Wright Rival (Wright)

“Do you need anything?” I asked as we entered the house. “Ice cream?”

“No,” she said with a sniffle, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m going to get into bed. Maybe take a shower. Thanks for doing this. Really.”

I crossed my arms and watched her with concern as she disappeared into the spare bedroom. A minute later, I heard the shower turn on.

“Fuck, this sucks,” Hollin ground out.

“Yeah. Poor Nora.”

“What a fucking idiot! He should be glad Campbell wasn’t here. If you think I overreacted for punching him, wait and see what happens when Campbell finds out.”

“I don’t think you overreacted.”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to punch him, too,” I admitted. “It makes no sense. They were so happy. They were together all the time. I remember him dropping by the winery when she was meeting with Peyton just to bring her Starbucks. How do you go from that to kissing her best friend?”

“I don’t know, but they’ve been doing a lot more than kissing.”

I cringed. “I agree.”

“Fuck.”

Hollin kicked the baseboard in frustration. “This isn’t how I wanted the night to go.”

He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of wine.

“We need something stronger.”

He glanced up at me, and a flicker of a smile hit his lips. “You’re probably right.”

He replaced the bottle and grabbed whiskey instead. I strode over to the kitchen, sinking into a seat at the island. He poured us each a knuckle’s worth of the stuff and slid the glass into my hand.

I took a sip and flinched slightly. It was good whiskey. I only drank the stuff under extreme circumstances. Gin and wine were more my preference. But tonight had been hard, and we needed hard stuff to go with it.

Hollin chuckled at my expression. “Well, at least there’s some alcohol that makes you pull a face.”

“There’s plenty of alcohol that does that.”

“I’ve watched you toss back tequila shots like it was nothing.”

“It was nothing.”

He shook his head. “You’re some woman.”

“Whiskey has its own particular burn.”

“Tequila gets me naked,” Hollin said.

I arched an eyebrow and swirled the drink. “That so? You were mostly clothed on that tour bus.”

He met my gaze. “That’s true. Maybe it makes me want to fuck.”

“Mission accomplished. Should we switch to tequila?” I winked at him.

It was enough to bring out that cocky smile that I’d somehow come to adore. I didn’t know when it had happened. One minute, that smile had made me want to fight him at every turn, and now, it made me wonder if he was going to take my clothes off right then and there. Had it always been a sexual look and I’d made it seem like this terrible thing?

“I need tequila to get your clothes off anymore,” he teased.

I shot him a challenging look back. “If you’re lucky.”

“Babe, it’s not about luck.”

I laughed at the arrogant way he’d delivered the line. It would have bothered me before, and now, I found it endearing.

I tossed back the rest of my whiskey. He refilled the glass, unprompted, nursing his own drink.

I read the lines of him. The muscular shoulders that fell into the tapered waist. The tuxedo elongated his square build and took him from cowboy to billionaire in the change of fabric. I liked the duality. That he could pull off a suit just as well as his Wranglers and Stetson. The truck just as well as riding around on his Harley. He wasn’t one thing; he was everything.

“How did you want the night to go?”

“Hmm?” he asked, peeping up at me from where he’d been staring into his whiskey.

“You said this wasn’t how you wanted the night to go.”

“Oh.” A soft blush came to his cheeks, and somehow, that was even hotter. “I guess I had this idea that we were going to dance all night. I wanted to show off my girlfriend to the rest of the world. And now, we’re back here. No dance. No showing off. And my sister is heartbroken.”

I finished the whiskey and set it back down on the counter. “Well, I can fix one of those things.”

I offered him my hand. He looked down at it for a second before putting his into mine. I directed him out of the kitchen and opened the back door.

“What are you…”

“Trust me,” I told him.

We stepped out onto the back deck and under the pergola. The May night was warm, but Lubbock was more desert than not. So, the nights were cool, and the wind blew in, making the heat more bearable. It was a perfect night. The stars bright and twinkling overhead. And the moon just a crescent sliver in the sky.

I wrapped my arms around Hollin’s shoulders and adjusted his hands to my waist. The back of my dress was incredibly low, and with the way he held me with his hands, his fingers brushed against the bare skin. I shivered slightly at the touch. So intimate.