▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance
There's a kind of wild you can't outrun.
Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I followed him. Not because I wanted to, not really, but because standing out in the dark felt reckless now. The kind of foolish that catches up with you later. The air wasn't cold, but something in me shivered anyway.
It wasn't just those guys.
It was all of it.
The weight of Rem not being there sat heavy, like a bruise I kept pressing just to see if it still hurt. And then there was Colt, the walking contradiction. He made me feel steady one second and spun out the next. Safe and seen, but exposed in a way that left me raw.
The bar's warm light spilled out onto the pavement, stretching across the street like it was trying to pull us back into something softer. We stepped through the door, and the noise swallowed us whole, voices, laughter, the low hum of a jukebox that didn't quite drown out my thoughts. But none of it touched the chill knotted in my chest.
I glanced at Colt. His jaw was tight, eyes scanning the room like it was muscle memory. He didn't speak, but he didn't need to. The worry was there, tucked into the slope of his shoulders, the way his hand hovered close to the small of my back. Not quite touching, but close enough to catch me if I slipped.
"Here," Colt said, low, as he guided me through the crush of bodies.
I didn't want to lean into him. But the truth sat heavy beneath my ribs: being alone right now terrified me.
The noise softened as we slipped toward the back, where a table waited in the corner. Dim light pooled across it, warm and low, but the tension between us didn't budge. It clung close, unspoken, breathing down the back of my neck.
The crowd thinned as Colt guided me toward a table tucked low in the back corner, half-swallowed by shadow. The light above it flickered soft and amber, like it was trying to be kind. It felt like a hiding place. But the tension between us still buzzed, sharp and quiet, like a wire stretched too tight.
I didn't even see the woman until we were nearly on top of her. She was already looking up, like she'd been waiting, not impatient, just certain. Older, but not in the way people mean when they say it. She looked ageless the way mountains do. Her dark hair was pulled back clean, nothing fancy, but it suited her. Her face held the kind of calm that only comes after surviving a lifetime's worth of storms. And not one of those storms had knocked the steel out of her spine.
She glanced at Colt, and something passed between them. Not a word. Just a shift. Familiar. Easy. Like I'd walked straight into a moment I wasn't meant to witness.
Who the hell is she?
Colt pulled out a chair for me, his hand resting on the back of it like he expected me to sit without question. I didn't move. Not right away. My gaze jumped between him and the woman, trying to catch the rhythm of something I hadn't been taught to dance to. There was a tilt to the moment, subtle but sure, like I'd walked in halfway through a story and missed the part where the roles were handed out.
