knew it. But it did not seem like the time to argue the point.
“Anyway, Dakota can handle her liquor,” Walker grunted.
The rest of the ride was silent, with Sawyer trying to come to terms with the spectacular humiliation he’d just suffered in front of Walker, in front of half the town. If none of the onlookers knew right this moment exactly what they’d witnessed, he felt certain Palmer Conroy would be more than happy to tell them. The look in the man’s eyes as he gleefully tore their lives apart had been nothing short of infuriating.
When Walker pulled to a stop outside the barn, both men unloaded the feed in silence, Sawyer unwilling to even look at his brother. Eventually, they would all know, depending on how much Walker told them. There was no escaping the humiliation of having been played like a fiddle by a woman who had no intention of returning his feelings. He walked away when the work was finished but passed up the bunkhouse in favor of the Big House. He really didn’t want to be alone in what he now thought of as “their space.”
The bed would be cold enough without her tonight.
He sauntered through the side door that led directly into the kitchen and found Sofia at the stove with Dakota filling tamales at the island counter. The younger woman grinned at him. “I’ll be careful what we let her touch, but could you send Cass in here to give us a hand with these? We’re making enough to feed an army.”
“She’s not here,” Sawyer replied quietly.
Dakota frowned. “Where is she? Is she coming to dinner, at least?”
Sawyer shook his head, unsure what to say.
Dakota waited for answer, didn’t get one, and then put down the steamed wrappers. “Where’s Cassidy?” she asked firmly.
He didn’t have an answer, so he didn’t give one. “She’s not coming back,” he replied.
“What do you mean she’s not coming back?”
“She’s just not coming back.” He pushed up his sleeves, indicating the island with a slight gesture. “I’ll handle this. I need you to go to the bunkhouse. Get her things. Get her keys. Whatever’s hers.”
Dakota’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Drive her car into town. I don’t know where she is right now. Just call her phone. Give her all of her stuff back. I don’t want her setting foot on Snake River. Ever again.”
“What happened?!” Dakota prodded.
Sawyer pinched the bridge of his nose tightly. “Just…just do this for me, okay? I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to get into it right now. Just get her shit out of here and make it clear to her that I don’t want to see, hear, or speak to her again.”
“Oh my God,” Dakota murmured but left the kitchen.
Sawyer was alone with Sofia, who was silent but watching him with her shrewd, dark eyes. “Don’t,” he said quietly.
She remained silent but still watchful.
“Sofia!” he hissed, because even her gaze spoke volumes. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.” He turned his attention to the tamales and filled each one carefully, not looking the older woman in the eye. Minutes passed before he couldn’t take it. “I don’t know her,” he said softly. “I thought I did. Or I thought I was getting to know her. And I thought I’d gotten her so wrong. I actually felt bad about that, about getting her wrong. But I was wrong about being wrong.” He scoffed derisively. “Listen to me. I sound like an idiot. I am an idiot.”
“You sound like a man in love.”
Sawyer shook his head. He remembered his mother and father, how happy they’d been. The spontaneous bear hugs, the dancing in the living room at Christmas. That was love. This was…nothing. “Love doesn’t feel like this,” he told her.
“It does when it leaves.”
“I didn’t love the real Cassidy!” he insisted. “I didn’t even know the real Cassidy!”
Sofia merely shrugged. “Perhaps Cassidy didn’t know the real Cassidy, either. Until she came to Snake River.”
Sawyer turned to blink at her.
“This place, this land,” Sofia told him, “it has a way of…stripping away all you thought you were and leaving only the truth, the essence.” She eyed him closely, and Sawyer felt the scrutiny of her sharp gaze prickle over him. “Some men do that, too.”
He shook his head. He thought he had, but it hadn’t been real. “She’s a predator, Sofia. Everything she showed me was a lie.”
Sofia paused to consider his words thoughtfully. “A predator? Or a survivor?”
“She hurt people, Sofia. She lied. She used them. And she dumped them once she was done with them.”
