Page 125 of Double Bucked

I understand that word now. Goodbye.

This is a good bye. A wonderful bye. The best bye there ever was.

Goodbye, Riley Ransom.

Goodbye to your stupid jokes and your filthy clothes.

Goodbye to your crooked grin and your color-coordinated bandanas.

Goodbye to your need to always get in the last word.

Goodbye to that big, bleeding heart you wear on your sleeve.

Goodbye to the way Claire looks at you with those soft doe eyes.

Goodbye to the way she wrote about you in her diary with such painful longing.

Goodbye to the shadow of you that hangs over us every moment I’m with her.

Good. Bye.

But as I aim the gun directly at the back of Ransom’s skull…

A dragonfly flutters in front of my vision.

It hovers in the air. Buzzing. Its blue-green body flickers. Then it settles, landing on the muzzle of my gun. Its tiny legs cling to the silver metal.

Everything within me turns to glass. Thin. Cold. Glass. The kind of glass that might shatter apart at the slightest touch.

My dragonfly.

Ransom turns to face me. The dragonfly lifts and zips away.

Ransom’s jaw goes slack when he sees the eye of my gun. “What the hell?—?”

“Don’t move,” I tell him.

He goes still. I fix my aim and fire.

The pistol goes off with a crack. The bullet sinks into the soft dirt an inch from Ransom.

The leaves shudder with movement. A brown copperhead snake whips around and quickly slithers away, its diamond-studded body weaving through the autumn leaves as it goes.

Ransom’s body deflates with a sigh. “Y’don’t like snakes, huh?”

“I don’t like snakes,” I agree.

I slip the pistol back into my boot. I step over beside Ransom and point to the white ball beside him. “Are you going to get that?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He scoops it up. I hold out my hand, and when he takes it, I help him to his feet.

He dusts the dirt off his knees—a strange thing to do, considering his uniform is already covered in grass stains. “For a second there,” he says, “I thought you were going to kill me.”

I take him by the chin and tilt his head toward mine. Those brown eyes are electric when they meet mine. A hint of fear and…something else.

Not unlike being in the path of a copperhead.

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