Page 1 of Forever Wild

Chapter one

Bryn

“Take any longer and our balls are going to turn blue,” my sister Kelsey yells from the next tee box, where she and her friends are waiting for me. I heft the golf bag onto my shoulders, and the straps immediately dig into my skin. Relishing the warm sun on my face, I make my way over to the group. The course looks exactly the same as when I used to caddie here as a teen. Luckily, today I’m carrying my own bag rather than schlepping around someone else’s.

Developed in an old cow pasture, Wild Bluffs Country Club was built on the sand dunes that surround Wild Bluffs, Colorado. With its golf holes enveloped by a natural grass rough, you have a hard time finding golf balls if your shot isn’t straight down the fairway.

I spent many an hour searching for members’ lost balls, working to get a better tip as a teen. Even at that age, I knew college wasn’t going to pay for itself.

Today is different, though. We’re here for the 32nd birthday party of my oldest sister, Kelsey. The music is blaring—spurred by our mutual friend Becca’s recent breakup—and our group is the only one still out on the course. The rest of Kelsey’s friends, along with a couple of groups of golfers who flew in for a weekend of fun, gave up after nine holes and headed to the bar for food and drinks.

“When you see my face, hope it gives you hell,” I sing along under my breath, loving that Becca is fueling her angst with 2000s pop.

I adjust my stance and take a few practice swings before putting down my Titleist 4 golf ball on the tee. Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply and then launch the ball through the air. It soars but slices right into the rough between our hole and the one next to it.

I swear under my breath. The sun is too bright to follow the ball. It’s definitely somewhere between the second or third yucca clump, right?

Why did I let Kels talk me into a bottle of wine each last night? It wasn’t even her birthday yet.

Making my way through the sandhills, I search for my ball with my 7-iron, hoping to get out of the weeds before finding any rattlesnakes. Spotting a Titleist approximately where mine landed, I quickly hit it back into the fairway where the other girls had all managed to find their tee-shots.

As I follow its trajectory, I suddenly hear the thud of a bag being set down and somehow know it wasn’t my ball that just flew off.

Oops.

Turning around, I see a dark-haired man standing there, looking in disbelief at the ground. I slowly approach him and see my Titleist 4 golf ball lying next to his feet, complete with the small penis Izzy drew on it this morning.

“So you know how to mark a ball, you just don’t know how to use the mark to identify your ball?”

Looking into his face, I can’t help but cringe a bit at the bitterness in his voice, despite being pleasantly surprised by the fact that I am actually looking up at a man for a change, a rarity at five feet, ten inches.

“Oh. Shoot. I’m playing a Titleist 4 too, and I wasn’t paying enough attention, I guess. Yours was right over there.” Recognizing how ridiculous I look pointing at the spot he had clearly just seen me hitting from, I quickly lower my arm and glance at his face again.

In addition to being tall, this man is all kinds of eye candy. He clearly hits the gym on a regular basis, if how tight his white, collared shirt is pulling across his chest is any indication. His dark brown hair matches a thick beard.

Don’t I know him from somewhere? I’m usually pretty good at matching faces with names, and there is something about his dark green eyes that seems familiar. Maybe the facial hair is throwing me off.

Would it be inappropriate to ask if he has a beard all the time?

He crosses his arms, the movement drawing my attention to his defined biceps. “Sure, well, a lot of good that does me. It’s still a stroke. Maybe pay more attention next time you and your sorority sisters decide to use Daddy’s golf membership, okay?”

Definitely an inappropriate time to ask about the beard, then.

“Excuse me?” I feel my eyebrows shoot up under my baseball cap. “First, you’ve got to be joking about it being a stroke. You are out here”—I look around—“alone? You get to decide what number you write on your scorecard. Second, fuck you. This is my sister’s membership, you arrogant prick.”

I turn to point at Izzy, an almost six-foot-tall brunette decked out in Wild Bluffs Country Club attire, nicely proving my point.

The fact that she decided to curtsy with her hot-pink golf skort after her shot does not help my case, but, in her defense, it was a pretty damn good shot.

He pulls his baseball cap off and runs his hand through his hair, a gesture I find irritatingly handsome. “Ahh, yes. A real credit to the sport of golf, that one.”

“Again, fuck you. Just play my ball. It will be easy for everyone to identify as yours.”

Arms crossed warily across his chest, he shoots me a confused look.

“...because you’re such a dick?”

Continuing to search his face to figure out who this man is, I’m surprised when I see an almost smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

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