Chapter Three: Minus You

Ryder

MINUS YOU

Performed by Brandon Davis

After a long, tedious afternoon workingon the two new cabins, I should have been wiped out and more than ready to head home and fall into bed. Instead, I was weirdly wired. Something about Mila and the crow had sunk into me, and I ached for things I knew better than to want.

What I needed was to get laid. A single night lost in soft skin that would rip any thoughts of a pair of dark-haired beauties who haunted me from my mind. Except, I hadn’t been able to close the deal with any woman in months. After Ravyn left, it had been easy to get lost in others. It had felt like vengeance. These days, it wasn’t my ex-fiancée who held me back. Instead, it was a damn journalist who’d stayed at the ranch long enough to get caught snooping in my office.

A woman with hair so dark it looked like midnight skies and eyes that mysteriously changed from green to brown depending on the light. A woman who’d briefly made my deadened heart trip out a new pulse before she’d disappeared without so much as a goodbye.

Gia Kent’s vanishing act was a warning I needed to heed. A warning to keep my lips and hands to myself when it came to her. Thank God we hadn’t shared more than a single damn kiss. Because just that one had left me singed with the taste for her I couldn’t quite shed.

Maybe tonight I could finally leave her behind. Find some relief in someone who didn’t stir that ridiculous organ inside my chest. Relief with a side dish of peace rather than torment.

I passed on Mama’s offer for dinner, saying I’d grab something in town, got in my truck, and headed for Willow Creek. As I passed the town’s sign at the city limits, my lips curled upward.

Willow Creek―home of football heroes, rock stars, and ranchers.

The sign was only a couple of decades old, created after the band Watery Reflection built a compound above the lake. Our town was as proud of our celebrities as Bell Buckle was of their RC Cola and Moon Pies. The stadium at the high school was named after a dead football star, and the area behind the lake was now known as Watery Reflection Hill. We were proud of those ties to our community, but we were also protective of our famous folk. If the press came nosing around, we shut them down as fast as a raccoon opens a garbage can.

The quaint, old-time vibe of our downtown drew artists, photographers, and even film crews. The plethora of church steeples peeking over the rooftops, the cobblestone streets hinting of long-forgotten carriages, and the sidewalks strewn with lantern-shaped lampposts made it Hallmark-card perfect. Graceful weeping willow trees were mixed in with the magnolias on every corner, filling the air with scent and color when they bloomed. The storefronts were sun-worn brick with white columns and black shutters, and their lead-glass windows turned the street into a mass of gold and crystalized rainbows in the sunset.

I parked my pickup out front of Willy’s garage, hoping to put a burr in his butt about the sound gun. When I noticed the sign saying he’d closed early, I groaned, knowing exactly where he’d headed. I wasn’t sure I was ready for Drunk Willy tonight.

I made my way to the edge of town and Uncle Phil’s bar. McFlannigan’s had been in Willow Creek for over a century. Whispers about every generation of McFlannigan owning the place were almost legendary in this neck of the woods.

I pushed open the carved doors to reveal a pub that would have been better suited to the Irish countryside than the wilds of Tennessee. Old-world charm, etched-glass mirrors, and rich woods filled the space. The sound of the live band hit me, and I barely held back yet another groan. I’d forgotten what day of the week it was. Thursday night meant two-dollar beers and line-dancing competitions that turned the town into rabid dogs.

As I made my way to the bar top, my gaze settled on Willy. His mammoth shoulders were hunched, and a beer was cradled in his hands as he watched the locals slapping their hands and twirling about the dance floor. The crowd’s flannel, dark-wash jeans, and cowboy boots seemed at odds to the old-world-style dark paneling and faded green wallpaper lining the walls.

I tossed my hat on the lacquered mahogany and swung myself onto the stool next to Willy.

“You get around to fixing my sound gun yet?”

Willy nodded. “I’ll drive it out to you tomorrow.”

Sadie slid a beer toward me, and I met my sister’s eyes with a twist of my lips. “What if I wanted whiskey tonight?”