“Perhaps she did,” the woman ventured. “And perhaps, once she was here, you showed her a better way.”
Sawyer’s brows remained furrowed.
“Can people change, mijo?” Sofia asked gently.
He didn’t have an answer.
Sofia gave him a knowing look. “What about you?”
“Me?”
She nodded. “You had no taste for settling down, for marriage, for children, not while you were in the rodeo, not while you were away from home. Can you say the same now?”
Sawyer definitely did not want to think about how tightly he’d allowed himself to be snared in Cassidy’s web, how much he’d grown to want those things. And want them with her someday. “I…I couldn’t settle down,” he replied simply.
Sofia smiled ruefully. “Because of your brother. Because of Court. But you came home. And Snake River took care of you, stripped away all you were pretending to be while you were on the road and left only the man standing in front of me now. Love is kindness, this is true. But love is also forgiveness, mijo.” She gestured to the Crock-Pot container. “I’ve made albondigas for Mac to apologize for making him look for the snake. He’ll forgive me.”
Sawyer smiled ruefully. “I think this is more serious than a snake prank, Sofia.”
“But every act of forgiveness starts with a small kindness,” she told him.
He finished helping with dinner but didn’t stay to eat it. The stone had never really left his belly, and he wasn’t interested in sitting down face to face with anyone right now. He left Sofia and headed back to the bunkhouse, showered, and then sank onto the couch to read. But Hondo’s lone-rider lifestyle hit a little too close to home and left Sawyer more than a bit disconcerted. He set the book aside and glanced at the closed bedroom door.
She wasn’t there. None of her things were there. So why did it feel as though he could just push on the door and see her slender, sleeping form tangled in his sheets? He reached up, turned off the lamp beside him, and hunkered down into the lumpy old couch instead, eschewing the bed and its emptiness entirely.
Chapter Thirty
‡
CASSIDY STARTED WALKING, but she wasn’t exactly clear on her destination until The Spur came into view. It was late enough in the day, at this point, that the place was open. Not seeing anywhere else she could go, she headed across the street and ducked inside. The usual Friday and Saturday night crowd was nowhere in sight, since it was Monday and late afternoon.
Ian looked surprised to see her but smiled anyway. “One club soda coming up.”
Cassidy raised a hand to stop him. “Tequila, actually. Two shots.”
Ian set the glass he was about to fill down on the counter and looked at her. “Cassidy?”
“Just pour the drinks,” she replied, sliding on the cracked faux leather barstool in front of her.
Beside her, a man she didn’t know laughed, cackled really, and raised his frothy glass to her. It was clear that it wasn’t his first drink. “Starting early!” he crowed.
“Momentous occasion,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Second worst day of my life.”
He paused with the glass at his lips. “What happened on the first one?”
“My mother died.”
“Who died today?”
She blinked at him. “No one. M
y boyfriend dumped me.”
He laughed, actually laughed, and for a moment Cassidy was offended, but then she joined in, too. Her boyfriend dumped her. It sounded so banal, so silly. My boyfriend dumped me. Trivial compared to My father tried to pimp me for top dollar to all the eligible men in Lincoln County. I manipulated a suffering old man and tried to baby trap another man that I don’t even know.
Boy, that sounded complicated. That sounded like a person you didn’t want to sit next to in a bar at four o’clock in the afternoon. Cassidy didn’t want to tell that story, so she laughed instead.
“Do I know you?” he asked then, examining her face closely.
“No,” Cassidy told him, fiddling with the napkin Ian had given her. Though it was possible he’d seen her face on a dozen county fair flyers. “No one knows me.”
And the only person who did didn’t want to see her face again.
Cassidy’s phone chirped, and she pulled it out, heart knocking furiously in her chest. She prayed it was Sawyer and that he was done cooling off. Hopefully, he was coming to get her. When she looked down at the screen, she saw the message was indeed from Snake River, but it wasn’t him.
