Page 110 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

The lights looked beautiful overhead. A dark night with the twinkling lights of the city below us. Somewhere down there, miles away, was Bestens. Everything I’d ever known and loved.

Everything that had seemed sostableuntil recently.

There was a tight feeling in my throat like there had been earlier, but I wasn’t crying. And the higher we got up into the air, with each increasing mile, I felt calmer.

Surrender.

Another thing Draven had been teaching me, without even trying.

There was so much I couldn’t control. So much I wasn’t aware of—like when I’d just wanted to share my videos online, never knowing what that simple desire could lead to.

I managed to doze off during the flight, my body resting up against Draven’s the entire time. His scent felt like a second home to me now, even though I knew that was just another naive thing about me. I was getting toousedto him. Needing him by my side. Needing his touch, his protection, his scent.

This is all going to go away, too.

My life had been nothing buttoo muchchange lately.

I picked at it in my mind like a hangnail I couldn’t ignore. I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. Pretend my life was as simple as it had always been. I didn’t want to think about the biggest inevitable change that was coming my way.

Draven was never meant to be permanently mine.

The plane started to make its descent, after I’d already made my reckonings with mortality and thought it through too many times:if I die, I’ve lived a good life. 22 ain’t so bad. People will know what I loved.

The wheels touched down and it was as if I’d been born anew.

“I didn’t die,” I told Draven as we waited to deboard the plane.

He smoothed my hair with his hand. Gentle dark circles had appeared below his eyes, and he looked calm in a way I wasn’t used to seeing.

“You lived.”

“And now I’m a person who has flown.”

“Do you feel different?” he asked. “Like you’ve lost your virginity?”

“I’m a new man. A wiser man,” I joked. “But mostly I just feel likeme, still.”

A black SUV picked us up. After driving for almost an hour, the driver pulled over to drop off Dominic in front of the nicest house I had ever seen in my life.

And then, not too long after, we pulled up in front of our destination.

And I realized I had a new standard fornicest house I’ve ever seen in my life.

I stepped out of the SUV and the first thing I felt was the air. It was nearly three in the morning in Big Sky, Montana, but no matter the time, it wouldn’t have felt like this back in Bestens.

It felt like we could almost touch heaven.

The mountains loomed dark in the distance, taller than any I’d ever known and already snow-capped even as summer eased into fall. The tension that had built up in my body over the past handful of hours—over the past manyweeks—seemed to drop away for a moment, and the muscles in my body relaxed.

Wind-worn rock framed the backdrop of Draven’s house. It smelled like rain-wet rock and sweetly floral.

House.

You couldn’t call it that. Not in any world.

It was hisestate, but really, it looked more like a resort, not a structure built for only one person. It was all stone and wood, sprawling over the land. Sconces glowed on seemingly everycorner of the house, and I realized that while Draven had been gone, his house certainly hadn’t been empty.

He had staff. There was already a man coming down the curved stone path toward us, ready to greet us as we arrived, even at three o’clock at night.

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