Page 65 of Ridin’ Dirty

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and held up my left hand in order to show off my new ring.

Her jaw fell open, her brown eyes doubling in size. “Is that a weddin’ ring?”

“Sure is.”

“Girl, the last time I talked to you, you were practically a nun. What the hell?”

Combing my fingers through my hair with a sigh, I leaned back against the counter and replied, “I can’t get into all the details but, you got time for me to start from the top?”

“Damn right, I do.”

I told her nearly everything—from my birthday until that very morning, skimming over the finer points of Pistol’s crime. Much as I trusted Charity, I didn’t want her to know things she could get in trouble for later.

“That’s it. That brings us to now. Am I a total idiot?”

Charity stared at me in exaggerated silence.

“Yeah,” she finally answered. “But not for the reasons you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lyla, you landed yourself a Stallion. Who the hell cares how it happened? You’re sleepin’ in his bed, for crying out loud!”

“Technically, yes. But⁠—”

“But what?” she interrupted. “Sure, he fucked up. But that was more stupidity than anything else. You and I both know, these men aren’t poster boys. They’re wild and reckless, and we get off on it. Always have, always will. You’re not perfect, either, but he married you. He moved you into his house. Girl, you’re livin’ the dream. You just have to grab hold of it.”

She had a point, and I couldn’t refute it.

I wasn’t perfect—and I had the past to prove it—but he didn’t know that.

Moreover, my dirty secrets aside, that didn’t mean I was ready to surrender to her logic.

“He made me his wife. Not his ol’ lady. There’s a big difference.”

Charity scoffed. “Lyla, that’s step one! When’s the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror? Far as I can see, you’re still as pretty as Snow-fuckin’-White. Now you’ve even got the hair. He sees it, too. He picked you his first night back.”

“But he hasn’t laid a hand on me since our kiss at the courthouse, and that was just for show.”

This time, when Charity fell silent, I didn’t like the look in her eyes. When she spoke again, what she said hit me like a slap across the face.

“He really did a number on you. What I can’t quite figure out is—how much of you did Twister take, and how much of it was Carmine?”

With a furrowed brow, I shook my head and murmured, “This has nothing to do with them.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t. Pistol is not Twister. He’s not your brother, either. You’ve got a chance to live the life we always dreamed of. It’s right there in front of you. All you’ve got to do is take it. You’re still young, girl. I don’t care what your birth certificate says. With the body you’ve got and that face of yours—not to mention the wild spirit inside of you—Lyla, if you want it to be real, all you’ve got to do is make it real. You’ve got more power than you think. It’s in you. I know it is.”

I heard what she was saying, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so I changed the subject. It wasn’t hard to get her talking about Bodhi and how things were going back in Gillette. We talked for another thirty minutes, until she had to go.

“I want updates,” she demanded before she hung up. “Promise you’ll keep me posted?”

“Yeah. I promise,” I said.

And I meant it, too.

Even though Pistol told me not to wait up, I tried. I couldn’t say when I fell asleep, and I woke up alone, but I could tell I wasn’t alone all night. Aside from the imprint he left in the pillow beside me, there was also a breakfast burrito waiting for me in the kitchen.

He didn’t leave a note, but the burrito said enough—namely that the man didn’t make a habit of sleeping in. Also, he was really into breakfast.