I need to bring your car to you.
It was from Dakota.
The Spur, Cassidy texted back and shoved her phone back into her jeans pocket.
So this was it, she thought as she picked up the first shot glass. The amber liquid didn’t look all that appealing, but the numbness that would follow would be more than welcome. She downed it, nearly choking from the burn as it coated her throat. She was getting her car back, presumably with her purse in it. She had less than one hundred dollars to her name and nowhere to sleep tonight.
Somehow, Cassidy Conroy’s life had turned into a bad country song.
It took a while for the nausea from the first shot to dissipate and so by the time Cassidy had the second glass to her lips, Dakota had come through the front door.
“What happened?!” the girl demanded while holding the keys to Cassidy’s car in her hand.
Cassidy blinked, surprised that Sawyer hadn’t told her yet.
“Cassidy, what happened?”
Good question.
Long answer.
Long, painful, humiliating answer.
Cassidy just shook her head. “It was never going to work,” she replied simply.
“Cassidy!”
“It wasn’t!” Cassidy insisted. Because that felt better. It felt better to tell herself that this was always going to happen. Maybe not this way, not exactly this way, but it would’ve happened at some point. “We just…weren’t right for each other.”
Technically true. Sawyer Barlow was a genuinely good person. Cassidy Conroy was anything but.
Dakota gaped at her. “But…God…he wouldn’t even bring you back for your car?”
“Clean break,” Cassidy muttered, sliding off the stool. She nearly stumbled, but Dakota caught her.
“Are you drunk?”
Cassidy wanted to answer but didn’t trust herself to open her mouth. Instead she just blew out a hard breath and waved her hands in a gesture that could mean anything. She plopped down a few bills onto the bar and took the keys to the Mercedes from Dakota’s hand.
“You can’t drive,” Dakota hissed as she followed Cassidy out the front door.
“Well,” said Cassidy, speaking slowly and blinking at the harsh sunlight beating down on them from overhead. She preferred the dark cave-like atmosphere of The Spur. “That’s okay. Because I don’t have to drive.” She started to walk down the sidewalk, toward the center of town.
“Where are you going?” Dakota asked, catching up and falling into step alongside her.
Another good question. Apparently, Dakota was full of them.
“There,” Cassidy replied, lifting her arm and pointing up ahead.
Dakota’s head turned to look. Then she turned back to Cassidy. “You’re not serious.”
Cassidy swallowed hard to keep the tequila down and nodded as carefully as she could. “Yep.”
*
THE DUSTY ROSE was the only lodging within twenty-five miles, but Cassidy could see why no tourists ever stopped, even for the night. Inside the small room, the wallpaper was peeling, the bedspread had a number of faint stains, and the TV had a thin layer of dust on it, which probably meant it didn’t work.
“Maybe you should sleep on top of the covers,” Dakota suggested. “With your clothes on. With the lights on.”
Cassidy tried to hide her distaste as well. Anything would be better than this.
“Why don’t you just come home with me?” Dakota suggested. “Sleep at our house.”
Cassidy shook her head. Not only did Sawyer not want her there, Dakota wouldn’t want her, either, not after she knew the truth. “You don’t know what I did.”
Dakota frowned at her. “No. Sawyer didn’t say.”
“Dakota, I…”
Cassidy wanted so badly to stay quiet, to not speak up and tell the truth. This was the one friend she’d ever had. A single friend in all her twenty-three years, and she was about to end it with one admission. The instinct to lie weighed heavily on her. Years of half-truths, whole lies, manipulation and misdirection made her good at easing her way out of almost any given situation. And Sawyer wouldn’t be here to see the deception in her eyes, to call her out for it.
He’d tell Dakota later, of course, and thus spare Cassidy the pain of this moment. But as of right now, this second, Cassidy no longer wanted to be a liar. Not even to spare Dakota’s feelings. And certainly not to spare her own. Cassidy deserved what was coming to her. Her one and only regret was that she had to hurt Dakota to turn over this new leaf.
