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Chapter One
“I’ve never met anyone like you, Amy Star. I know we haven’t been together long, but I want us to have the rest of our lives to remedy that.”
Amy’s stomach sank like the Titanic as Tristen slid from his seat and dropped to one knee. His starched Wranglers slowed his descent long enough to attract the attention of several neighboring tables, and by the time he’d wrestled the small, velvet box out of his pocket Amy doubted a single patron in the Last Stand Saloon was unaware of the proceedings.
Not again, she thought miserably.
He beamed up at her as he opened the box, and to her relief the diamond ring inside was so modest it probably hadn’t cost him anything he couldn’t afford to lose. In fact, the more she looked at it…
“Amy Star, will you do me the honor of—”
“Hold up. Is that even real?”
She snatched the box out of his hand and squinted at the ring, then popped it shut and tossed it on the floor. “That’s a cubic zirconia. What’d it set you back, thirty dollars?”
Tristen’s ears reddened as he scrambled for the box. “This was all I could get at short notice. I’ll save up for a nicer one.”
“I see. And the urgency to propose ten minutes into our third date has nothing to do with that guy who bought me a cocktail on Tuesday, right?”
Tristen popped up from the floor, stuffing the box back into his pocket. “You were at McNab’s with me. He should’ve respected that.”
“You were outside messing with your stupid truck, and as soon as I told him so, he apologized and took the glass back to the bar.”
“Only for you to follow him and drink it anyway.”
Amy threw up her hands. “It was top-shelf whiskey. What do you want from me?”
“Commitment,” Tristen shot back, the agitation in his tone instantly shifting the atmosphere from slightly cringey to downright unpleasant. Amy sensed movement all around her, knew her fellow denizens of Last Stand were positioning to rush to her defense—and fought not to roll her eyes.
As if she couldn’t take care of herself.
“I guess you were hoping the green stain on my finger from that cheap-ass ring would mark your territory, because you sure haven’t done anything worthy of me wearing it. I don’t know why you and every other single bozo in this town think I’m a prize to be won, like some wild filly y’all are busting your faces trying to rope, but the next time the local Dickhead Committee convenes I’d like to add an agenda item. No more proposals, no more pissing contests, no more pathetic, weak-armed fistfights between guys I’ve barely said hello to. Find someone else to chase after, because not one of y’all can catch me. Got it?”
Tristen’s scowl was almost as deep and deadly as the silence that had fallen over the saloon. No one dared look their way, but she knew every ear in the building was tuned in, eager for the next installment of the unending, messy drama that had been her life since she was eighteen years old.
Amy didn’t care. She’d been inadvertently fueling the rumor mill since she very publicly and very cruelly sent her high-school sweetheart packing ten years ago, and to this day she’d never told a living soul the real reason why. At first, she resented the widespread interest in her love life—especially since she believed in love about as much as she and her Jewish forebears believed in original sin—but she’d learned early and often that other people’s opinions were worth exactly what she paid for them. Somewhere along the line she decided to make herself happy, first and foremost.
Especially since no one else seemed inclined to do so.
Whatever. She didn’t need anyone’s sympathy, or affection, or second-glance kindness. With a dead mother, a distant father, and three preoccupied sisters, she’d learned a long time ago that the only person she could rely on was herself. She didn’t even fully trust her fellow firefighters, which is why she’d spent the last two years working her way through her certification and had just applied to be promoted from an EMT to her unit’s lone, long-vacant paramedic job. Soon she’d be in her own fly car, responding only to the most urgent calls, supplementing the work of the EMTs, and, most importantly, making her own decisions.
She didn’t need anything from anyone.
Tristen’s expression was darkening by the second. If she were a nicer person, the forgiving and forgetting type, more like her sisters, more like everyone said her mom had been, she would take this opportunity to defuse the situation. She’d smile understandingly at poor, misguided Tristen and then let him down gently, warmly suggesting they remain friends. He’d calm down, their audience would lose interest, and they’d leave with as much dignity as anyone could after a rejected marriage proposal.
