Page 149 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
“How the hell would I know?” I step up and toss the horseshoe closer.
“Better.” Dean pops a bottle cap from his beer off the edge of someone else’s table.
“She usually weaponizes any dirt she gets. This time? Silence.” Levi throws and sends his horseshoe sailing in a perfect arc toward the stake.
It lands with a solid thunk, knocking my horseshoe off the metal post.
“Shit. Come on.” Dean spews a mouthful of beer on Bronx.
“Bro!”
“It’s been a long couple of days,” I say. “If you don’t recall, y’all abandoned me with her.”
“Oh, we remember.” Levi twirls the horseshoe.
“That was some Faye and Wilma shit right there,” I accuse him.
“They have a knack for it.” Levi glances over at his wife. “The love thing. They’re spot on, Hart. Even when you don’t want to believe them.”
“Don’t even start.”
Ever since Levi found his true love, he thinks the matchmakers aren’t full of shit. Hell, all my brothers are believers.
But let me tell you, the matchmakers are full of shit.
And I don’t want to discuss my love life with him. Not when he got his Fox. Not when he stood up against our pa and the entire fucking town for her.
“I’m done.” I toss the last horseshoe and listen to Dean lose it.
Competitive idiot.
I’m too antsy to sit, so I lean against our abandoned table, tip my hat down, and stare at her. I don’t care who notices.
Natalie slides into a seat next to me.
Maybe I do care because my eyes shift away.
“Weird, huh?” She doesn’t elaborate right away; she simply sets her drink on the table and follows my previous gaze. “Two people in the same room pretending they don’t see each other.”
“Guess that’s how it goes sometimes.” I glance at my beer. “People get good at pretending.”
“You’re not wrong there.” She lifts her drink, and I clink my glass against it before taking a chug.
“I’ve been holding onto something that doesn’t belong to me.” She reaches into her pocket and sets an old Discman on the table in front of me.
I recognize it right away.
“How do you have this?” I rub my thumb over the initials I carved in the back.
Not my initials—hers.
“She might have thrown away the book, but she didn’t throw this away.”
My eyes snap up to Natalie. “What do you know about the book?”
Her eyebrows hike upward. “That it’s not just hers.”
“She told you?”
