Page 103 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

I gave Dom a look. “Never heard you be so sentimental.”

He smoothed back a lock of blond hair with his palm, glancing up at the shelves of liquor behind the bar, then back to me. I hadn’t been away from Dom for very long at all, but seeing him here made me feel like he was a relic of another lifetime for me.

“Well, I wanted to see you here,” he finally said. “And tell you that I think you might be able to come back to Montana within the month.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A month?”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Dom’s lips. “Sherman’s DUI is becoming public knowledge. He was busted for ecstasy,alcohol, and he had an illegal weapon in his car. Combine that with what you have on your dad?—”

“I don’t want to use the nuclear option unless I need to,” I said.

Dom frowned. “What more could you possibly need to save it for? Your dad is a serial cheater andalsoa cokehead, and the whole county thinks he’s squeaky clean.”

I looked down at the bar top, swirling my cocktail in its glass. “Ruining his reputation only further ruins the Lyons name for all of us, though. Either Dad and Bill Franklin cut me out of the company, and my own legacy, or… I toss a bomb into the whole thing and the Lyons family legacy gets ruined for all of us. It’s a shitstorm either way.”

Dom pulled in a breath. “It definitely is a shitstorm.”

My daddiddeserve to be known for who he really was.

I’d sat on his secret for almost an entire year now, knowing that I had a way to ruin his reputation. He knew. I knew. Dom knew. But nobody else did. It was like sitting on an active volcano, knowing I could make it erupt at any moment if I chose to.

But I hadn’t been able to pull the fucking trigger.

Even when he refused to budge. Even when all of his best friends—sheriffs, judges, lawyers—would share cigars with him late into the night.

And when Bill Franklin apparently had my dad by the balls, telling him to cut me out of my goddamn legacy.

I took another sip of the whiskey cocktail, enjoying it more than I ever thought I would.

Legacy.

Why does it even matter?

Most people didn’t give a damn about it. But I’d lived my entire life being a Lyons first, and Draven second. As far back asthe first grade, other kids in classknewthe name Lyons. It was all around town.

To me, it had felt like being royalty.

And I wasbornto be a royal.

But in the same way seeing Dominic felt out of place, here, the idea of being wrapped up in being aLyonsseemed almost absurd now. In Bestens, for the first time, I'd experienced just being… me.

Draven.

And I never could have known there was something I could like about that, too.

Royalty in disguise. Or royalty who’d abandoned the throne.

“I still think the threat of it would be enough,” Dom told me. “Tell your father you’re going to use the info against him if he keeps himself wrapped around Bill Franklin’s goddamn finger.”

I sighed, leaning back on the bar stool, looking up at the pendant light hanging above me.

“Or I could sayfuck it all, never go back, and just stay here.”

Dom laughed like I’d just said I was planning on moving to Jupiter. “Yeah. Right. Stay here and pretend you’re one of these small-town Southerners, caring only about what type of tractor you drive. Or what Sally down by the cornfield said about Betty down by the dollar store.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Same shit we talked about back in Montana, just with less money involved.”

“What are you talking about?”

---