Page 7 of Duke
“But?”
My heart dips. “How’d you know there was a but?”
“I’ve been staring at it all night.” She releases the dart. Twenty points. “You’re a Wrangler guy, huh?”
Laughing, I finish my beer. “Just like my dad.”
“He was a cowboy too?”
I like how she’s the one asking questions now. Is she curious about me like I’m curious about her?
She throws another dart. It lands on the board—another twenty—but I feel it land in my chest too. Aim precise, needle puncturing my breastbone.
“Yep. Just like his daddy and his daddy before that.”
Wheeler arches a brow. “That’s quite the legacy to uphold.”
“Cash is the one who shoulders most of it. The rest of us, we just gotta fall in line. Keep everything running nice and smooth.”
“You’re smooth.” Her eyes narrow. “But you’re different too, aren’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re chatting up a stranger in the corner.” She glances across the bar. “But your brothers are with people they seem to know. Even your twin.”
She’s not wrong. Cash and Mollie are canoodling on the dance floor. Wyatt is cozying up to Sally underneath a neon Miller High Life sign, and Ryder is doing tequila shots at the bar with Colt Wallace. I’m close with Colt, but he and Ryder are super tight. Sawyer’s the only one missing. Always the responsible parent, he’s at home putting his three-year-daughter, Ella, to bed.
I blink, feeling disoriented for a minute. Like I’m standing in the middle of a moving kaleidoscope, the familiar shapes and sounds around me shifting into an unfamiliar landscape.
Wheeler noticing I’m different isn’t objectively a big deal. But it’s a big deal to me. As a twin especially—Ryder and I were born ten minutes apart, numbers four and five in the birth order—I always felt like I got lost in the shuffle of my brothers.
My parents loved the hell out of us, of course. But Mom and Dad had five kids in six years, and they didn’t have much help. Attention, and often patience, were in short supply. Especially when it came to those of us at the bottom. I think by the time my parents had me and Ryder, they were exhausted.
They definitely didn’t have the energy to deal with an annoyingly curious son who loved school but was lukewarm on chores around the ranch.
“I’m good at it,” I say. “Being a cowboy. When you grow up working cattle, hard not to be. I love a lot about the job. Being outside. Working with my family. There’s purpose in it.”
Wheeler looks at me from underneath the fringe of bangs that tickles her eyelashes. “It’s not your purpose, though. Or not your whole purpose.”
Yes. You get it.
You’re a fucking smokeshow, and I want to know everything about you.
I never could do anything halfway. Mom used to say I was impulsive. Dad called me wild, and now so does Cash.
They’re not wrong. But maybe they were wrong about my curiosity, my restlessness, being a bad thing. A character flaw I needed to work on or change.
Then again, maybe I’m just delusional and a little drunk.
Whatever the case, I ain’t about to let this girl slip through my fingers.
“Always thought there’d be more.” I tip back my beer, even though there’s nothing left. Feels too soon to touch Wheeler, and I need a reason to keep my hands busy. Don’t want to scare her off by coming on too strong. “That the world would be bigger somehow. I hate the idea of getting stuck here forever.”
She nods, a soft look in her eyes. “I get that. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job—all the people I get to meet, the places I get to see. It’s the best education there is.”
“I loved school.”
“Nerd—”
