Page 1 of Sawyer

CHAPTER1

Ava

HONKY-TONK HOTTIE

“There’sgonna be cowboys there, right?”

I may roll my eyes at my sister Bee’s ridiculous question, but I still smile. None of us have lived on our family’s small ranch outside Killeen for years now, but clearly our teenage obsession with the guys who worked our cattle hasn’t gone anywhere.

Despite the growing crowd that packs the sidewalks lining 6thStreet, Bee is busy applying lip gloss, peering into the tiny mirror tucked into her palm. She’s only a year and a half younger than me, but you’d think there was at least a decade between us for how much, ahem,energyshe has when it comes to seeking out the opposite sex.

“You would ask that.” I loop my arm through hers and give it a tug, the two of us narrowly avoiding a run-in with a slow-moving couple absorbed in sucking each other’s faces. “I haven’t been in Austin in years, so I can’t say. But it is a honky-tonk, so …”

“Who wouldn’t ask that?” Bee pops her lips before snapping the mirror shut with a succinctclap. “Cowboys are athingfor a reason. And that reason is?—”

“They ride like the motherfucking professionals they are.” My older sister Dottie smirks. “They also look really good in hats.”

“Reallygood,” Bee adds, dropping her gloss and mirror into the tiny bag slung over her shoulder. “There’s just something about a man who works with his hands.”

Dottie nods. “A man who knows what he’sdoingwith those hands.”

“They’re all yours, ladies.” I slow my steps to look up at the neon sign glowing above a nearby door. “I’m just here for the music and the whiskey. Bonus points if we get to dance too.”

“But if you have enough of that whiskey and just so happen to see a cute guy …” Bee nudges me with her elbow. “I mean, c’mon. Now that you’re getting back in the literal saddle, don’t you wanna get back in the proverbial one too?”

“No thank you.”

Mehis the word I use most often to describe my post-divorce sex life. While I have absolutely no interest in ever getting married again—being a wife once has cured me of the desire to ever do it again—I was open to having fun with someone new after my divorce was finalized a year ago.

Commitment is out. The freedom to do whatever the hell I want without worrying about a man’s needs or expectations is in.

Only the two tipsy hookups I had didn’t turn out to be very fun or liberating at all. They left me with hangovers from hell and the depressing sense that sex in my late twenties is just … not that great.

I have no regrets ending my marriage to Dan. Just like I have no regrets about becoming a mom. I’ve wanted to have kids for as long as I can remember.

But I hoped my sex life would get a boost. By the time we separated, Dan and I hadn’t slept together in over a year.

I wasachingfor sex. And even then, it was a disappointment. I just couldn’t be myself during those brief encounters. Couldn’t find my groove, I guess.

“Whatever. Third time’s a charm, right?” Dottie shrugs. “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.”

“I don’t want a prince. I want sleep.”

“Not even a prince in a Stetson? With a big?—”

“Bank account?” Bee finishes the thought.

I laugh. “Not even then, no. I will take a shot of Jim Beam with a beer back, though.”

Dottie nods. “Let’s manifest that shit. Both the Jim Beam and the cowboy prince, I mean.”

Bee holds up a finger. “I’m on it.”

I roll my eyes for what feels like the fiftieth time today. “Y’all, please,pleasedon’t.”

“We’re just fucking with you.” Wagging her brows, Dottie stops in front of a wooden door with a big brass handle shaped like a horse head. “Or maybe we’re not. You of all people could use some good old-fashioned stress relief. C’mon, y’all, let’s go have some fun.”

Dottie opens the door, and I step inside the infamous Blue Stallion. I’m immediately hit by the scent of stale beer and cigarettes, the smoke likely drifting in from the smoking patio that’s out back. The thump of a bass line echoes inside my breastbone. It’s a Chicks cover, one the band across the room is absolutely slaying.

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