But she wasn’t nice, or forgiving, and she hoarded slights and wrongs in her memory like towering piles of dirty laundry. Amy had never met a conflict she wouldn’t run toward headlong, and Tristen was not about to be the exception.
“You got something else you want to say to me?” she prodded. “Or are you planning on sitting there all evening, sulking on account of I didn’t weep with devotion at the sight of your claw-machine trinket?”
He glowered at the tabletop, lifting one shoulder in an almost imperceptible shrug.
She rolled her eyes. “In that case, I have somewhere else I need to be. Thanks for a pleasant evening. Wish I could say I’d love to do it again, but as it happens, next time we run into each other I think it’s best we pretend we’ve never met.”
Tristen didn’t look up, and part of her deflated, her appetite for a confrontation left unfulfilled. Then she reminded herself it was for the best, drained her mostly full wineglass in one gulp, and sauntered out of the saloon without a backward glance.
It was barely six o’clock but already the late-November sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving Main Street dark and hushed, its quaint shops’ buzzy daytime trade reduced to the occasional orange haze of a bulb left to glow deep within a shuttered store. This was one of Amy’s favorite times of year, weather-wise, the unrelenting summer heat of the Texas Hill Country finally giving way to cool breezes and crisp evenings. By New Year’s, they’d be in the topsy-turvy cycle of sixty-degree days and subzero freezes, but for now the air was calm, the trees bare, the shadows long and low.
She reminded herself to check when Hanukkah started this year, zipped up her jacket, and picked the direction that would afford her a winding, scenic walk to the two-bedroom, ranch-style house she’d bought all on her own. It wasn’t historic and elegant like her oldest sister’s, or cottagey and cute like her twin’s. Its cheap linoleum floors, wood-paneled walls, and hideous fake-Tiffany lamps were original to its seventies build and clashed mightily with her eclectic collection of furniture acquired from garage sales and thrift stores, but she didn’t care. It was all hers—well, nearly.
Amy had a tendency to leave the scenes of fires with brand-new, four-legged friends. Her pet-rescuing prowess was the butt of many firehouse jokes, to which she retorted that she’d take a smoke-stinking gerbil over a dopey human any day. For the most part she simply housed the displaced creatures until they could go back to their families or were adopted, but two had stuck around: Sweetie, the irascible filly who resided at her family’s ranch, and Sunny, the grouchiest cat ever to stalk the Earth.
Amy smiled, already imagining Sunny’s hostile reception when she got home. Her cat was demanding, ungrateful, and downright rude—just like her.
Sunny could also be loving and sweet and devoted. Amy’d worked hard to gain her trust, to pry her open and show her she was safe. It wasn’t easy, but they’d gotten there in the end.
Maybe there was some fantasy-worthy guy out there willing to put that same effort into her. Who wanted to know her for her. Who’d do the work, because he believed she’d be worth it.
Or maybe trouble would follow her forever.
“Amy.” Her name came on a breathless pant, which she found ridiculous given the short distance between the table he’d come from and the place where she stood. Yet Tristen seemed intent on making the most of his short sprint, practically squeaking to a halt as she turned to face him.
“What?” she asked testily.
“Can we talk?”
She crossed her arms. “Go ahead.”
“The proposal was a bad idea. I get it. Doesn’t mean we have to be finished, though.”
“Finished? We never even started.”
“We still could, though. We got chemistry, you and me.”
“I thought we did. Now I’m pretty sure I was just high on the exhaust fumes outside McNab’s.”
Tristen regarded her unhappily. “You don’t have to be so mean.”
“Of course I do. Otherwise, you’ll try this again with someone else, and she might not be as good at saying no. Trust me, I’m saving you a lot of future heartbreak.”
“You’re breaking my heart right now,” he insisted, moving closer.
“You’ll survive.”
Amy turned and continued walking, picking up the pace when she heard Tristen following behind. She wasn’t scared of him—she wasn’t scared of anything—but she wasn’t in the mood for all the paperwork she’d have to do if she broke his nose, either.
“Please, Amy. Give me another chance,” he pleaded, so hot on her heels she could smell his cologne.