“I hit on Walker,” she confessed.
Dakota blinked at her. “What?”
“I hit on Walker. It was before I came to Snake River, before I got to know you. I tried to get him to dance with me, but he said no.”
“Okay,” Dakota said cautiously.
It was tempting to stop there, to just let it go at that. But that wasn’t really the right thing to do. Cassidy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I offered to take him to the bathroom.”
Dakota’s eyes narrowed.
“I…I was trying to trick him. I was going to tell him I was on the pill.”
“But you’re not.”
Cassidy shook her head. “And even if I didn’t get pregnant, he would’ve thought I was. And we could get the ceremony done quickly, and I’d be pregnant for real, soon enough. He…he would’ve never known the truth.”
“You goddamn fake-ass bitch!” Dakota shouted.
“I’m sorry! Dakota, I’m so sorry! I don’t even like him! I—”
“So…what? You’re just a whore, then?”
“No!” Yes. “I just…I’m just…he didn’t even want me. And I never tried to go after him again after that night. I swear to you, Dakota. I swear! I knew you liked him, and I never would’ve done that.”
“Oh, well, thank you, Cassidy! Thanks so much. Thanks for stepping aside. Thanks for gifting him to me and so generously letting me have Walker instead of trapping him into making you his trophy wife. Thanks!”
“That’s not what I meant! I didn’t give him to you. He was never interested. He—”
Dakota snorted. “That’s because he sees you, Cassidy! He knew exactly what you were! He’s too smart to trick like that.” Her jaw suddenly clenched. “Did you get your hooks into Sawyer? Are you pregnant now?”
Cassidy blushed at the memory of making love with him next to the river and how she hadn’t wanted him to use protection. But that hadn’t been a trap or a game or a lie. Cassidy hadn’t wanted it to happen in the way Dakota was accusing her of.
Dakota took her reaction in the worst possible way, though. “Oh my God. You are?!”
“What? No! NO! I’m not pregnant Dakota! I am not pregnant!”
“But you wanted to be! You wanted to take Sawyer down because Walker gave you the brush-
off. And I fell for it, too. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I can’t believe I became friend with you!”
“We were never friends,” Cassidy told her.
Dakota huffed indignantly.
“I mean because I was always lying to you. To everyone. I wasn’t a friend to you.”
“And you sure as hell never will be!” Dakota snapped.
The declaration hurt Cassidy, cut her to the bone. She pressed her lips together and held her palm against her stomach to keep from getting sick.
Dakota actually laughed, which hurt all the more. “Oh my God,” she said. “You aren’t serious. You don’t honestly think we can be friends now.”
“I…I don’t have any friends.”
“Well, of course not! You’re a fucking plastic Barbie doll bitch! Nothing about you is real. Your hair’s fake, your nails are fake, your boobs are courtesy of Victoria’s Secret! You spend all that money on yourself, but you’re totally worthless, you know that? You can’t even shovel shit! Stay away from me, stay away from my family. If I see your face again, I’ll break it.”
Dakota turned and stormed out the door, slamming it so hard the window rattled.
Cassidy curled into a ball onto the dirty comforter, hardly caring anymore about such a pointless thing. Dakota’s words echoed in her ears over and over. Fake. Plastic. Barbie. Unfortunately for Cassidy, she wasn’t fake. The pain was real. And so were the tears.
Chapter Thirty-One
‡
SAWYER ROSE IN the dark and suddenly knew exactly what he needed to do. He headed to the empty bedroom and stripped it even further, loading his camp pack with clothes and zipping it shut. He scratched out a note to Gabe that he’d gone up to the Folly three days early and slipped it underneath the man’s door before heading to the barn.
He saddled up Cash, the familiar process soothing his jangled nerves, putting him in a near-trancelike state. He slipped a loaded rifle across the back in case he ran into any more trouble this time and walked the horse outside before swinging up onto his back and nudging him west.