The text message ruined my life. It wasn’t a surprise. Just confirmation that things in Bootleg were going to get rougher.

I swore and swung my legs over the side of the bed and let the family attorney ruin my day off. Snow fell pretty as a picture outside my bedroom window. It was a snow day. School was closed. I was going to catch up on a few hours of sleep then drink my body weight in coffee and fix some shit around the house I’d been ignoring until I noticed it all when my half-brother Jonah moved in.

Instead, I was waking up with a family crisis on my hands.

I’d been elected the Bodine point of contact for our attorney. Mainly because Gibson was an ass. Jameson “couldn’t people”—and was too busy loving up on Leah Mae to be of any real use. And Scarlett would only make a heap of trouble for everyone. I debated responding. But before I could formulate a response, the phone vibrated in my hand again.

I glared holes in the wall across from my bed. Cassidy’s wall. Her bedroom was on the other side. We lived parallel lives in opposite sides of a duplex. We shared a wall, a backyard, a front porch. Given that Cassidy was my sister Scarlett’s age and best friend, we shared a good long history, too.

She had to have known. The dark thought had me dragging on a pair of sweats. I stopped in the hallway and stared at the door that connected my side to her side. We’d never used the door. We didn’t have a relationship like that. Not anymore.

Now, I was wondering what the hell kind of relationship we did have if she’d been sitting on the DNA results all this time without a word.

I took the stairs two at a time and yanked the front door open. In two steps I was standing at her front door, banging on it with the pent-up frustration that had been my constant companion for years. It was fucking cold, and I was barefoot, but my anger kept me warm.

Sometimes life just plain wasn’t fair. The thought stuck in my mind when the door swung open.

“If you’re fixin’ to break down the door, by all means, go right ahead,” she yawned.

Same pretty, freckled face, only a touch pale today. She had dark circles under her eyes. Her hair, that tawny blonde-brown mix, was a mess. She wore a hoodie and gym shorts that highlighted that mile of leg that I was so fond of.

Deputy Cassidy Tucker was the literal girl next door. And I never had a shot at her.

“You don’t own any shirts?” she demanded, shivering at the cloud of cold air that I was letting in.

I pushed past her into the foyer that was the twin of mine. Beadboard and plaster. She’d painted hers a soft gold. Mine was still the dingy ivory it had been when I moved in. A more romantic frame of mind would have me waxing that fate had us buying opposite sides of the same house around the same time. But realistically, I knew I’d put my offer in because I wanted to be close to her.

Pathetic. Yeah, I was well aware.

“Come on in, why don’t you?” she muttered, closing the door behind us. I was too riled for conversation. So I stormed down the hallway to her kitchen. Like mine, it was too small with a minuscule amount of counter space and squeaky cabinets that were born sometime during our grandparents’ generation.

She always had her coffee maker set to 7 a.m. I pushed the override button and it sputtered to life. I pulled a mug out of the cabinet and then shot her a look. She was perched on a stool at the tiny island she’d squeezed in on top of the black and white tile, still yawning. Reluctantly, I pulled a second mug off the shelf.

“Late night?” I asked. I couldn’t seem to quit caring when it came to her.

“Accident on Mountain Road. 2 a.m. No injuries. Just a hell of a mess.”

I poured coffee into the Bootleg PD mug, keeping her favorite Cockspurs mug for myself, and put it in front of her. She could get her own damn cream and sugar. “When were you going to tell me about the DNA results?”

I saw the shadow in her green eyes come and go. I knew this woman as well as I knew anyone on this earth. At least, I had.

I swung away from her, not wanting to face her betrayal. “Goddammit, Cass.” I wanted to hurl my mug into the sink and shatter it. She was one of us. No matter what had or hadn’t gone down between us all those years ago.

She sighed. “Look, Bow. What do you want me to say? I’m a cop.”

“You’re a deputy.” If I was good and pissed, she should be, too.

