Page 3 of Between Two Thorns

***

Rose seized the first distraction her green eyes caught out the window. “Hey look, it’s a sign.” She forced a chuckle to sell it, then turned promptly to face her passenger window and end the elongated silence with Fred.

The neon sign flickered dimly, but in the middle of nowhere it might as well be a signal fire. ‘Bone & Barrel’ was scrawled in curling red font across the grossly yellow rectangle—like a blinking caution light.

Rose leaned against the glass, her gaze drawn down the tall post of the sign, to where the ghastly hue was catching the edges of a woman’s silhouette.

The redhead risked a look back in to the truck cabin at Fred. “Do you see her?” She gestured, trying to pull his sulking stare away from the road before he missed the sign. “Do you think she’s okay?”

Even barely visible, it was obvious that the woman couldn’t keep her balance. Her long hair was all over her face. She took another teetering step towards the Bone & Barrel sign, like she wouldn’t or couldn’t lift her feet higher than a few inches off the dirt, just shambling along. Rose worried at once that this stranger wouldn’t be upright for much longer.

“Looks more than okay to me,” Fred said, with another of those stupid snorts through his nose. “Like she’s already had a good time tonight.”

Something…chilly tingled up Rose’s spine. “Pull over,” she reached behind her, tapping his rigid arm with the back of her hand.

“What? No, we’re almost there.” He grunted, steering his wheel away from the side of the road the woman was on.

Rose grabbed his arm, but Fred jerked it away.

“She’s out here stumbling around drunk; she gets what she gets,” And she heard the snap of his gritted teeth as he spoke.

Her hand dropped from his arm at once, hiding the face of confusion that quickly turned to revulsion.

Rose’s eyes followed the woman as the truck eclipsed her and continued on—because she didn’t want to look at Fred as much as she wanted some sort of confirmation that the stranger was alright. She stumbled into the sign’s post as Rose watched, and something in the nineteen-year-old’s gut clenched.

But, a familiar feeling of helplessness sat heavy in her stomach as she watched until the woman’s silhouette disappeared. Her determination to tell the jerk she’d been saddled with off was renewed—after she found a new ride home.

The woman was gone from sight, and neither Rose or Fred could see her stumble back from the collision with the post. Or her attempt to ram into it again.

On the third futile attempt, the woman’s arm dropped from her body…and began to crawl its way up towards the flashing neon sign.

Bone & Barrel

Rosetriedtokeepthe woman in sight, twisting around in her seatbelt until the sign was too far away to make anything out—leaving the birthday girl totally unprepared for Fred to suddenly jerk the wheel and send the truck careening off the left side of the road.

She would have slid right across the bench seat and into him, if it wasn’t for her death grip on the ‘oh shit’ handle.

“Dude, did you almost drive past it?!”

The brunet had just opened his mouth, probably with his usual complaint about Rose calling him dude—which everyone else on the Ranch called each other, even though more than half of them were women—when Rose preempted him with a gasp.

Bone & Barrel was a burned down, rebuilt, and added on to ramshackle of a place in the middle of desolate southern Arizona.

To Rose Woods, it was Heaven on Earth.

Cars clustered together in an unlined, unpaved parking lot. The wind swept up beer cans, billowing them around like tumbleweeds and illuminated drink logos shook to the beat of music.

And it was perfect.

‘Paradise’ might as well be scrawled in harsh red neon above the blacked-out window, where it said lite beer.

Rose hesitated at the door handle-less door, before she stepped up onto the concrete block that bridged the gap between the threshold and the dirt.

She brushed off her denim shorts—tugging them down by their fraying hems. Maybe she’d cut them just this side of too short. But they were good, and showed off her assets… asset, unlike the pink tank top. She’d wanted something just a little more adult, maybe a lacy black since she couldn’t get away with red as a ginger.

But people always told her that pink suited her skin tone.

Rose’s second thoughts about her outfit made her utterly miss whatever the hell Fred was saying behind her as she hesitated back from the door.

---