“You’ll get beer and like it,” she tossed back, lips twitching as she wiped her hands on a towel.

My sister was a vivacious brunette in her twenties with a pixie haircut and the McFlannigan pale skin and blue eyes. Eyes that used to dance with an impish delight but were often hidden these days behind a simmering frustration. It was one of the aftereffects of being shot while protecting Mila. Another was the limp that showed up when the damage to her nicked femoral nerve flared. Stuck at home while recovering, she’d dropped out of college and given up her promising career on the world dart circuit. My opinion—that I wisely kept to myself—was that she’d started working at Uncle Phil’s simply out of a desperate need to escape Mama’s clucking.

My neck burned as if I was being watched, and when I turned my head, I caught a blond woman in a tight sweater dress, staring me down. She screamed city girl with her expensive bag hanging from the back of the stool and her spiked heels dangling from her toes. Tourist. Here for the snowy mountain vibe and the antique stores that graced our streets.

I raised my glass, smiled, and thought briefly about sauntering over to her side of the bar. She was exactly what I needed. The complete opposite of the two dark-haired beauties who’d tortured my memories all day. I could lose myself in this woman. Find release and satisfaction without any emotions attached to it. I’d give her a memorable night to tell her friends about when she returned to her real life.

“No,” Sadie said, smacking my arm with the bar towel.

I grunted out my disapproval, catching the towel, twisting it easily from her hand, and then attempting to flick her with it. My sister danced back with a little chuckle.

“What happened to the Sadie who was always on my side, talking about the joys of the naked flesh and making Gemma and Maddox blush?” One of Sadie’s and my favorite shared pastimes was making our siblings uncomfortable, and while I didn’t want to think of my youngest sister having sex, I could block it out enough to enjoy harassing our middle siblings.

“Not her, Ryder. Not tonight. Her boyfriend stood her up for a long weekend away where she thought he was going to propose.”

“Sounds like the perfect time for me to swoop in. Revenge sex,” I teased back, but the idea of it actually turned my stomach a bit. I wanted to forget the woman who’d abandoned me, not be reminded of what it felt like to be left behind.

Uncle Phil sauntered behind the bar to join Sadie. As he was only thirteen years older than Mama, most people thought he was her brother rather than Mama’s uncle. He had dark hair that I suspected he dyed, the McFlannigan eyes we’d all inherited, and a stomach that had expanded over his belt in the last couple of years. He normally smelled like cigarettes, whiskey, and cheap cologne, and he had a reputation for being a bit of a ladies’ man back in the day, who had turned sort of sleazy as he’d aged. A wave of alarm hit me, wondering if that was what my nieces and nephews would think of me in another thirty years. The decrepit uncle who hit on women too young for him while trying to relive his glory days of sex and rock and roll.

It took any ideas I’d had left about one night in the arms of the blonde and turned them to ash in my mouth.

But what else was there for me? I wasn’t going down the path of a relationship again. I’d had my chance, and it had disappeared.

Color-changing eyes and lips that burned taunted me. Eyes that had nothing to do with Ravyn’s dark ones. These were all snarky defiance with a rebellious boldness that had all but screamed from Gia when I’d caught her red-handed going through my office, making me want to punish her and devour her at the same time.

Uncle Phil put his arm around Sadie and squeezed. “Your sister looks good back here, doesn’t she? Like Sarah all over again.”

Sadie and I shared a look. Granny Mc had lived and breathed the bar, spending more time here than anywhere else. She’d had a stroke in the office and died before the EMTs could get her to the hospital. Everyone had said she’d gone out just like she would have wanted, breathing in the bar’s aroma. My siblings and I had all worked at the bar at different times growing up, especially in those years when things had been all but desperate at the ranch, but I didn’t want this to be my sister’s life. She had a future outside of this town and this bar. She just needed to be reminded of it.

Sadie slipped out of our uncle’s hold, slid an empty pint glass his way, and said, “On that note, I’m out. I have a song calling my name. I was only covering until Ted came back from his break, so now that you’re here, you can do it.”