She groaned inwardly and walked even faster.
“Why do you have to be like this, huh?” Tristen demanded, his tone sharpening. “You think everyone’s fooled by this ruthless, cold-hearted game you play? Keep it up and you’ll be alone forever.”
“I wish I was alone right now,” she muttered.
“Hey. At least have the decency to look me in the eye when I’m talking to you. Hey.”
He grabbed her arm, and the chronically thin thread of her control snapped. Instinctively she planted her feet, drew back her fist, and put all her weight into her swing—only to hear the whistle of her knuckles through empty air.
She stumbled forward with the momentum of her punch, nearly colliding with the tall, broad-shouldered man who’d seemingly appeared from nowhere to grab Tristen by the front of his shirt.
“Chill out, bro. I wasn’t going to hurt her, obviously.” Panic watered down Tristen’s haughty retort.
Her erstwhile rescuer said nothing, and as Amy regained her balance, she studied the man still mostly concealed in shadow—and narrowed her eyes in annoyance.
“You can let him go now. I’m very impressed, I promise,” she said dryly.
The stranger glanced her way, abruptly releasing his hold on Tristen. The streetlamp illuminated the top of his black felt cowboy hat, shrouding his face in the darkness below the brim.
Amy propped her hands on her hips, glaring at her wannabe bodyguard as Tristen all but sprinted in the opposite direction. Talk about out of the dipshit frying pan and into the douchebag fire.
“Listen, asshole, I’m sure riding in to save damsels in distress gives you a raging hard-on, but I was doing just fine. I had the situation handled, and you could’ve provoked him and made it worse. So, the next time you see what you think is a helpless woman gasping for a big, tough man to come to her defense, maybe take a two-second pause and ask yourself if you’re really the hero she needs, or just another puffed-up jerkoff liable to get someone killed.”
He was still and silent, and something about his posture filled Amy with cold unease. She didn’t think he’d hurt her, or that he was a physical threat, yet she sensed he was somehow dangerous nonetheless.
“Anyway, appreciate your time, but I need to go. Do not follow me.”
She’d half-turned, pleased with how confident and dismissive she’d sounded despite her wariness, when one word froze her to the spot.
“Amy?”
She knew that voice. It had echoed in her memories for a decade, persistent and unsilenced no matter how hard she tried to muffle it, remembered with perfect clarity even now as she tried to convince herself she was wrong.
With a hard swallow Amy looked up at him slowly, her chin heavy with dread. He removed his hat and pressed it against the center of his chest, a gesture so unnecessarily, undeservedly respectful that her stomach twisted.
Logan Bullock.
The only man she’d ever loved, and the only loss she’d never mourned.
For several long, quiet moments they simply stared at each other. The yellowish lamplight revealed a man largely unchanged by the last ten years. His face was leaner, his jaw squarer, but the cocoa-brown hair was exactly the same and so were his eyes, vivid blue shot through with gray, like smoke drifting across a clear autumn sky.
He was beautiful. As tall and broad and downright perfect as she’d only allowed herself to remember in her darkest, weakest pre-dawn hours.
For the tiniest, briefest instant, as the two of them stood in contemplative silence, cloistered in the circular glow of the streetlight, Amy warmed with contentment so unfamiliar that at first, she couldn’t even name it. Distantly recalled comfort wrapped around her like a reassuring blanket, easing the tension in her shoulders, calming her racing heart.
He was here. He was safe.
He was here.
Amy shoved off her fleeting serenity like it was on fire. This wasn’t happening. He couldn’t come back. Not after all these years. Not after what she did to him.
“What the hell are you doing in town?” she demanded.
“Getting my rocks off saving women from harmless bad dates, according to you.”
The sentence was practically a snarl, and Amy stifled a relieved sigh.
He still hates me. Thank God.
“I didn’t know the army was handing out savior complexes these days. Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be off somewhere driving a tank and defending my freedom?”
“Not anymore. Honorably discharged.”
