Page 63 of The Cowboy Complication

He’d had every opportunity to become more. Could argue he’d actually succeeded a couple of times. But then he got scared and backed off. Stepped into the delusion that things hadn’t changed. That they were still the same friends they’d always been.

False. Wrong. Incorrect. Negatory.

They weren’t friends. Might not ever have been. Not the way he tried to pretend they were.

They were always more. From that first time when he saw her laying there on the barn floor, a pile of goats surrounding her, he should have fucking known Isla could never be just his friend.

After years of chasing. Trying. Hoping. Wishing. What he’d been looking for—desperate to find—literally fell onto the floor right in front of him, and he’d refused to see it.

Refused to accept the truth.

Dropping his personal cell into the console, he let his head fall back against the rest. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

A call—possible burglary—came though, dragging him out of the pit of self-loathing he wanted to die in. Forcing him to put his miserable mind to something else.

The burglary turned into a foot chase, which turned into an apprehension, which ended with a career criminal, who thought it would be smart to break into a ranchers barn, threatening his life for being fast enough to catch him.

All in a day’s fucking work.

By the time they were wrapping up, it was past ten and he was ready to peel his skin off.

“You look like shit.” Grady strolled up, looking fresh as a daisy. “I take it you were the one who went after him when he ran?”

Looking down at his uniform he shrugged. “It was either me or Peters, and he’s even older than I am.”

“I heard that,” Peters called from where he was talking to the rancher who’d made the 911 call. “And I could have caught him faster than you did.”

“Only because you’re taller.” Cooper scowled, slapping at the bits of dried grass clinging to the dirt caking the vest strapped to his chest. “I had to take that dick down to the ground and it’s fucking muddy as hell out there.”

“Guess it’s a good thing your shift’s almost over.” Grady reached out to flick a bit of branch off his shoulder. “You won’t have to walk around like this for the rest of the night.”

No, but he’d still be walking around the rest of the night. Pacing the floors wondering what in the hell was going on at The Creekery while he wasn’t there.

“Since you’re headed in.” Grady checked his phone. “Maybe you could discreetly check on my wife. She and Isla went to have a couple drinks and I haven’t heard anything in a couple hours.”

A couplehours?

“I’ll do it now.” Cooper spun on one heel, forcing himself not to run back to his cruiser the way he wanted to.

“Discreetly,” Grady called after him. “I don’t want her to know I sent you there.”

“Got it.” He could be discreet. Could fly right under the radar. No one would ever know he was there. Not Evelyn. Not Isla.

He drove way too fucking fast back to town, pushing the limits of the law past their breaking point as he flew down the dark and deserted roads he’d been patrolling for over a decade.

When he finally pulled up in front of The Creekery, the pit in his stomach became a bottomless well. Cars lined the street and people milled around outside—a good indication the place was even more packed than it had been the night Isla went out with the girls.

He double parked—because fuck it—and cut through the crowd smoking and chatting on the sidewalk. As expected, he pulled the door open to discover The Creekery stretched to its limits. Every inch of the space was occupied by dumbasses in hats and boots.

Working his jaw from side to side, hoping to keep from grinding every tooth in his head down to the nub, Cooper started fighting his way through the crowd, shouldering a path aimed for the spot he most frequently saw the Bridge Bitches. Evelyn used to bring them here regularly, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume she’d choose a similarly located table when she came on her own.

But she wasn’t on her own tonight. Tonight she was with Isla, so they could be anywh?—

They were probably in the corner packed with horny cowboys jockeying for a closer spot.

Fuck.

He picked up the pace, throwing a few elbows as he shoved his way to the upper portion of the bar. He could practically smell the testosterone as he closed in. By the time he reached the edge of the gathering, his blood pressure was skyrocketing and he was two seconds away from losing his shit.

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