Page 2 of Bolt To Me
A sound escaped her lips, sudden and uncontrollable. The laugh bubbled up from deep within her chest, raw and freeing. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but it was no use. The sound kept coming, rising into the air like a lunatic hymn.
Carli Santana had just become Willow Creek’s latest scandal. And sweet Jesus, it felt good.
She tilted her face toward the sun, let it burn away the remnants of who she’d been pretending to be. The genteel bride. The good daughter. The woman who smiled and nodded, saying yes because it was easier than explaining why everything in her body screamed no. She was done with easy.
And maybe, just maybe, she was finally ready to figure out what came next, even if it meant walking barefoot through a wild Texas thunderstorm to find it.
Whiskey In A Wedding Dress
The Dusty Spur wasn’t exactly known for subtlety. It was the kind of bar that wore its grit like a badge of honor. Its hardwood floors were scratched, the walls paneled in beer signs, the stale scent of stale choices permeated the air, and the jukebox hadn’t updated its playlist since the early 2000s. Neon glowed at every window like a fever dream in Bud Light blue and Corona gold, buzzing softly beneath the tin ceilings and warping the shadows. The air inside was thick with fryer grease, the ghost of a hundred Camels and Marlboro Reds, and the sharp bite of whiskey that clung to the rafters like it was holding its breath.
Cory Hayes hadn’t planned to stop in. Hell, he hadn’t planned on being in Willow Creek longer than a day. Drop in, check on his brother, and maybe grab a sandwich from the diner if he was feeling nostalgic. But the old roads had a way of pulling him sideways, and somehow his truck had turned in toward the bar without asking permission. There was something about this dusty, sunburnt, too-small-for-its-own-secrets town that curledaround your ribs and held on tight, even when you thought you’d left it behind for good.
Which was why he was now nursing a Lone Star on a cracked leather barstool, elbows resting on a wooden surface worn smooth by decades of elbows before his. He let the beer sweat onto his fingers, cool and wet and grounding, as he tried not to remember how many bad decisions he’d made in this very spot. How many kisses pressed against that old, outdated jukebox. How many girls whose names he didn’t recall but whose perfume he probably would.
The jukebox moaned out an old George Strait ballad, slow and aching in the steel-guitar rhythm of memory. He half-smiled and took another drink. The last thing he needed was a stroll through the ghosts of his teenage libido. That was until the door swung open, and everything shifted.
She walked in like a storm in slow motion, barefoot, wild-eyed, radiant in the most chaotic way imaginable. And wearing a full damn wedding dress complete with wilted flowers around her wrist and her hair done up in some expensive do that showed off the long line of her sun-kissed neck.
The bar fell silent, sound pulled out of the room like a vacuum. Even the jukebox seemed to pause, letting the moment reverberate. Heads turned, and mouths fell open. Someone dropped a pool cue with a hollow clatter. The bartender froze mid-pour, whiskey overflowing the rim of a glass. A bachelorette party in the corner snapped out of their tequila-fueled giggles to gape.
Cory choked on his beer.
She stood framed in the doorway, backlit by the brutal Texas sun. Her gown, a sculpted thing of satin and stubbornness, was streaked in dirt, the hem torn and trailing remnants of thistle and gravel. Her curls were coming undone in glorious rebellion, tendrils escaping their pins like they weredesperate to breathe. Her veil was gone, her face flushed, her eyes wide but not lost. No, not lost. Reckless. Righteously unmoored. She looked like a saint dipped in scandal.
Carli Santana.
It took Cory a second to place her, but once he did, he felt the recognition like a gut punch. No one forgot the Santanas. Hell, the whole damn town had grown up orbiting that family in one way or another. He hadn’t seen Carli in years, not since back when she was just Luke’s kid sister with sharp elbows and a sharper mouth, always hollering at the boys down by the lake, daring them to race her across the water while she cannonballed off the dock without so much as a countdown. She used to wear cutoff jeans and scuffed sneakers, along with a perpetual look of dare-me. The girl had been all spitfire and scraped knees.
But this? Oh hell in a handbasket. THIS was something else.
She moved through the bar like she owned the damn place, despite the whispers starting to stir like wind through dry brush. Carli didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. She just marched to the bar in a gown worth more than most people’s monthly mortgage, trailing dirt and tension, and slapped her hand down on the counter like she was ordering vengeance.
“Whiskey,” she said, voice sharp as a broken bottle. “No rocks. No lecture.”
The bartender blinked, then nodded like a man who knew better than to argue with a woman who looked like she’d just committed a felony in heels. Or in this moment, in Carli’s case, bare feet. “You got it, Miss Santana.”
The first shot hit the bar with a dull clink. Carli downed it without ceremony, the liquid fire catching in her throat, making her eyes water and her chest rise. She winced. “Another.”
Cory watched her from two stools down, one brow cocked, caught somewhere between awe and amusement. Therewas something magnetic about watching a person unravel so boldly. No shame, no script. Just raw nerve and adrenaline wrapped in white satin and chiffon.
She noticed him watching. “What?” she snapped, eyes narrowing.
He raised both hands in mock surrender, a lazy grin sliding into place like a favorite pair of boots. “Didn’t say a word.” He pushed his cowboy hat back a bit with the mouth of his beer bottle, his lips twitching.
“But you were thinking it.”
“Thinking you’ve got guts,” he said. “And maybe a mild concussion.”
Her glare was a thing of beauty, especially when recognition crossed her face like wildfire across the prairie. “Cory Hayes.” She snorted. “Of course it’s you.”
He leaned back against the bar, letting his beer dangle from his fingers. “I’m flattered you remember.”
“Oh, I remember.” Her tone was dry enough to start that prairie fire. “I remember every dumbass stunt you pulled in high school. I remember the fireworks incident. And the time you tried to impress that college girl by riding a stolen llama through the town parade.”
He winced. “Okay, fair. But in my defense, the llama had a great sense of direction.”
She didn’t smile. Not yet. But the tension in her shoulders eased just a fraction, like some invisible string had slackened. The second shot appeared, and this time she sipped it slower, letting the burn settle deep in her bones. “You ever run away from a wedding, Hayes?” she asked, eyes still on the glass.