“Same damn thing,” she said, coolly. It was a sign I’d landed a direct hit. Where my little sister Scarlett raged with hellfire, Cassidy froze me out until every inch of my body was frostbitten. “It doesn’t change anything anyway.”

“It’s a bloody finger pointing at my father as a murder suspect.”

“The investigators are looking at all leads—”

I took the step that brought me to her, and it pissed me off even more when she recoiled. “Don’t feed me that bullshit, Cass. You owe me more than the standard line.”

“You may not take my job seriously, but I sure as hell do,” she shot back, working up the energy to get mad.

“Apparently I take our friendship more seriously than you do.”

“That’s not fair, Bowie. I’m doing my job. Connelly says keep a lid on it, so what do you want me to do? Run blabbing all over town?”

I crossed my arms, not inclined to get out of her personal space. “No. I want you to come to me. Or Scarlett. I assume my sweet little sister doesn’t know about you holdin’ out on us since she isn’t here burning down your life.”

Now Cassidy winced. The fear of my sister was strong in all of us.

“Why, Cass? Why’d you keep this to yourself?”

She slid off her stool and paced the eight feet of tile. “What do you want me to say? That it’s been eatin’ me alive? That I hate being in this position between you…Bodines and the investigation? I’m not even supposed to know about the results. I’m some peon to Connelly. Someone he dumps grunt work on and orders coffee from.”

That would irk her, I knew. She’d worked damn hard to stand on her own two feet and not just be seen as an extension of her father, Sheriff Tucker.

I grunted, not feeling particularly sympathetic. “You owe us all an apology.” Me. You owe me an apology. “You chose to work in Bootleg. You chose to be a part of our family. Now deal with it.”

She skidded to a stop in front of me. “I’m not apologizing for doing my job!”

“Then apologize for being a shitty friend.” It was a low blow. One I wasn’t particularly proud of. There wasn’t a more loyal person in my life than Cassidy. She reacted as if I’d hit her. By that I mean she balled up her fist and started to wind up. I took defensive measures and pinned her up against her fridge.

“Now, Cass—”

“Don’t you ‘Now, Cass,’ me! You come into my house, insult my job, and accuse me of being a shitty friend?” She squirmed against me, and I was pretty sure she was trying to work a leg free to knee me in the balls. I crowded her, stilling her with my hips. I’d known Cassidy her whole life, and this was the most physical contact we’d ever had. It made my day a little worse.

“I’m pissed off,” I admitted, gritting my teeth. Holding her in place wasn’t easy. She was trained to take down 200-pound drunk assholes. If she really wanted to, she could have already handed me my balls. “Okay? You hurt me, Cass.”

She froze against me. “I hurt you? Oh, that’s rich.”

I felt her heart thumping in her chest against mine, felt the soft, subtle curves of her breasts pressing into my bare chest.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I needed to get some space between us right quick before my traitor dick—that didn’t give a good damn what Cassidy had or hadn’t done—got any harder against the flat of her belly.

Too late. I saw the second recognition flickered into her eyes. Her breath caught, her body stilled. I could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her neck.

“You gonna take a swing at me if I let you go?” I demanded, my voice was rough on the edges of the words.

She hesitated, then shook her head. I stepped back immediately, taking my chances.

What the hell was I doing? I was the good guy. I didn’t barge into women’s houses and pin them between appliances and hard-ons. I was polite. I said “ma’am.” I walked dates to their front doors without an agenda—though to be fair, more often than not I was invited inside.

It was Cassidy, I decided, shamelessly blaming her. She drove me fucking crazy. And I wasn’t about to walk through why that was. Not for the nine billionth time.

“I’m going home,” I announced, shooting a glance at her. Her eyes were pinned on the front of my sweatpants. “Come find me when you figure out how to fix this mess.”

I slammed her front door and then my own. Two doors between the mess of feelings I had tangled up around Cassidy. It still wasn’t enough.