Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Hours later, we were all at the Hard Spot, because I wasn’t going to leave Max alone, and apparently Dominic wasn’t going to leave me alone.
“You going to tell me why you’re here?” I asked him from our spot on one end of the big, U-shaped bar. I set my cocktail glass down on the wooden bar top, enjoying the satisfying sound it made.
Dom’s eyes landed on my glass.
“Maybe if you tell me why you’re drinking that instead of straight whiskey like you always do.”
I waved my hand through the air. “Max likes making up new things. He told me whiskey is good with… what was it, citron extract? Citron extract mixed with a tiny sprig of thyme? Anyway, it’s good, so shut your mouth.”
Dom took a sip of his own preferred drink—vodka, preferably at a sub-zero temperature.
The Hard Spot was unusually quiet tonight. Groups filtered in and out, but the jukebox was on low, nobody was dancing, and I’d only seen a couple of college students playing pool. Max was busy behind the bar, because Kane had come out and given him a project—he was reorganizing the top shelf liquors, on a little step stool, in between serving customers.
I liked watching him work.
Honestly, I’d have enjoyed watching Max do anything, especially if it involved him facing away from me so I could see his ass.
And the relatively calm evening just made it easier to watch the front doors.
To look at every single person who walked in, making sure none of them were Max’s stalker.
But it also meant that Dominic and I stood out like two very well-dressed sore thumbs here tonight. I always dressed a little differently than the cowboys here in Bestens to begin with, but Dom was in that stupid fancy suit and kept looking around like he was above this place.
Not so long ago, I felt like I was above this place, too.
“I’m here because I was tired of being far away from you. Is that good enough, Drave?”
I gave Dom a look. “Never heard you be so sentimental.”
He smoothed back a lock of blond hair with his palm, glancing up at the shelves of liquor behind the bar, then back to me. I hadn’t been away from Dom for very long at all, but seeing him here made me feel like he was a relic of another lifetime for me.
“Well, I wanted to see you here,” he finally said. “And tell you that I think you might be able to come back to Montana within the month.”
I raised an eyebrow. “A month?”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Dom’s lips. “Sherman’s DUI is becoming public knowledge. He was busted for ecstasy, alcohol, and he had an illegal weapon in his car. Combine that with what you have on your dad—”
“I don’t want to use the nuclear option unless I need to,” I said.
Dom frowned. “What more could you possibly need to save it for? Your dad is a serial cheater and also a cokehead, and the whole county thinks he’s squeaky clean.”
I looked down at the bar top, swirling my cocktail in its glass. “Ruining his reputation only further ruins the Lyons name for all of us, though. Either Dad and Bill Franklin cut me out of the company, and my own legacy, or… I toss a bomb into the whole thing and the Lyons family legacy gets ruined for all of us. It’s a shitstorm either way.”
Dom pulled in a breath. “It definitely is a shitstorm.”
My dad did deserve to be known for who he really was.
I’d sat on his secret for almost an entire year now, knowing that I had a way to ruin his reputation. He knew. I knew. Dom knew. But nobody else did. It was like sitting on an active volcano, knowing I could make it erupt at any moment if I chose to.
But I hadn’t been able to pull the fucking trigger.
Even when he refused to budge. Even when all of his best friends—sheriffs, judges, lawyers—would share cigars with him late into the night.
And when Bill Franklin apparently had my dad by the balls, telling him to cut me out of my goddamn legacy.
I took another sip of the whiskey cocktail, enjoying it more than I ever thought I would.
Legacy.
Why does it even matter?
Most people didn’t give a damn about it. But I’d lived my entire life being a Lyons first, and Draven second. As far back as the first grade, other kids in class knew the name Lyons. It was all around town.
To me, it had felt like being royalty.
And I was born to be a royal.
But in the same way seeing Dominic felt out of place, here, the idea of being wrapped up in being a Lyons seemed almost absurd now. In Bestens, for the first time, I'd experienced just being… me.