Page 1 of Between Two Thorns

Day Zero

MotherNature’swratherectedthe undead, and as usual, her timing really screwed a gal over.

Rose Woods just didn’t know how screwed she was, yet.

All she wanted was one night of rebellion, a little vacation from her family’s Dead Wood Ranch. Away from the stalls that needed to be mucked and the guests with attitudes that stank worse than the manure.

Horses were divas; tourists were worse.

Constant questions, more complaints disguised as questions, wondering why they had to do authentic horse ranch work when that was exactly what they had signed up for on the website.

Yes, you have to milk the cows, muck the stalls–and yes dammit, this pale redhead was about to tell you what to do in the Arizona desert.

See the freckles? She could handle it.

Rose stared at the constellation of sun marks across her face as she tried to do her makeup in the truck’s mirror. They were trendy, but they belonged to a lady much younger than nineteen. Still, she hadn’t wanted to cake on the foundation today. Not when she hoped to be sweating some of her make-up off.

Carefully, Rose brought the brown eyeliner right up to her green eye—just as the truck hit an invisible rut in the dirt road and both riders rattled around like a concussed brain in a skull.

“Sorry.” Fred muttered from the bench seat next to her, giving her a side eye that the redhead thought was distinctly un-sorry. Like her brunet buddy had sniffed a cowpie.

“No worries.” She forced a polite tone into her voice. “Thanks so much for driving the getaway car.” Rose gripped her elbow, stabilizing her hand to finish her wing.

Fred was a creep, but right now he was a creep doing her a favor. She could deal with the side eyes that lingered not quite at her face.

Even when they were trundling down a road that had no lights, was completely barren, and with barely a sign to be seen.

That was how roads were out here. Miles and miles of nothing, until you got to something, and that was everything.

Dead Wood Ranch was in the middle of nowhere, along with the town closest to them—a dusty little place on the map with ambitions to turn into a real tourist trap. Store fronts were being recovered with butterscotch-colored stucco and the wide wooden porches from old west movies. Walker Woods loved it, but then again, he was one of those old-timers that like to capture the past and put it up on a shelf; like ships in a bottle.

Rose shook her head to clear the thought and focused on the mirror. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about home tonight. Not the Ranch, not her father or her brother or even her beloved bees. Just the Bone & Barrel—the middle of nowhere college bar that was not anywhere near the actual nursing school.

It wasn’t the most picturesque landscape–it was virtually impossible to make out any details once the sun set beyond the orange sand. Nevertheless, Rose Woods fixated on this bar like a moth to a flickering neon light.

“It’s not like you need to put on more makeup, anyway,” Fred said, just barely loud enough to be heard over his truck bumping down the road. His words hung in the air like the stench of the cowpie he must constantly be sniffing, from the way his nose wrinkled and his lips curled.

Rose gave herself one last look over in the visor mirror with its tiny light. A subtle glimmer was around her eyes and lips added to her overall appearance. She hadn’t gone overboard with the makeup, unlike what she would have done for a drag show—which she had never done and would love to do.

“I think it looks fine.” Rose tilted her chin up, speaking to her own reflection. “I like it.”

“You mean guys will like it.” He scorned, lifting his hand to push his own greasy hair out of his face. How he wore a hoodie in this heat was beyond her.

Rose’s eyebrows furrowed and her mouth twisted at his familiar tone, but she caught herself before it registered on her face. She forced her features to smooth, holding his gaze with a neutral expression.

He helped her sneak off the Ranch. She could deal with his bullshit. Just for tonight. Back to real, boring, ordinary life when the sun came up in the morning.

She just had to hold her tongue a little longer than Cinderella.

But, you see, Rose Woods had this problem. Sometimes, she just couldn’t bite her tongue. She might just bite someone else.

“I hope they do. If they don’t, that’s not my problem.” She shut the mirror and sat straight up with a defiant roll of her shoulders.

Fred scoffed. Actually scoffed.

Asshole.

Rose must have been thinking that too loud, or it did show on her face, because she heard him sit up on the cracked vinyl seat, jeans scraping over the rips in the sunbaked material.

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