Page 87 of Bull Rush

“Maybe he was bored of life out East.”

“I’m sure he was real bored of fame, good money, and endless women.”

I glare at my brother for even bringing up the other women. I knew there were others, and I was fine with it. I didn’t expect him to stay celibate while we thought we were divorced. I certainly wasn’t. But I didn’t need to dwell on them.

“And that reaction right there tells me everything I need to know about how you feel about letting him walk.” Bo sits back in his seat with a self-satisfied smirk.

The idea of Ramsey leaving after this makes my heart twist and my lungs clench, almost like I can’t get a breath. The thought of him now, with someone else after the last few weeks we spent together—well, that makes me imagine setting things on fire. Namely his clothes and his bike and half the things I’d saved for him while he was gone. He’s mine now, and if he could force me to be his for ninety days on a technicality, well… two could play that game.

“Is he thinking about leaving?” I ask, trying not to sound as worried as I feel. I haven’t exactly been kind to him.

“I haven’t discussed it with him. I don’t want to be in the middle of you two any more now than I did before. But I can’t imagine he is. All he talks about is keeping you safe. You know, after his parents…”

“I know,” I respond sharply. I knew better than anyone how much his parents’ deaths—especially his mother’s death—rattled Ramsey to his core. He’d been sweeter and more carefree before it. Always with a joke, always a laugh about something. Finding his parents like that had extinguished almost all of the light he had in his soul. It had broken him in a way nothing seemed to be able to glue back together again—not therapy, not the ranch, not me… not even football—his first real love.

“Then you know as much as I do about the state of his mind. Probably more.”

“Does anyone really know his mind?” I shake my head, staring out at the water as a fisherman in waders wanders deeper in on his next cast.

FORTY-TWO

Hazel

“I needyou to listen to me, Hazel. This is serious.” Curtis had been lying in wait for me when I got home from my brother’s today and is refusing to take the word no for an answer.

“Oh, I’m very serious, Curtis. I want you out. You lied to me repeatedly. If you need to get your stuff, do it quickly. Or if you give me an address, I can send it to you.”

“And what? You’re just going to let him stay here?” Curtis scoffs at the very idea of Ramsey.

“Let him? It’shisranch. He’s my husband.” I can’t believe we’re still covering basic facts.

“What happened to all the stuff about you loving me, and us being it for each other? The future we were going to have? None of that matters now?” He looks at me like I’m the one betraying him, and it makes my blood boil hotter.

“What happened is you lied to me,” I say through gritted teeth.

“What happened is he bribed you into sleeping with him, and now he’s got you so twisted up you can’t remember all the reasons he ruined your life. You’re distracted by the money. We can make our own. We’re good together.”

I slam the pot down on the counter. I won’t even dignify the implications, especially not given how enthusiastic he was about the arrangement himself.

“Where were you all this time? Not Vegas.”

“I can explain all that, I was… I’m working on a secret project, and I couldn’t share details with you. It’s all undercover. But if it’ll change your mind, I’m willing to risk it. I’ll tell you.” He bargains with me as if he has any kind of leverage in this situation. The only thing he has right now is his life, and he’ll lose that too if Ramsey comes home and finds him in this house again.

“A secret project? Undercover? What are you even talking about? You act like you’re FBI or CIA or something.”

“Not quite.” He says it with an air of authority I’m positive he doesn’t have. Curtis was—or at leastI thoughtCurtis was a lot of things—patient, thoughtful, pragmatic. But not once did I ever peg him for having any of the required personality traits to pull off being an undercover agent of any kind. So I have to smother the scoffing laugh that wants to bubble out.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m… I’m…” he falters, looking around the room like he’s desperate to tell me anything but the truth. “I’m trying to recover something that was lost. Something that’s very important to people who are not the kind of people you want to cross, Hazel. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this. And I promise you that the Stocktons are.”

“Is that why you were in the pole barn? And in the field with a metal detector? Who were you arguing with at a motel a fewmonths ago?”

He blinks rapidly for a moment, shock coming and going from his face before he rights himself. He didn’t expect me to know those things. Apparently, he thinks my brothers are dull just because they’re from a small town.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I want answers. Now.

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