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There was no soft kiss this time.

No hot one, either.

Just a chin jerk, and then he was walking to his cruiser, breaking my damn heart more with each step he took away from me.

Goddammit.

Nineteen

Ever look at the gray in your beard and think, ‘she did that?’

—Text from Jessamy to Black

Black

I wasn’t in my sheriff’s department skin today.

No, today I was in my Dixie Wardens skin.

The one that didn’t give a flying fuck about anything but when my next beer was getting there.

And I was fucking angry.

Not at Jessamy.

I couldn’t blame her.

She already had enough to deal with.

She didn’t need my shit on top of that.

But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t disappointed.

Now that I’d finally broken the seal and spent time with her in that way, I didn’t want to let her go.

I’d been thinking about her since she was old enough to be legal.

Which, I know is fucking terrible.

But goddammit, I couldn’t stop the way that I felt.

“Why so glum, Sheriff?”

I looked at the two women who’d taken the seat in the booth across from me.

The twins, both married now to two of my club brothers, looked nothing alike.

At least, not anymore.

Nettie was tall and athletic with a short-sleeve t-shirt that looked to be painted on her upper half. She was also wearing baggy pants so baggy that you couldn’t see how defined her professional soccer player legs were.

Meanwhile, Eddie, her twin sister, looked like she’d stepped out of a runway show.

“What the hell are you wearing?” I found myself asking between sips of beer. “This is a bar, not Broadway.”

“Had a team dinner tonight,” she grumbled. “My husband wasn’t invited. So I had to go alone. I hate doing stuff alone.”

“You could’ve changed.”