Page 8 of Unruly

I figured that out early on. I don’t hold it against anyone, I just decided if the game was already rigged, I wasn’t going to spend my life pretending I had a shot at winning it.

So I don’t. I do whatever the fuck I want. I drink too much, smoke a little weed, fuck women I have zero intention of calling back, and I work the ranch because it’s in my blood and I’m good at it.

But I don’t carry it the way Rhett does.

Dawson’s somewhere in the middle—running the horse side of things, performing restraint like that’s going to tip something in his favor.

It won’t.

But I love him so I don’t say that.

So I just ride my bike, let everything go quiet, and call it self-care, because it is.

I’m coming up on Miller Creek when I catch the pink flash in my mirror.

A pink sports bike pulls up alongside me and I get maybe two seconds to assess before I’ve already clocked the most important detail.

It’s a woman.

The fit of the jacket, the curve of her waist where it meets the seat. And, look, I’m a man with a pulse and she’s got a body that even full leathers can’t argue with. The hips don’t lie and neither does that ass, which is doing something genuinely impressive for someone going seventy miles an hour.

I give it more throttle.

She answers immediately.

Okay. So that’s how it is.

We run the road for a good stretch—trading the lead, neither of us being reckless but neither of us being polite about it either. There’s a conversation that happens between two people on bikes that can’t happen any other way, because we can’t see each other’s faces, or hear our voices.

The road bends south at Miller Creek and she takes the inside line, carrying more speed into the apex than I’d have risked, weight shifted perfectly, not a wobble, and just like that, the gap opens up. Ten feet. Twenty. And then she’s gone over the rise before I’ve finished the thought.

I ease back.

Huh.

I don’t get dusted on this road, that’s just a fact. And she just took it from me like I wasn’t even a consideration. The messed up part is I’m not even mad. A woman just smoked me on my own county road, and I want to know everything about her.

Rhett, Dawson, and I pull up in the truck to meet Colt at The Bar.

I like Colt.

My brother, on the other hand, would consider him a mortal enemy.

Rhett’s jaw does something when he spots him.

I just chalk it up to some bullshit that probably happened to them at work today. He’s going to just leave it alone for the night, and so should I.

Here’s the thing about The Bar:

Aria Dawson has run this place for as long as I can remember, which means she’s been watching me do stupid things since I was old enough to follow my brother through the door. She’s my mom’s best friend. They’re so close that Dawson’s named after her.

Aria loves me in the way that women who watched you come into the world love you—with zero tolerance for your bullshit. The woman is more terrifying than my mother, though, as we’ve heard rumors within the family that Aria shot someone in The Bar for looking at her the wrong way.

I’m about sixty percent sure it’s something the adults made up to keep us in line.

Forty percent is a lot of uncertainty, though.

I’ve looked at that woman across this bar a thousand times and there’s something behind her eyes that doesn’t fully rule it out. She smiles at you and the smile is warm, and then you catch the edge of whatever’s underneath it and you think—yeah. Yeah, maybe.