Sidecar Crush

“And I suppose you think you’re gonna do something about it?” Rhett asked.

Eyes were on us. Lines being drawn. A couple more guys stood nearby, clearly on Rhett’s side. Like I gave a shit. Jonah stood on Gibson’s right. He hadn’t grown up here, but he understood.

“You’re damn right I’m gonna do something about it,” I said.

Rhett got off the stool. He was about my height—could look me in the eyes. I stared back, my face hard, my jaw set.

“Y’all better back away from my bar if you’re gettin’ rough,” Nicolette said.

“Well, shit.” Scarlett’s voice.

I saw Devlin come up next to Bowie. He was rolling up his sleeves, but he leaned closer and spoke under his breath. “Watch it, guys. You’re supposed to stay out of trouble.”

“Bootleg justice, Dev,” Bowie said, his eyes never leaving Rhett and Trent.

“I know, I know,” Devlin said.

I wasn’t an idiot. Hitting first was a bad idea, if you could avoid it. But if I didn’t hit first…

“What are you hanging out in here for, anyway, Rhett?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be keeping tabs on your girlfriend?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rhett asked.

I shrugged. “Word around town is Misty Lynn’s been messin’ around with Wade Zirkel. I reckon you ain’t man enough, so she had to go look elsewhere.”

“You son of a bitch.” Rhett drew his fist back, and I let it come. Took it across the jaw.

Rhett’s punch was the invitation I was looking for. I clocked him square in the nose while all hell broke loose around me. Rhett grabbed his face and hollered, blood running down his chin. Gibson and Bowie dove in, pushing and punching at anyone who dared face them. Even Dev and Jonah got in on it.

The scuffle was broken up quick, and I let someone pull me back. I’d bloodied Rhett’s nose, and I was satisfied with that. Didn’t seem like too many punches had landed on anyone. The only blood was Rhett’s, although Trent looked like he might wind up with a shiner. Gibson flexed his fingers a few times. Everyone else gave each other a good mean glower and went back to their places.

“Jameson, what in the hell were you doing?” Scarlett asked. She touched my jaw and tipped my face see if I was hurt.

“Rhett needs to remember himself, is all,” I said, jerking my chin out of her reach. “I’m going home. See y’all later.”

“If you wanted to go home so bad, you could have just left. You didn’t have to punch someone in the dang face,” Scarlett called after me.

I walked out, ignoring the eyes that followed me. Yeah, starting a bar fight meant people would look—and talk. Although a scuffle in the Lookout was pretty typical for a Friday night. But I could not abide that good-for-nothing pond scum Rhett Ginsler talking about Leah Mae like that. She’d been my friend once, and that still meant something to me. That jackass needed to remember his manners.

After I got home, I might have scrolled through her Instagram a little bit. And that might have been a habit I’d gotten into recently. A habit that was right stupid, and I knew it. Nothing had ever happened between Leah Mae and me when she’d been a normal girl, visiting her daddy for the summer. Sure as shit wasn’t any chance of something happening between us now.

2

LEAH MAE

T he scenery rushed by in a blur of green and brown. I’d been looking forward to the drive—I hadn’t been out here in so long—but all I could think about was last night’s episode of Roughing It.

“How could they have done that to me?” I asked.

Kelvin had his hands on the steering wheel of our rental car, his phone in a cradle on the dashboard with a map showing the route to Bootleg Springs. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren dress shirt and gray slacks, a pair of Versace sunglasses perched on his nose. I was the one with the modeling career, but Kelvin Graham looked like one too. It was how he’d gotten his start when he was just sixteen. He had that pretty-boy Abercrombie and Fitch look. Dark hair and hazel eyes. Toned physique. Perfect bone structure.

But he liked the business side of modeling more than being in front of the camera. He wasn’t a man who liked people telling him what to do. He owned his own agency now—managing my career as well as the careers of dozens of other models—and this way he could grow his stubble, or cut his hair, or put on a few extra pounds of lean muscle, and no one could tell him not to.