Page 60 of Down in Flames
“I don’t know about that.” Cal rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. He shot a helpless look across the room, but Eli only raised his eyebrows and refused to budge. “I think he loves you.”
“Yeah? That how you treat someone you love? My way or the highway?”
Cal burst out in a startled laugh and glanced over his shoulder at his boyfriend. A smile ghosted across his expression. “Can’t say it’s unfamiliar,” he admitted ruefully. “Some men are terrified of losing control. Whit has already lost his wife on the back of a horse. Maybe he’s just scared shitless he’s going to lose someone else he loves.”
West’s nostrils flared. “So, you think I should quit?”
“Didn’t say that.” Cal said, taking back the untouched coffee and downing it in a couple of swallows. He hopped off the stool and clapped West on his newly healed shoulder. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s the way rodeo burns itself down deep in your bones. You’ll never be happy until it burns itself out again. But don’t give up on Whit. He’s wrecked. He’ll come around…in about ten minutes, if you wait. Eli called him as soon as you started knocking them back.”
“He what?” West was off his stool in an instant, wobbling when gravity asserted itself with a vengeance. Glowering in the sheriff’s direction, he yelled, “That’s bullshit!”
Cal didn’t look like he disagreed, but his lips twitched in a helpless smile when he said, “He can’t help himself. Y’all never should have made him sheriff.”
“We didn’t make him town busybody!” West yelled loud enough for his voice to carry.
“I could have locked you in the drunk tank ‘til you sober up,” Eli replied, not even needing to raise his voice to be heard over the music.
“Screw you, Eli,” West shot back, thrusting out a middle finger, annoyed when both men only looked helplessly amused. An aggravated sound strangled in his throat, and he growled, “Fine. I’m leaving.”
But even after Cal returned to his table, West wasted a few precious moments staring down at the bar, tracing wet patterns in the spilled whiskey and trying to think. His brain felt like a soggy sponge, too full of liquor to soak up any clarity.
Did he want another run-in with Michael? Yeah. He would never stop wanting to see him, hear him, breathe the same air as him. No matter what. But he’d already embarrassed himself in every imaginable way. He couldn’t bear being hauled home or poured into a cab like a child. Worse. Like a responsibility.
He left the bar with his stomach churning and his mind spinning, but he didn’t even make it across the parking lot before he was forced to take a break. He’d never been a big drinker, and the whiskey had burned a sour hole in his belly. Bracing himself against a nearby Honda, he hung his head and sucked in a few gulps of the crisp night air.
His stomach had just begun to settle when the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Gravel crackled behind him, but before he could turn, a fist dropped on the back of his skull. His face bounced off the roof of the Honda and his vision went white. He didn’t remember falling, but he came to on the ground with a dark shadow looming above.
“Nothing personal.” Ronald Sutter’s voice came out of the darkness, thick and sloppy with drink. “It’s just he took something from me. So, I’m going to take everything from him.”
The words had barely registered before he drew back one steel-toed boot. Instinct had West rolling the second he moved, and the blow glanced off his ribs. It hurt. The pain was sharp and hot, driving the breath from his lungs, but it was nothing he hadn’t felt dozens of times in an arena.
Out there, if a cowboy stayed on the ground, he was going to get hurt. So, he scrambled to his feet, gravel spitting out beneath him as he dodged another brutal kick.
“Jesus Christ! Are you insane?” he yelled, swiping a sleeve over the hot blood gushing from his nose. “The sheriff is right inside!”
Sutter grinned, drunk and evil, and said, “Then he ain’t out here.”
He lashed out with a meaty left cross that drove West to his knees. All the power of his huge barrel chest was behind it, and the shot rocked West’s head around so hard it felt like it had snapped right off his spine. He caught Sutter’s knee seconds before it collided with his chin, unbalancing him, but Sutter threw himself forward and they fell together in a tangle of grunts and curses. He was like a concrete block on West’s chest, clumsily straddling him for a good, old-fashioned ground-and-pound.
In a flash, it was ninth grade all over again. Behind the snack stand at a rival football game, running his mouth and taking a beating for it. Derek had come home the next day with a broken nose and knuckles like hamburger. Then he’d taken West out into the yard, and he hadn’t let up on him until he knew how to do more than throw a punch. He’d taught him to fight—and fight dirty.
Headlights flashed, blinding them both, and West used the distraction to rock his hips and throw the huge man off balance. In the same motion, he hooked an elbow around Sutter’s neck and threw all his body weight into twisting. Sutter’s back hit the ground just as a car door slammed.
“West!”
Michael. West’s head cranked around, toward the voice, and that was when Sutter punched him in the throat. He went down hard, clutching his throat and wheezing.
Michael’s roar was so loud, he swore it shook the earth. He was sprinting across the parking lot, swifter than a man his size ought to be, and the look on his face chilled West to the bone. If he got his hands on Sutter, he’d be going to jail. All his instincts and fear and training would kick in, and he wouldn’t stop until the threat was neutralized and Sutter was in a body bag. He’d lose his little girl, lose everything he’d worked so hard to build…and Sutter would win.
West had no doubt.
“Stop!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet and throwing out a bloody hand in Michael’s direction. “Stop right now, Michael, or I swear to God I will never fucking forgive you!”
The absolute fury in his tone was enough to break through Michael’s fear. He pulled up short, skidding on the gravel, just as Sutter took West’s legs out from under him.
“West—let me—”
“No, goddammit! You’re not taking this from me!” West cried, punching Sutter hard in the junk before catching him in the nose with a vicious elbow. There was a sickening crunch and sudden warmth on his sleeve, but he barely noticed.