Page 116 of Westin

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

They go down, one after the other. In the distance, police sirens wail. They pull around me in a circle, and an officer carries me off the scene. My father is on his back, blood soaking his jeans. His eyes are open, so I can tell he’s alive.

I should be screaming. I’m twelve years old.

But, as my mother tells it, I don’t make a sound. I don’t say a word for a week until my father gets out of the hospital and comes home. In true fashion, my father never speaks about it after the police let us know what happened. It was a freak accident, a dispute over drugs. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A one in a million mistake. One that leaves me forever altered.

I learn something that day: my father is the biggest, strongest man I know, and he can’t protect me. No one can. So, I practice, in the heat, in the cold. I learn to fight with a knife, a gun, and my bare hands.

Most of all, I learn to keep it all behind a mask. Because if those men had thought I was capable of killing them, they’d have shot me too.

NOW

Gunslinger.

The word moves like a whisper on the wind. It’s still a mockery. The gunslinger can shoot a tin can with the sun in his eyes, off the back of a running horse.

But he can’t keep his woman safe.

Rage at myself courses through my veins. I’m my father’s son; I’m not an angry man. I don’t raise my voice or leave broken things in my wake.

No, my rage is precise. It hits its mark.

I’ve fucked around long enough, and Diane was hurt because I can’t accept who I am. It’s time to start taking what I want, consequences be damned.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DIANE

I move our things into the primary bedroom. It’s enormous, and the bathroom off the side has a big, round tub. The best part about it is the window seat that looks out over the back field. I climb into it, wrap myself in a blanket, and watch a group of deer scavenge in the snow as the sun sets.

Maybe tomorrow, I can bring them hay.

Westin went back out after a quiet lunch at the kitchen table. We haven’t spoken much since our conversation the other day. I hope I didn’t cross a line we can’t come back from.

Downstairs, the door opens, and Billie’s nails click on the floor as Westin tells her to go lay down and his steps move up the stairs. The primary bedroom is at the top, and he pauses just outside the door. It pushes open, and he steps inside.

My stomach flips. He looks especially good today, maybe because he just got a haircut. I like how the edges are shorter. It makes me want to run my fingertips through them.

“Are we sleeping here now?” he asks.

“I like that the bathroom is right off the bedroom,” I say.

He nods distractedly and starts unfastening his shirt. Maybe I went too far moving his things into the dresser. I didn’t touch thecloset, though. I follow him with my eyes, and his face doesn’t change as he puts his clothes in the basket and goes to shower.

I curl up against the pillow. This bed has red flannel sheets, and they’re cozy enough that I’m in just a blue slip. He bought it for me, and I wear it because…because I want him to look at me and be pleased.

Maybe I’m too prideful to admit it, but I want to please him.

It makes me feel good.

My mind drifts back to the contract I signed. I stretched the truth when I said I read it, but before he finds out, I’ll go over every word.

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