An anxious knot tightened in her throat. “Thought you’d do a hometown victory lap, huh? I’ll be sure to alert the mayor. Hopefully we can squeeze in your ticker-tape parade before you’re off on your next adventure.”
“This is my next adventure. I’m home for good.”
His tone was flat and cool, yet it set Amy alight with scorching horror.
Ten years ago, she’d made sure Logan ran fast and far from Last Stand and everyone in it. As far as she knew he’d never come back, not even when his father died—though to be fair, she’d had hangnails more tragic than that sorry event. The possibility of his return seemed so remote she’d stopped worrying about it, and the fact he’d caught her off guard irritated her almost as much as his ridiculous decision.
“Don’t expect me to be on the welcoming committee. I was hoping you’d stay gone forever.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Guess we’ll have to do our best to stay out of each other’s way.”
“You need to stay out of my way. You’ve been gone a long time. A lot has changed around here, and you’ll have to figure out where you fit—if you fit.”
Hurt flashed in Logan’s eyes and she flinched, startled by its intensity.
“It’s my home, Amy,” he said forcefully. “You took plenty from me when we were kids. You can’t take this, too.”
Her rancor faltered, leaving space for regret. She hated what she’d done to him. He was the last person on Earth she wanted to be in pain. But she’d loved him too much to let him stay, and she’d do it all over again if she had to.
She hardened her expression.
“Watch me.”
Without another word Amy spun on her heel and walked away, her chin high and her spine stiff despite the sickening sensation that she was collapsing from the inside out.
There hadn’t been a single day in the last ten years that she hadn’t thought of him. Not one. She’d wondered where he was. Hoped he was happy. Prayed that he’d forgiven her or, even better, forgotten her entirely.
She wouldn’t have to wonder anymore. Logan Bullock was exactly where he shouldn’t be—back in the place she’d worked so hard and sacrificed so much to keep him away from.
“Then he’s a damn fool,” she muttered, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets as an unexpectedly chilly breeze whispered past her ears.
She’d done her best for Logan when they were eighteen years old, even though she was sure he didn’t think so. If he wanted to make the same mistake twice, that was on him. They were grown-ups now. Her responsibility was discharged.
And as for her aching heart, and her hot frustration, and her desperate, yearning, impotent fury at what had torn them apart back then, at the secret she’d carried ever since, and at that stupid, misguided, idiot man who couldn’t just stay gone… Well, she’d tough it out.
Just like she always did.
Logan’s mom was sitting on the porch in the dark when he pulled up to the weather-beaten farmhouse, the glow of her cigarette an amber complement to the red-and-green Christmas lights he’d helped his sister string up that afternoon. He shifted his dad’s twenty-year-old truck into Park, resolving for the hundredth time to trade it in first thing tomorrow morning. Then he crossed the porch to drop into the rickety plastic seat beside her, his boots echoing on the brittle timber.
“Told you to quit.” He took the lit cigarette from between her two fingers and stubbed it out in the ashtray on the floor.
“I will. Tomorrow.” She pulled a fresh one from her pack and lit it, winking at him as she took the first drag.
Logan smiled. He always did, when she looked at him like that.
Forty-six years of hard living and harder men had turned Alma Bullock thin and hollow-eyed, a taut, fidgety version of the rosy-cheeked girl in her courthouse wedding photo. She’d been just seventeen then, pregnant with Logan, kicked out of her parents’ house and living in her brand-new husband’s car, washing their clothes in public water fountains while he worked in the oilfields. Yet her smile was beatific and undaunted, as joyful as if she’d been wearing a million-dollar, blinding-white wedding dress instead of a shapeless navy pants suit she’d found at Goodwill.
She’d always had that way about her. That coquettish grin and playful sparkle, undimmed by poverty or desperation or hunger or pain, or the sound of her son’s body being flung against the wall as he swung his small fists at his father, or the acrid, chemical smell of meth being smoked on the other side of a locked door, or the blood she’d scrubbed from the carpet while her husband snored on the couch.
