The house smelled like sugar cookies and dust. My grandmother had been in Europe for a few weeks, enjoying a spring holiday with her partner, Estelle. When they heard about the trouble I was in, the shambles my life was in, they offered up their comfortable lakefront home in some tiny no-one’s-ever-heard-of-it-town in West Virginia.

I’d never been here. Not with a life in Annapolis. Gran came to us for holidays and events. We were the busy ones, she’d insist, though we all knew the real reason. My mother—her daughter—would throw a passive-aggressive fit about venturing into the backwoods for any amount of time.

However, this backwoods was currently my only option. I’d fucked up and been fucked over. I was banished, temporarily. And now, I wanted to do nothing but sit here with my eyes closed and will away the past few months.

Including the moment when I broke Hayden Ralston’s nose.

Violence was never the answer as my father had so helpfully pointed out. But the dark pleasure I’d felt from the crunch of that asshole’s cartilage suggested otherwise. It was out of character for me, a man who’d been groomed for public approval from preschool.

I stared out into the night through the deck doors. I’d opened them in hopes of freshening the stale air inside, but all I’d done was invite the pounding music from next door into my solitude. Some upbeat country singer was infringing on my angst, and I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t come here to be subjected to what sounded like a spring break hoedown. I came here to wallow.

With a sigh, I shoved my way out of Gran’s plaid wingback and stalked to the door. The sliding screen door protested when I shoved it open. Another item to add to my fix-it list. If Gran and Estelle were nice enough to harbor a broken man, then I was nice enough to help patch up a few things that could be fixed. Myself included.

The smell of campfire bled onto the lot through the woods when I stepped out onto the deck. If one hard-partying redneck stepped the toe of a cowboy boot over the property line, I’d scare the shit out of him and his friends with a trespassing charge.

I followed sounds now foreign to my ears through the woods. Laughter, hoots of delight. Fun. Inclusion. Belonging. I didn’t know what any of those things felt like anymore. I was an outsider looking in, both from my old life and here at this rustic juncture. This limbo of before and after.

The path between the properties was well-worn, but by human or animal feet I wasn’t sure. When I broke through the woods, it was like crossing the border into another universe. Revelry. Couples slow-danced and laughed under the stars in the front yard. A dozen others crowded around the bonfire that snapped and crackled, sending up plumes of blue smoke into the night sky. The roll of the land was gradual down to the shimmering lake waters. The house—a cabin really—reminded me of a dollhouse. Tiny and pretty.

The music changed to a country anthem that even I’d heard before, and the crowd reacted as if they all just won the lottery. Someone cranked the volume even higher, and I remembered why I was there.

“Whose house is this?” I asked a gyrating couple on the impromptu dance floor.

“Scarlett’s,” the woman answered with a twang so thick I almost didn’t make out the word.

Of course her name was Scarlett.

“She’s over yonder on the pick-up.” Twangy’s man-friend jerked his bearded chin in the direction of a red pick-up truck backed up to the fire. A cheering crowd surrounded its tailgate.

The couple went back to swaying back and forth, forehead to forehead. I stalked across the grass in the direction of the ruckus. Ruckus? It appeared that the backcountry was already rubbing off on me.

I weaved my way “yonder” through the crowd to the rear fender of the truck and stopped cold. She had her back to me, facing the crowd. She wore a short denim skirt, a plaid shirt that was knotted at the waist, and cowboy boots. The legs connecting the boots and skirt were leanly muscled. She had long brown hair that hung down her back in waves. She was tiny, but the curve of her hips was anything but subtle. She looked like every man’s girl-next-door fantasy, and I hadn’t even seen her face yet.

She tilted her head back, the ends of her hair brushing the small of her back. The crowd cheered even louder.

“Drank, drank, drank!” I supposed it was the cheer to “drink” just with an accent.

With a flourish, the slip of a woman righted herself, opening her arms to her adoring audience, revealing the empty 32-oz. plastic mug in her hand. She spiked the mug off the tailgate and curtsied, offering me a shadowy look at just how high that skirt was riding.

The crowd loved her. And I had to admit, if I weren’t a shell of a man, I would have fallen just a little bit into that camp. She danced a little boogie in those boots and leaned over to offer high fives all around the bed of the truck. Until she got to me.

She had a wide mouth and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose. Her eyes were big and thickly lashed.

“Well, well, y’all. Look who finally came out to play.” Her voice was as sweet and potent as the moonshine my grandmother had brought to Thanksgiving dinner.

Before I could react, before I could demand that she turn the damn music down and have some respect for her neighbors, she had her hands on me. My shoulders to be precise. She planted and sprang, and I only had time to act on instinct.

