Page 16 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

I knew exactly who it was.

I tapped out a reply.

Max

How did you get my number?

Draven

Calm down. Lily gave it to me. So what part did you like best?

When you knocked me onto the ground on my front porch? I’d say the best part was fantasizing about getting you thrown in jail.

Really? You didn’t have fun?

My idea of fun is playing pool or chatting with friends. Not everyone’s a violence whore like you.

Well, you clearly liked some part of it. Your grey sweatpants seemed to think so.

Die, please.

Most people don’t act like that. Or react like that.

Like…?

Down to fight. You came at me, but you also bit me. Spit in my face. Seemed to enjoy an arm against your neck. All of that, and then the precum…

The phone suddenly felt like a live grenade in my hands.

There were two things at war inside me: my compulsive need to be honest all the time, and my own good common sense.

If I was being honest?

Yes. There were some things I liked about it.

I wasn’t a fighter, and it was true that I would never seek out violence. But the incident with Draven was the firstthrillingthing that had happened to me in…

In a very long time.

Forever, maybe.

My life had been simple, easy, and routine since the day I was born.

Bestens, Tennessee was all I knew.

I’d lived here for my whole life. I was 22, and I’d never been on an airplane. I’d been out of Tennessee on road trips, but only to Kentucky once, Georgia twice, and one school trip to a museum in North Carolina.

I’d gone to college only ten minutes from here at Tennessee North University before graduating last year with a marketing degree and no goddamn clue what to do with it.

For now? I was just a bartender. I liked a simple life, and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but there had been a switch flipped in my mind once Draven and I were getting physical, too.

Maybe I didn’t crave pure violence, but I did cravephysicality.

Back when I played hockey, I secretly liked when players on other times would try to fuck with me. I was a sweet person, but the moment someone actually got in my face?

I wasn’t backing down.

Ever.

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