Page 115 of Burned & Bound

CHAPTER 80

jackson

Not hearing from Westwas fucking killing me. Not only had he ignored my texts but he also sent all my calls to voicemail. I spent the night worrying. Was he okay? Has he relapsed? Was he just done with me? Fuck, I even contemplated texting Mickey, but that was a desperate move.I wasn’t a desperate man. Yet anyway.

I pushed thoughts of West out of my head as I approached the restaurant where I planned to meet my girls. It wasn’t my first time in Reno, and we had a brunch place. They had a pre-game plan, I just had a plan to sit back and make sure none of them did anything too fucking stupid.

Were the buckle bunnies my first choice of tour partners? No. But most of the girls were young—practically babies enjoying the country spirit of things. They were also gullible as shit, and while most of the riders were good men, they were still men. I hated watching the girls get taken advantage of, used and discarded, or treated like shit.

It was a hell of a lot harder to come at a six-foot-two cowboy with that alpha male bullshit than it was a buckle bunny. They were good girls who deserved respect. I was just there to make sure they got it.

“Jackson!” My name was about all the warning I got before a five-foot-one tank barreled into me, throwing her arms around my waist. For something so fucking tiny, Darla Wilson had a hell of a tight grip.And a hell of a right hook but that was a story for a different time.

“Woman!” I exclaimed. “I can’t fucking breathe when you squeeze me like that.”

She stepped back, beaming up at me for all of two seconds before punching me in the shoulder.

“Ow!” I snapped. I didn’t have to pretend as I rubbed my shoulder. “That fucking hurt. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Why the hell didn’t you swing on by last night to say hi?” Her accent was as heavy as the judgment on her pretty face. I did my best to glare at her—make her uncomfortable—but after almost five years of friendship, I had little effect on her.

“I was seeing you today! Right now!” I said, gesturing to all of me as if she needed the reminder.

“We got a few new girls, cowboy.” She crossed her arms as I scowled. While her presumption was that it was my response to her statement, I was frowning at the nickname. It suddenly didn’t sound right unless West was saying it.

“All right, pretty girl.” I matched her stance. “Tell me who we got.”

This was routine for Darla and I. Darla had made being a buckle bunny her thing—God bless her. She’d shown up when she was eighteen years old and just kept showing up every year. Where a lot of other girls came and went, she stayed.

But Darla wasn’t just a buckle bunny. She was also a barrel racer and a damn good one. She just never talked about it. Why was beyond me.

“So, Opie, Sutton, Willa, and Wren are back this year.”That didn’t surprise me.The four of them were consistent faces around the rodeo—college girls on summer vacation. While they didn’t go to every event, they went to as many as they could. “But they also brought a friend of theirs with them this year.Birdie.”

“Oh?” I cocked a brow. The way Darla said her name piqued my interest. “Do we not like Birdie?”

Would I raise a little hell because my favorite girl didn’t like someone?Absolutely.

“Birdie uses more hair product in one day than I use in a whole damn year,” she retorted, making me laugh. “It don’t move! Tell me why her hair don’t move, Jackson! Who in their right mind wants that?”

But all I could think about was the fact that West used the same bar of soap on his hair as he did his body.

Fuck. I had to focus.

“I don’t know, pretty girl,” I said. I draped an arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Why don’t you and me go on in there, get something to eat, and judge the hell out of her hair?”

“Are we bad people, cowboy?”

“Damn straight we are.”

Birdie’s hair didn’t fucking move. Not a single fucking strand. It had to be the eighth wonder of the world considering her hair went down to her ass.How the fuck was that comfortable?

“I wonder what would happen if someone lit a candle next to her head,” Darla whispered next to me, hiding behind the guise of biting into a biscuit.

“I don’t have the money to bail your dumbass out of jail, pretty girl,” I muttered under my breath.Why was this a common theme among the people I spent my time with?Between her and West, I needed a goddamn bail fund.

And there was West again, nudging his way from the back of my mind. Jesus fuck, I couldn’tnotthink about him. Every little thing sent me reeling back to West. It drove me a little crazy. Usually, I enjoyed hanging out with my girls, but right now, all I wanted was to talk to him.

“So, how does this work?” Birdie’s voice broke through my thoughts.Yeah, I was going to blame my lack of enjoyment on Birdie.Unfair? Probably. Was I still going to fucking do it? Fuck yes. “Cowboys are hot, and you’re—”

---