Ride Dirty Cowboy

Prologue

Blood dripped on my hand. For a long moment, that was all I allowed myself to notice. 

Not the screaming.

Not the flurry of activity outside the mangled wreck of the car.

Not even my best friend, who lay dying on the back seat.

I blocked it all out.

Everything, except the drip.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

But it couldn’t be kept at bay forever. Too soon, reality punched through, the chaos focusing into crisp, clear pictures, breaking down the walls I’d been trying to build around myself.

I wished it hadn’t.

Because it wasn’t my blood.

I twisted, my gaze raking over Addie’s silent form in the passenger seat beside me. Her head slumped forward, chin to her chest. Instinct told me not to look farther. Not to look into the back seat again. Not to ever look there again, even though I couldn’t quite remember why.

“Addie,” I rasped. The blood staining my hand and arm fell from a gash that ran the length of her face. My stomach rolled at the sight of the open wound, and her lifeless, unconscious body.

The arm I’d slung across her chest at the moment of impact trembled, and I forced myself to move it, fumbling for the release button on my seat belt.

“Addie.” I tried again, my voice stronger this time. “Addie, wake up.”

I shook her shoulder, which did nothing but bobble her head around. Panic and adrenaline hit me all at once.

“Addie!” I yanked the handle on my door and shoved it open with my shoulder. My legs didn’t want to hold my weight, and I leaned heavily on the hood, half running, half limping around the broken metal shell.

I had to get her out.

Steam hissed from beneath the hood, and bile rose in my throat at the ticking sound that filled my ears.

On the other side of the car I stopped dead.

“No,” I whispered.

The entire back section of the passenger side was crumpled in, wrapped around a traffic light pole.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Just get her out.

But the front section hadn’t fared much better. My fingers found the cold, twisted metal of her door handle, and I jerked it with everything I had, but it didn’t budge. Sirens wailed in the distance.

Too far. They were too far away.

Reaching through the broken glass, I pushed two fingers to the vein running down her neck and prayed to feel the steady beat that would tell me she was still alive.

Still with me.

But there was nothing. Not a thump. Not a beat. Not a pulse.

“No,” I whispered, shoving my fingers harder into her delicate skin. “No!”

I wouldn’t let her go.

Not like this.

Not ever.