Page 9 of The Last Promise You Made

“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.

Chapter Four

Gia

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