My smile was huge as I stepped out of my car once I’d found a parking space at the bar. I figured that a ‘Bad Company’ song playing on the jukebox as I approached was a good omen. I loved most classic rock, but there was something about their discography that always pulled me back into my happier memories like a warm embrace.

The moment I opened the door, the cacophony of voices joined the song, and I slipped inside with a contented sigh. Owning a bar meant that this kind of atmosphere was a different kind of home for me. One that always made me feel comfortable.

It didn’t take long for Garrett to notice me. I had sent him a text before leaving the house, and knowing how long that journey took, he’d probably timed my arrival. Just another small thing that made my smile grow wider now that I was there. He looked good in his T-shirt and jeans combination, and I savored the view as I approached and shrugged off my thin summer jacket while leaning in to kiss him.

“Hi,” I sang as the bartender slipped a bottle of beer in front of me. My laughter rang out as Garrett pulled me between his legs and held me in a tight embrace.

“Hey. I’m sure glad you’re here.” That would have been nice to hear on any given day, but he meant that in more ways than one and that was reflected in his tone.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, wrapping my arms around him and rubbing his back. “What’s going on?”

“My ex is in town visiting,” he grumbled. “She’s a bit of a pain in the ass.”

“You wanna get out of here?” I asked quietly. “We can pick up a pack of beer and go to your place.”

“I’m not gonna get a better offer than that tonight.”

I barked out another laugh and wound my arms around his neck, reaching for the bottle that was sat next to me on the bar. I took a long pull and wiped my mouth with the back of my index finger, grinning down at Garrett affectionately.

“Do that again, and we won’t make it out of the parking lot.”

I lifted the bottle to my mouth, but he tugged it away and pressed his lips hungrily to mine. The thud of the bottle hitting the bar made my lips curl into a smile as he did the same. I’d had a great day after the craziness of that morning, and those jovial emotions had stayed with me. I could feel the warmth of emotion and passion as they burned through me pooling where my stomach was pressed against him.

“Is that a threat?” I finally asked, using my thumb to brush some of my lipstick from his bottom lip. “Or a promise?”

“Promise. I would take you here now if I weren’t so adverse to other men seeing you naked.”

“So greedy.”

“Fuck, yes. Now drink your beer like a lady so I can take you home and fuck you.”

“So demanding, too. You’re the full package.”

He met my eyes and locked them in, the deep brown holding me captive before he broke the spell by blinking. “That, and I want to get you as far from my psycho ex as humanly possible.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

I squeaked out a sound and shrugged. I could look after myself, but he was probably right about getting out of the bar sooner rather than later. The less attention was drawn to me, the better.

“Let me powder my nose, and we’ll go.”

“Hurry.”

“Consider it done,” I said, kissing his cheek as I grabbed my jacket and headed in the direction of the ladies room.

By some divine intervention, the restroom was empty when I got there, and I was finished in a second. When I flung the door to the stall out of my way, I rocked back on my heels with an intake of breath as the very reddened face of my old adversary, Libby, glared back at me with raw hatred.

“I know you,” she said in a strong twang that was just over the line of reality. She was putting the accent on for my benefit. She stared at me hard, and her lips twisted as she tried to make the mental connection. It seemed unfair that she was still so prevalent in my mind, while I was less than a blip on her radar. She’d made my life miserable in high school, and there she was, not recognizing me.

“Doubtful,” I replied in an even lie, slipping past her to wash my hands. I watched her profile in the mirror as I soaped up my hands and rinsed them off, and I thought I’d gotten away with whatever she had planned for me for barely a minute, but the sudden flutter of recognition and hatred that filled her aging face almost bowled me over, and I knew I’d finally been made.

Covering her mouth with her hand, Libby turned to the door and back to me as her other hand balled and released at her side. When she finally dropped her hand, her lips curled in disgust, and I finally began to catch up with what she’d already figured out.

She was the psycho ex.

“You’re Kay?” The words were followed by a maniacal laugh.

“You’re the psy… ex?” I countered, my heart dropping.

“Yeah, I am. I always knew you were a bitch, but this?”

“How was I supposed to know he was your ex? I thought you were married or something?”

It was a bit of a dig on my part as I was well aware she was also divorced, but there was no way I could have known that out of all the men in Childress, Garrett was her ex.

“I don’t give a shit about you having my seconds, bitch. It’s not the first time,” she said, raising her voice, her body leaning toward mine in anger. “But I still care about him, and what you’re doing to him is just sick.”

“What I’m doing?” I repeated confusion the only thing I was capable of offering her.

She sneered at me so coldly I could have sworn I was developing frostbite on my hands. She held it for a while before her sneer broke into a wave of bitter humor.

“Christ, you don’t know, do you?” She shook her head as gratification warmed the chill of her features. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes and giving her a reason to dig deeper and drag this confrontation between us out further than it needed to go. She was already having too much fun making me squirm. Whatever I didn’t know, she was about to have the distinct pleasure of telling me. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction and taking the bull by the horns, I moved to push past her and reach for the door.