I grabbed her by the waist as she hopped out of the bed of the truck. My arms reacted a little slower. I held her aloft and our eyes met. Sterling gray, wide, and sparkling. Was she laughing at me? Slowly, slowly, I lowered her to the ground, her body brushing mine every inch of the way down.

She was tiny, a West Virginian forest fairy that came to my chest.

“It’s about damn time you showed up.”

“Excuse me?” I managed to string two words together and congratulated myself.

She put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle. “We can turn the music down now,” she yelled, or hollered, or whatever it was they did in this godforsaken town.

The volume immediately cut almost in half.

“Do I know you?” I asked, finally finding my words. I was quite certain there was no way this beer-swilling creature and I knew each other.

She ignored my question, grabbing my hand instead and pulling me to a trio of coolers halfway between the house and the bonfire. She bent and fished through the ice before producing two beers.

“Here,” she shoved one at me. “Everybody, this here’s Devlin McCallister. He’s Granny Louisa’s grandson.”

“Hey, Devlin,” the people circling the beer coolers chorused in an Appalachian twang.

Confused, off kilter, I glanced down at the beer in my hand and, with nothing better to do, twisted off the top. The music was down. Mission accomplished. I should go.

“C’mon,” she said jerking her head toward the crowd near the fire. “I’ll introduce you around.”

At this moment, I couldn’t think of anything I’d like less than being subjected to introductions. I just wanted to crawl back to Gran’s house and hide there until…

It was one thing when I was a state representative. A married man with a nice house and a five-year-to-D.C. plan. But now that I was a nearly divorced, newly disgraced lawmaker on leave? I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to start making small talk with anyone.

“Devlin, this is my brother Jameson,” she said, pointing her fresh beer bottle at a man in a gray t-shirt. His hands were shoved into his pockets, shoulders hunched, as if he too didn’t care to be here.

I nodded. He nodded back. I liked him immediately.

“And this here is my brother Gibson,” she said, laying a hand on the flannelled shoulder of a man quietly strumming a guitar.

He eyed me as if I were in a police lineup and grunted.

People sure were friendly ‘round these parts.

“And this is my brother Bowie,” she said, knocking shoulders with a guy in a waffle knit shirt holding a beer. The family genes were abundantly evident when all three of them were in close proximity. Scarlett, on the other hand, had finer features, and in the firelight, I could see more red than brown in her long hair.

“Hey, Devlin. What’s up?” Bowie offered his hand and a quick smile.

“Hey,” I parroted, apparently having lost the ability to perform during even the most casual of introductions. My Queen of All Social Etiquette mother would die of embarrassment if she could see me now.

“Granny Louisa’s asked that we all make Devlin feel right at home,” Scarlett said, giving Gibson a pointed look.

He snorted. “Whatever.”

Scarlett slapped him on the back of the head. “Be-have.” She said it like it was two words.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gibson grumbled and went back to his guitar.

“He’s the strong angry type,” Scarlett said by way of apology. “Jameson’s the artistic, leave-me-alone type. And Bowie just loves everybody. Don’t you Bowie?” She fluttered her lashes at him, and he gave her a glare.

“Don’t you start that bullshit again,” Bowie said, pointing a warning finger at her, but there was no heat behind his words.

Scarlett laughed, and it sounded like the twitter of birds on a sunny Sunday morning. The light in her laughter turned something on inside me.

“And you are?” I heard myself saying the words.

She gave me the side eye.

“Why, I’m Scarlett Bodine, of course.”

Someone turned the music up to head-throbbing levels again, and Scarlett let out a bred-in-bone whoop when she recognized the twangy song. It made me remember why I’d come in the first place.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d turn the music down,” I snapped.

“What?” she yelled.

I leaned down into her space, avoiding the arms she tossed in the air in time to the music. “Turn down the music!”

She laughed. “Devlin, it’s a Friday night. What do y’all expect?”

I’d expected the tomb-like quiet of a backwoods town whose residents were in bed by eight while I licked my wounds. I’d expected my wife to remain faithful. Hell, I’d expected my entire life to turn out differently.

“Not everyone likes a party,” I said, sounding like an old man who’d kick kids off his lawn. “Turn it down, or I’ll call the cops.”

“Well, excuuuuuuuse me. I didn’t realize that fun was illegal where you’re from,” Scarlett snipped.

“Causing a disturbance is illegal where everyone is from, and you’re disturbing me.”

“Well, bless your heart. Maybe y’all need to lighten up?” Scarlett suggested, batting her eye lashes with false sympathy.

I wasn’t sure of anything right now except for the fact that it had been a mistake to come here. Bootleg Springs was not a place to hide and heal.

“Just turn it down,” I muttered. I turned around and headed for the sanctity of the woods.

“Real nice meetin’ you,” she called after me. One more thing to be sure of. Scarlett Bodine was lying.