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| 2 | Offense Taken

I give Taryn a lot of credit for going back to the dance floor, pretending that disaster didn't just happen.

While I'm drinking alone, feeling incredibly sorry for myself, she's dancing with everyone who has the right mind to ask. It began with Knox, and she has since moved on. And that was on him. The idiot. Nellie barged in, the girl he's actually seeing. It's not serious or anything, but she was having none of it all the same.

I can stare all I want now. Taryn isn't staring back. And her partners keep getting sleazier and sleazier as the night wears on and the liquor takes hold. It's like she's doing it on purpose, just to get my skin to crawl. If that's her grand design, it sure is working. And if it has nothing to do with me, it's working anyway.

She does say no if they dip too far below her standards, but they don't always take no for an answer, and she sometimes falls into the hands of something bad to avoid worse.

I've been trying to convince myself that their intentions are all in my head, but the latest numbskull to approach her seems to confirm my suspicions. She hears what he has to say with a cold expression and her arms crossed. An apparent friend of his looms closer as well, enough for her to take a step back.

My fists clench. I'm about to get up when a bottle falls and shatters near her. It creates a momentary distraction, and she uses her slim physique and natural grace to slip from their range and disappear from view, even mine, and I never took my eyes off her.

She's gone for a long time. I consider the likelihood that she's hiding in the ladies' room or found a way out the back. My gut gets watery at the thought of never seeing her again, but then she reappears by the entrance and pushes through the glass door.

I haven't seen her touch a drop of liquor. It seems the responsible choice, especially if she's expecting trouble.

The two goons looking for her must have caught a glimpse of her vacating the premises. They traipse after her at a speed I don't like.

I down the last of the Jack in my glass, knowing it's both too much and not enough for what is about to transpire. Then I get off my ass and join the parade. Taryn may not want my help, but, sorry to say, she may need it. Even if she were a stranger, the situation doesn't sit right with me. She's all alone and has a presence that would tempt the devil in all of us. Even Nellie looked like she wanted to claw her eyes out.

Am I overreacting? I don't want her to think I'm another drunk, territorial halfwit who wants a piece of something that she's not willing to give.

When glass shatters in the parking lot, it turns my head. It gives me some direction and puts the uncertainty to rest.

The one guy took a baseball bat to her windshield and the other one is holding Taryn against the car by her throat. When he whispers something in her ear and pokes her in the bare side, she starts thrashing like crazy and attempting to scream.

"Drop your weapon," I say to the man holding the bat.

My pistol is on my ankle. I shouldn't pull it out when I've been drinking, but I will if I have to. I go for the badge first, hoping it will shake things up enough to gain the advantage without putting my whole career at risk.

As soon as they see the shield, the bat hits the ground and they both hightail out of there, which is what I expected. They seemed like douchebags through and through, but they didn't look like brave ones.

I tentatively approach Taryn. She's leaning against her damaged car in what appears to be a state of shock. The old sedan has seen better days in many respects. I'm amazed she got it here and lived to tell the tale.

"Are you all right?" I turn into her aisle and lean against her back driver's side door.

The question breaks her trance, and the reality brings fresh tears to her eyes. "I didn't need you to save me."

"I respectfully beg to differ," I say as calmly and amicably as I can manage, when really, I'm still boiling. I'd like nothing more than to chase those guys down and make sure they never come back, by any means necessary.

When a sniffle is her only rebuttal, I make the obligatory call: "I need a squad car and a tow truck..."

"I can't afford a tow truck." She wipes the tears off her cheekbones with the palms of her hands. Then, by holding her breath and waving her hands wildly by her eyeballs, she seems to do everything in her power to get them to stop, and it seems to take.

I heard her, but I'm still on the call. I hold up a finger until it's over with. "Would you just let me help you?"

"You didn't want to help me before," she shoots back. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"I'm . . . sorry," I grind out. "Does that work?"

"That may be, but I'd rather not be in your debt, too. That's how this whole car debacle started." She juts a thumb toward her windshield. "Didn't you see how it ended? And badge or no badge in my acquaintance, they're not done with me, I assure you."

"You owe them money," I surmise.

"Something like that."

I absorb that with a nod. It's strange for me that she has money problems. Her family was never rich, but they were rich to me. Within reason, the Abernathy sisters had everything they could ever think to ask for. Music lessons, dance lessons, horses, a menagerie of farm animals and pets, nice clothes, gadgets, you name it. They had a lot of land too—with trails, a stream, and a pond—and their farmhouse had all the bells and whistles.

It would take effort to get bored on that ranch. I never did in my free time. Once Quinn and I were an item, I had a cot in their barn and only had to make appearances at my actual home occasionally, thank the Lord.

Things got hard for the Abernathy ladies at the end of my term, but I would have never foreseen a point where two goons, twice Taryn's size, would find the need to break the girl's windshield—a polite, pretty, presumably well-educated girl who is barely of drinking age, if my math is right.

It's sad how far she fell since all ties were severed. It feels like yesterday, but I guess it's been five years now. A lot can happen in that time, but knowing what they once had, it would take some serious neglect or mismanagement. Without a doubt, this is something her father would have taken a bullet to avoid.

"And if you owe me money, then you'll think I'll what? Borrow their baseball bat?" I glance at it on the ground and a caustic chuckle pops out. What a bunch of assholes.

"Men are always looking to cash in, in one way or another." With one arm cradling her splotchy neck, she drapes the other over her chest.

"I take offense to that."

"Doesn't mean it's not true."

I look to the heavens and beg for the mercy I wasn't given earlier. She's an Abernathy to the core, and I want to scream, but it comes out as this pitiful little sigh.

"Look." I lower my head back to neutral and drop my gaze to the hole in one of her boots. "I just want to talk. You have questions, I have answers?" And I have questions that need answering too...

I dig out the keys to my truck and toss them to her. She catches them without a hitch.

"I had a little too much to drink," I go on. "How about you drive me to wherever it is you're staying. We could hash some of this stuff out while I'm sobering up, and then I'll be on my way." I turn to her with both hands up. "No strings attached. I promise."

She takes me in with that wary, calculating, wide-eyed gaze of hers. It ends with a sigh and a slight, resigned smile, and I take that as a good sign.

"You know they're gonna talk." With the tip of her sweet little nose, she points out the side Saddlebrook Saloon.

"Let them. They can't say anything I haven't heard before."


Corey Kent - Something's Gonna Kill Me

https://youtu.be/138py3r0KNI

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