“Uh, uh. You ain’t getting away that easy. And you sure as hell ain’t going to take this away from me. Believe me when I say you wanna hear this, Miki.”

“Don’t call me that.” I snarled, stepping back from her. The retreat was more for her safety than mine now because I was losing my temper. “Unless you want those unnaturally white caps knocked out of your mouth, say what you have to say and get the hell out of my way.”

“Congratulations on being the only other person besides me to fuck both of the Hill brothers.”

My ears started ringing in a deafening tintinnabulation, and the world shuddered to a halt around me as her words penetrated the haze of anger that had been protecting me from her callousness. All of the heat in my body seemed to drain away until a cold sweat broke out on my forehead and a shudder of horror danced down my spine. My knees buckled, and I stumbled, landing hard on the cheap tiles, my fingers locked on the counters that held the sink as though it were my only lifeline.

“Garrett?”

“Rett?” She laughed, shaking her head at me. “That’s right, sweetie. You’re fucking Dustin’s big brother, and boy is he gonna flip his shit when he finds out. The bitch who killed his brother, now warming his sheets. This is some soap opera shit, right here.”

I pushed from my position on the tile, barely making it to my feet before I hurtled toward the stall and emptied all the contents of my stomach into the bowl. All of it was somehow in tune with Libby’s cackle of laughter and glee. I crouched in front of the bowl and leaned back against the stall wall, panting for breath, but Libby wasn’t through with me yet. She was just getting started.

“Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it, Miki? Dustin would still be alive today if you’d stayed the fuck away. You’re the reason he’s laid up in a box with no future. You took all that away from him because you’re a selfish bitch. I bet that little bastard you lost wasn’t even his, was it?”

Before I was even aware that I’d moved, I was standing. Libby was on her ass, and my hand was throbbing in pain. I could take her bullshit, I could take her names and insults and lick my wounds later when I was alone, but insulting Holly—even not knowing she existed—was a huge no in my book. I was done listening to this woman. I was done with this town. Childress just wasn’t big enough for the two of us. I knew that now.

“When I tell him,” Libby said, her voice muffled as her hand cradled her jaw. “He won’t want anything to do with you. He blames you, you know? For Dustin dying—for being at your house that night, for sneaking him in. For luring him away from where he should have been.”

“And where was that?”

“With me.”

“After you fucked the baseball team and his brother?”

“He might have ended up hating me, sure, but he would still be alive.”

That was like a punch to the gut. Pain blossomed from my chest and spread out over me because the truth really did hurt. Dustin would still be alive if he hadn’t have met me. He would have been miserable with Libby, but he wouldn’t have stayed with her forever. He was dead because he loved me.

Pushing away from the sinks that I’d been using to center my balance, I slipped toward the door, stepping over Libby as I did. She rolled to her knees and used the sinks to help her to her feet, watching me as I moved to the door on shaky legs, hating myself more than she could ever hate me.

“Run away again, Miki. No one wants you here anyway.”

“Go to hell, Libby.”

“I’ve been there for the last fourteen years, bitch.”

I pushed out of the bathrooms and into the main room, cringing at the music as I was jostled through the crowd. Walled in by dancers two-stepping around the small dance floor, I couldn’t breathe anymore. My lungs seemed to have closed over as I pushed people aside and forced my way toward the doors. I needed to get out of there, preferably before Garrett spotted me.

Rett.

Oh, God.

My stomach lurched again, and the hand over my mouth had the bar patrons scattering out of my path in fear I would empty what was left in my stomach all over them. When I finally made it through the doors to the humidity of the night, I gulped down as much air as I could manage, but never felt the benefits as I stumbled down the few steps to the solid ground below. I searched for my keys as I moved, half running and half tripping across the lot toward my car and some iota of salvation. How could I have not known?

How could I have not asked him his last name?

Had I?

No. It hadn’t ever come up. Not once. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but there was no disputing the facts. I had fallen for a man without even knowing his last name, and he was my daughter’s uncle. My Dustin’s asshole big brother.

As soon as my car was moving, I had my phone to my ear, my shoulder propping it against my head as I tried to navigate my way out of the parking lot and onto the road. I couldn’t go back to Megan’s in this state, and I couldn’t let Holly see me this broken. I certainly couldn’t let Garrett find me there with her because he would follow me. I was certain of that.

“Hello?” Megan said, laughter in her voice. “Kay?”

“Garrett…” I stopped and sucked in a breath, and all air of humor left Megan’s voice as she attempted to fill in the blanks.

“What happened?” Her tone was filled with panic and anger, and I could hear Robert shift somewhere close to her, already on red alert, I was sure. I loved them both for their concern, but it was unnecessary. At least the physical response was. I doubted I was in danger in that respect.

“Garrett’s Dustin’s brother, Meg.”

