Banshee

He made a vow at her grave. Her best friend is about to break it.

I haven't taken off my wedding ring in five and a half years.

Haven't slept through the night. Haven't answered a phone call without my hands shaking. Haven't let a woman close enough to touch the wreckage my wife left behind when she died on a rain-soaked highway with my name as the last word on her lips.

I had rules. The ring stays on. The walls stay up. The grief stays mine.

Then her best friend showed up.

Bex Dalton is everything Rose wasn't—dark, rough, stubborn as hell, built like a woman who fights the world with her bare hands and wins. She came back to Sharp for Rose's dying father, not for me. She made that real clear.

Doesn't matter. I watch her anyway. Watch her bend steel and gentle my horses and stand her ground against men twice her size. Watch her grieve the same woman I grieve and pretend she's not falling apart.

She was the reason Rose was on that road. I was the reason Rose was on that phone.

We're both guilty. Both broken. Both starving for something we have no right to take from each other.

I'm going to take it anyway.

And the ring is coming off.