Uncle Phil wiped his arm over his forehead, and I noted, with a bit of concern, that his face was sweatier than normal. It was a cold night and warm bar, but he looked like he’d been working out with a boxing buddy.

“Fine, fine, go have a bit of fun, but you’re on the schedule tomorrow.”

Sadie just waved at him as she started toward the crowded dance floor. I swung off the stool and caught up to her, grabbing her arm and twirling her toward me. “What are you doing here, Sassypants?”

“I was attempting to dance,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

Her eyes turned shadowed, and she didn’t say anything. She looked like she had when she was four, and I’d found her with her finger in one of Mama’s freshly baked olallieberry pies. Defiant and guilty all at the same time.

“When you going back to school?” I demanded.

“I’m not.”

My jaw clenched, and when I started to say something, she cut me off. “Don’t start. You dropped out and never went back.”

“Totally different.”

She huffed. “How is it any different?”

“I wasn’t using the ranch to hide. I came back with a plan to save it.”

“I’m not hiding, you big jerk. I’m recovering from being shot!”

I rubbed my hand over my stubble. Fuck.

“I’ll give you that, Sads, but don’t you think it’s time to move on now? Get your life back?”

Her eyes narrowed in on me, and I felt the first tremor of something that wasn’t fear but was close. Sadie could be deadly when she struck. I’d witnessed it many more times than I could count, but I wasn’t usually on the receiving end. She and I had always been a team, ganging up on the others even though she was a decade younger than me.

“You ever going to move on, Ryder? Get your life back? Or are you going to let what Ravyn did leave you with as many invisible scars as I have visible ones?”

My chest squeezed tight. No one in my family seemed to get the truth. Like the rest of the men in my family, I was a one-woman man. Soulmates might be a little too touchy-feely of a label, but it was the truth. My parents, my grandparents, and my brother had all been the same way. One person. One lifetime. Unfortunately for me, it just so happened that the woman who’d been mine had lied, stolen, and left. That didn’t make her any less the one I’d given my heart to.

I didn’t own it anymore. It wasn’t mine. I’d given it away.

Love had come and gone from my life. I’d missed my chance.

“Don’t throw what happened with her at me just because you’re pissed that I’m right,” I grunted out. “Your leg is better, damn it. Pick up a dart. Get a UTK course catalog. Do something, but do not get stuck in this town, tending bar so Uncle Phil can get drunk and smoke himself into his grave.”

She glowered at me for a moment before that impish look came back into her eyes. “I’ll make you a deal.” I knew I wasn’t going to like it, but I bit my tongue and waited for the rest. “You go out on a date—a real date with a woman who isn’t just passing through town—and I’ll start throwing again.”

I wanted to agree. A date was nothing. A mere exchange of a meal and a few hours of my time. I could do that if it meant getting Sadie moving again, couldn’t I?

Eyes the color of the fields in the fall flickered through my mind again.

I’d kissed Gia and been filled with ideas of dates. Filled with multiple thoughts of having her not just in my arms but at my side, riding along with me in my truck with the wind blowing through her hair. I’d had visions of champagne picnics on the hillside overlooking the lake and her writhing below me in bed.

It had been terrifying.

It was still terrifying.

Sadie’s expression turned sad the longer I went without agreeing. Finally, she patted me gently on the arm.

“We both have some healing to do. Pushing isn’t the answer for either of us.”

Then, she turned toward the dance floor, sliding in next to some of my parents’ friends who owned a ranch down the way. A smile filled her face that I knew was fake as she did a three-step move with the rest of the crowd.

I’d been okay with the path I’d chosen. I believed the ranch was all I needed. The ranch and my family. But as my gaze drifted to Uncle Phil again, watching him laugh at something Willy said before I turned back to my sister as she spun to the beat of the music, my heart lurched. That ache I’d been feeling all day bloomed stronger.

Goddamn, Sadie.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe I did need to move on. But I was damned if I knew what that really meant, because the one thing Sadie wanted for me was the one thing fate had already taken away.