Just saying it felt all kinds of wrong, but the words broke something in me enough to know where I had to go and find some kind of guidance. I wiped a stray tear that had escaped and turned the car away from Megan’s house in the form of an illegal U-turn, back along the highway toward the cemetery. I needed to be with Dustin, to be close to him in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. I needed the time there alone to think about what I had to do next.

“Ohhh. Rett,” she whispered in an ‘Oh shit’ tone. I was right there with her. Childress wasn’t that big. We surely should have known who Garrett was, what he looked like, anything to give away that he was a huge part of my past. He should have surely known me, or what I looked like? Anything. “Want me to come and get you?”

“No. Thanks. I’m going to stay away from the house for a bit. Libby’s is going to enjoy telling him who I am.”

“Libby? Jesus, Kay, what the fuck happened tonight?”

I laughed without humor and shook my head in disbelief. What had transpired felt like a terribly bad dream.

“She’s his ex. Libby. She saw us together and followed me into the bathroom out of jealousy or to stake claim on him or something. She recognized me, said some shit and had a ball telling me who Garrett was when she realized I was clueless. I may have hit her before running away.” I rubbed my hand over my eyes and focused on the road again.

“Please tell me you broke something on that bitch’s face.”

“Yeah, my hand,” I said bluntly, gazing down at the hand gripping the steering wheel.

“I really hate her. She just loves to bring people down to her level. Whatever she said…”

“Is the truth,” I clarified.

“Kay. Don’t you go down that road. If she wants to start pointing fingers, she can look in a fucking mirror.”

“If he’d never met me…”

“He’d have been in a car accident or run over by a fucking lawnmower. The thing about life, Kay, is that destiny has the ability to get what the fuck it wants one way or another.”

I wished that were true. I wished that I could relinquish myself of the guilt and blame that ran through me whenever I allowed myself to think about it for longer than a second. All of those emotions had been there since he’d died, and they would never leave me, so I had to think about my daughter, and how to make this easier for her.

“I can’t let Holly see me like this, Meg, and I can’t let Garrett see her. We both know, one look and he’ll see Dustin in her. I should draw him away, then she and I will head home tomorrow.”

“You’re leaving?” I knew she understood what I was saying. I hadn’t been considering moving back to Childress just for Garrett, although he had been a part of the pro column. This summer with Holly and I in Childress was supposed to see how things would go and whether anyone would realize who Holly or I were. If Libby hadn’t have come home, I’d like to think I would never have been discovered, and once I inevitably figured out who Garrett was, I could have told him in my own way. Not throw the information at him in the way I was sure Libby was, or had, done. I was also realizing I was too attached to a man who now, very probably, hated me.

“I can’t stay here now, Meg. I…”

“You were falling in love with him.”

She knew me too well, and hearing the words out loud sent another crack through my resolve, quite a significant one. The first sob broke easily. I pulled to the shoulder and slammed the car into park as the dam of control faltered and broke, and I started to cry. I cried for my daughter who would never know her father or the man who was her uncle. I cried for me because I’d killed my soul mate and just fallen in love with his older brother who blamed me for his death. I cried for Garrett who was probably having the news broken to him as I sat there crying—because he’d lost his brother and, only a few short months later, his mother, and because I was hiding a niece he had no clue even existed from him. I cried for Dustin, too, because loving me had been his demise and he’d never had the honor of meeting his daughter.

“Come back to the house, Kay. Don’t suffer through this alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” I admitted quietly. I let the silence linger for only a second before I followed through on my last thought. Garrett knew where Meg lived now, and if he went looking for me… “If Garrett comes to the house, keep Holly out of sight and tell him I’m at the cemetery with… with Dustin.”

Megan let out a sigh of frustration and concern. She’d never really been that good at hiding her extreme emotions. “If he lays a finger on you…”

“No. He won’t physically hurt me.”

“He’d better not. I’m serious, Kay.”

I shook my head, using my sleeve to blot the tears from my eyes as oncoming headlights lit up my world long enough for me to grab a fast food napkin from the center console and blow my nose. I wasn’t sure why I had such a conviction that Garrett wouldn’t hurt me. Maybe it was because, despite knowing who he was and how he probably felt about me, I still felt the same way about him as I had this morning when I’d climbed out of his bed.

“I’ll be okay. Just tell him if he comes by, okay?”

“I’ll do it.” She sighed. “Text me in an hour and let me know you’re okay?”

“I promise,” I said, putting my car back into drive and heading toward the cemetery again. “I just need to talk to Dustin and Garrett. Figure all this out.”

“I love you.” Megan’s voice was thick as the last word fell between us, and I smiled at how lucky I was to have a loyal friend who never faltered.

“Love you back.”

Hanging up the phone, I dropped it into the passenger seat as I blinked back the tears that were threatening again. I would survive this no matter how painful it was. This wasn’t the worst night of my life, but it was in the top five, and the night still wasn’t over yet.