The gravel crunched as Wren started the truck, the red taillights glowing like dying embers as it pulled away, carrying Isobel out of reach.
Ryder stood there in the deepening twilight, chest heaving, hat dangling useless in his hands. Victoria lingered just feet away, smug and poisonous, her smile stretched thin as a razor’s edge.
“Well,” she drawled, her voice like honey laced with arsenic, “looks like the mighty Ryder Hayes just found out what it means when the bull don’t throw you—you throw yourself.”
Ryder didn’t answer. His knees felt weak, his whole world crumbling, the laughter of cicadas swelling again in the silence like a cruel, mocking chorus.
The gravel crunched under Ryder’s boots as he came down off the porch, his eyes hard as flint. Victoria stood there with her arms fo