Logan looked away, staring without focus into the darkness obscuring the four hundred neglected acres of his family farm. That was behind them, now. His worthless father was in the ground, and Logan was here to take his place. To bring the farm back to life, to get his sister’s medical bills paid, and to be the man the Bullock women deserved.
To protect them like he should’ve been doing all these years in between.
“How was town?” his mother asked, twitching her lips to the side to release a stream of smoke.
“Fine. Spoke to the fire chief. He wants me to start this week.”
“Hey, that’s good news. Are you excited?”
“Sure.” Logan mustered a smile. Truth was, the only job open was for an EMT—a position way below the skills and training he’d gotten as a medical sergeant in the Special Forces. But the chief told him he’d have funding for a paramedic on that shift starting in January, so hopefully he could up his responsibility—and more importantly, his paygrade—sooner rather than later.
“You’ll be glad to be busy instead of stuck here in the house all day.” She patted his forearm. “Want me to heat you up some dinner?”
“I’m good. Grabbed something in town.”
“So that’s why you were gone so long. Larkin was awfully disappointed when you weren’t home in time to eat with us. She wanted your help with her math homework.”
“I’ll go see her now.”
Alma nodded. “You do that.”
Guilt hastened Logan’s path through the single-story, three-bedroom house, so rundown now that every door swayed on its hinges and the cracked windows outnumbered the whole ones. He picked his way across ripped linoleum and cigarette-burned carpets to knock quietly on his sister’s door, one of the few that still shut all the way.
“Come in,” she answered cheerily, and he stepped inside.
Larkin was fourteen, exactly half his age this year, though the gap between them had always felt wider. Their mother liked to joke that she’d mixed up her aspirin and her birth control pills, but Logan had always suspected his mother got pregnant on purpose, hoping the presence of a newborn baby in the house would defuse the increasingly violent confrontations between father and son.
It worked—for a while. Cole Bullock was infatuated with his little girl, and that he never so much as raised his voice to her was about the best thing Logan could say for the man’s character. But within a few months, tensions rose again. Logan’s increasing size and strength made him ripe for provocation in Cole’s eyes, while at the same time Logan became more inclined to fight back. Their brawls were regular and intense, leaving both of them injured and fuming, yet every time his father’s fist connected with his face, Logan reminded himself he could take it better than his mother—or, God forbid, little Larkin.
Thankfully Cole’s reverence for his daughter lasted until the end of his messy life. If anything, her juvenile arthritis diagnosis at age six made him treat her even more like a princess—while, in the absence of his son, he let his unspent wrath drift away in the white curls of meth smoke.
Not that Logan had been there to help, he thought bitterly—but he shoved his self-disgust to the back of his mind as Larkin smiled up at him from her desk.
“Hey, big brother. Did you have fun in town?”
“I had a productive trip to town,” he clarified. “Sorry about dinner.”
Larkin frowned. “What about it?”
“Mom said—never mind. How’s the homework?”
“All done. Just working on my history project.”
“Need any help?”
She shook her head, russet-brown strands loosening from her ponytail. “I’m good. Thanks for the offer, though.”
He nodded, hesitating beside her chair, sweeping his gaze around the room as if there might be something he could fix—some way for him to be useful.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he told her instead, rapping his knuckles against her desk before he walked out, easing her door closed behind him.
Logan made his way down the narrow hall to his own small, square room. His father had ripped the door off its top hinge more than a decade ago, so he propped it closed as best he could and added it to his growing list of urgent chores.
He shucked off his boots and stretched out on the single bed, crossing his arms behind his head. The degree to which this space was unchanged unnerved him every time he stepped inside. Dents and scuffs on the walls reanimated fights he’d let fade into the haze of memory. The old, mismatched furniture, threadbare sheets, and closet full of clothes with other boys’ names written on the tags brought back the financial insecurity he’d long left behind. On top of the wardrobe a cluster of academic certificates and sports trophies gathered dust, road signs he’d barely glanced at other than to assure himself he was heading in the right direction on his journey out of this awful house.
Logan turned onto his side, the bed creaking as he focused on the picture frame resting facedown on the unsteady card table where he’d done his homework. He hadn’t seen the photo behind the glass in ten years, but he knew every detail of every inch.
Him and Amy in their prom formalwear, standing in front of the high school. He wore jeans and a borrowed suit jacket that was too small, his wrists sticking out like a scarecrow. Amy refused to buy a new dress for the occasion, insisting it was all a waste of money—mostly to make him feel better about not being able to take her out to dinner, rent a limo, or even pay for her ticket. She’d shown up in a knee-length yellow sundress and dusty boots with a wildflower boutonniere she’d handpicked on her family’s ranch, her dark hair loose over her shoulders.
He couldn’t remember who’d taken the photo—he couldn’t remember almost anything about that night except how beautiful Amy was, that she was vibrant and playful and his. That’s why he’d shoved the picture in a cheap, drugstore frame—not because of where they were or how they were dressed, but because while he looked at the camera, Amy looked up at him, her smile secretive and adoring, her arm around his elbow so tight it seemed like she never wanted to let him go.
Which is exactly what she did, he thought with a groan, rolling over to stare at the chipped paint on the wall.
That summer his life at home was at its absolute worst. All of his friends were bound for college, but he hadn’t been able to cobble together enough scholarship money and was facing another year in his father’s house, working whatever jobs he could find to make up the shortfall. Cole’s drug addiction and his violence were escalating, taking aim at his son whenever he could find him.
Logan had existed in a constant state of misery, feeling selfish and guilty every hour he spent away from the farm, and literally fighting for survival every minute he was home. He was lost and desperate, and Amy was his only respite. Amy who drove out to the Bullock homestead to spend time with him, Amy who plodded the streets of Last Stand handing his resume to anyone who’d take it, Amy who smoothed ointment on his raw knuckles and put ice on his swollen eye and kissed the top of his head and promised him everything would be okay.
Not two weeks later, on the Fourth of July, she accepted her barrel-racing ribbon at the Last Stand Rodeo, marched out of the arena and into the bleachers, headed straight toward him—and then draped herself in the lap of the friend by his side, giving him a long, open-mouthed kiss that suggested the two of them had crossed the line he and Amy still hadn’t breached.
To this day he didn’t understand what changed. He’d begged her to explain at the time, but she’d turned cold and callous, a cruel, calculating version of the girl he’d loved. She’d told him outright that she cheated on him, that she didn’t want him anymore, and although she stopped short of admitting to losing her virginity with this other guy, she didn’t deny it, either.
He had a hefty list of injuries from ten years in the military, but not one hurt as much as the moment Amy Star turned her back on him to walk toward another man. The next morning he’d driven his father’s truck to the army recruiting office, nodded along without hearing a word of the pitch, and signed the contract with numb fingers. Two days later he was on his way to basic training, and he didn’t set foot in Last Stand again until last week.
Which was his choice, he reminded himself. Shortly after he left his mom finally went to the police for a restraining order, and for the first few months he was away he was confident she was safe. But then she started violating the order herself, meeting his dad in town, and then inviting him over to the house before letting him come home for good. Logan decided he preferred actual war to the one that would rage if he went back, so he didn’t. Not for Christmas, not for birthdays, not for the funeral.
And now here he was, in a place that was so familiar yet so different. He supposed that went for him, too. He wasn’t the brokenhearted, sorrowful boy who’d left—although he wasn’t entirely a new man, either.
Seeing Amy tonight had proven that.
Logan sat up abruptly, shoving his hand through his hair. He didn’t care that she’d gotten even more beautiful, or that he could’ve sworn he saw something soft and delicate glittering behind the anger in her dark eyes.
Amy had taken everything from him—his home, his family, his ability to trust, his willingness to love. He’d be damned if he got sucked in again.
No, he decided, rising to his feet. There was no future for him and Amy Star—not as friends, not even as tensely polite acquaintances. He intended to give her a wide berth, and to keep their paths far from crossing. He’d keep his head down, focus on saving the farm and supporting his family, and laying the foundation for the rest of his life.
This town was big enough for the both of them, surely.
Wasn’t it?
End of Excerpt
