Prologue | Desperate Hollow
then
Tex Bullock is no stranger to shoot-outs. He’s participated in more than any sane man would, but he’s still standing. Even when the odds are against him—down to his last bullet, outmaneuvered or outnumbered—his pulse stays steady. As long as he’s got his hand wrapped round the familiar hilt of a revolver, the thud of his heart keeps consistent time.
But at this particular moment, his two six-shooters are safe and secure in their holsters and his blood is racing through his veins.
“Whatever you choose, Tex, I’ll stand by you.” Sawyer’s eyes are wide and honest. “Whatever you choose.”
It doesn’t make any sense, is the thing. Sawyer Watson is not a man inclined to nonsense and yet ten minutes ago he’d shown up to where the Boys were staying on the outskirts of a one-horse town and proceeded to spout a whole lot of it.
“What are you trying to say?” When Barlowe speaks, his voice is far calmer than Sawyer’s. It should soothe Tex. It doesn't. “What do you think Tex is going to do?”
“That’s up to him,” Venom laces Sawyer’s voice but his eyes don’t move from Tex. “But I think he’d be well within his rights to shoot you where you stand.”
“Whoa, hold on now, Sawyer—”
The words come out of him before he can think. It’s the first thing Tex has said since Sawyer started in on his accusations and Sawyer looks at him like he’s crazy for butting in, which is a little rich. Sawyer’s the crazy one, saying all the shit he’s saying like its true.
“Haven’t you been listenin’?” Sawyer shouts, eyes pleading. “He’s been lying to you, for years—”
“Sawyer, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick here,” Barlowe says. “I have never lied to any of you—”
“You’re lyin’ right now!” Sawyer looks at Barlowe, waving around the papers he has clutched in his fist. “These letters are proof—”
“I truly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Barlowe says, still unmoved by the implosion of Tex’s life that Sawyer claims to hold in his hand.
Sawyer’s eyes are back on Tex and his expression is as close to begging as Tex as ever seen. Despite everything, a rush of heat flows through Tex at the sight.
“Tex, come on,” he says, extending his arm. “You take a look yourself and you’ll see—”
“Don’t you go putting lies and poison into Tex’s head,” Barlowe says, spurred into action. The step forward he takes is small, but like everything he does, it’s with a confidence and certainty that would make most men cower.
Sawyer Watson is not most men.
“Right.” Sawyer laughs, mean and short. “That’s your job, ain’t it?”
“Tex. Son.” The way Barlowe addresses him is warm and familiar, but he doesn’t look away from Sawyer, who refuses to return his gaze. “I know you’ve got a good heart, you see the best in folks, but this boy has always tried to get between us.”
Both Tex and Sawyer flinch. Sawyer, Tex suspects, because he hates being called “boy” outside the collective use; Tex because Barlowe’s words bring to mind the last argument that Tex and Sawyer had, an argument that had left Tex furious and sent Sawyer into the wind. And now Sawyer is back and what had begun as relief at the sight of him swung right back into anger when Sawyer decided to turn his world upside down.
“You know I wouldn’t lie to you,” Sawyer says, voice desperate. “Not about this. I know we both said a hell of a lot the last time we saw each other—”
“You admitted yourself that you wanted to leave,” Tex says, figuring he can’t make matters between Sawyer and Barlowe worse.
That may have been a miscalculation. Barlowe’s eyes flare.
“Did he now?” Barlowe leans back on his heels, looking around at the rest of the Boys, who have gathered around them in anxious interest. An argument between Sawyer and Barlowe isn’t so unusual as to spur anyone to intervene, but it seems everyone can sense this is different. “See? Sawyer Watson may have contributed his fair share over the years, but there was never true loyalty—”
“You wanna talk about loyalty?” Sawyer spits, cutting off what was surely building to be one of Barlowe’s grandstanding monologues. “With the way you been treatin’ Tex his whole life—”
“That ain’t fair,” Tex argues. “I’d be dead several times over if it weren’t for him.”
“But don’t you want more than that, Tex?” Sawyer takes a step toward him and out of the corner of his eye, Tex sees Barlowe’s right hand twitch. “You can ask for more than just survival—”
He can’t help the scoff that leaves his mouth. “Well, that’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? I don’t have the options you do. I don’t have the hope of a cousin in California, another family I can join, easy as that—”
“But that’s what I’m tellin’ you, Tex! You could’ve had that!” The shouting has reached a fever pitch, the tension throughout the small ramshackle camp threatening to snap any second. “But you’ve been too useful to Barlowe for too long—”
“Hang on.” Barlowe steps forward again. There’s still a considerable distance between Barlowe and Sawyer, with Tex stuck between, but every minuscule movement seems enormous. “Tex is as good a member of our family as there ever has been, but he is more than just his use. You may not see that, Sawyer, with whatever scheme you’re trying to rope him into, but I do. I love this boy like he’s my own and I’m just trying to protect him—”
Tex is too overwhelmed to be ashamed at how quickly tears gather in the corners of his eyes. It is beyond surreal to hear those words from Barlowe’s lips. To have someone admit that they love him.
A desperate, broken sound cuts through the air. Tex looks over to see Sawyer’s crumpled expression, like he’s just had a knife slid right between his ribs.
“Goddammit, don’t you see?”
If Tex thought Sawyer looked close to begging before, now he feels Sawyer might actually get on his knees. The rush of heat becomes a fire, sweeping through Tex and remaking the landscape inside him so completely, he nearly forgets that Barlowe just called him family.
“He’s manipulating you!” Sawyer takes another deliberate step toward him that Tex feels with a tug low in his gut. "He’s always been manipulating you. And when you read these letters, you’ll see, your fath—”
Tex is no stranger to shoot-outs and he knows with perfect accuracy when one is about to begin, like feeling electricity on the air the moment before lightning strikes.
Several things happen, seemingly all at once. The hand near Barlowe’s hip twitches again and this time, Sawyer notices too. Sawyer’s own hand reaches for his gun, confident, as if he’d always been planning to pull it. And Tex knows exactly what’s coming, sees what he stands to lose.
Sawyer is many things—a sharp mind, a strong hand in a fight, the best friend Tex has ever had—but his draw has never been half as quick as Barlowe’s. He’s never needed to get good at it, not with Tex by his side.
Tex can picture the next ten seconds with disturbing clarity; it plays out like a shadow puppet show on the back of his eyelids, a single blink bringing a new horrifying vision of the future.
Barlowe will get a shot off first.
The bullet will bury itself into Sawyer’s chest.
Sawyer will die.
Tex will watch Sawyer die.
So he does the only thing he can. He steps forward.
He’s facing Sawyer when the shot rings out. In the breath between the loud crack of the gun and a sharp pain in his shoulder, he looks over every inch of Sawyer that he can. Not to memorize him—every detail of the man is already locked permanently into Tex’s brain—but to indulge. His eyes land in their familiar favorite places: Sawyer’s broad shoulders, his capable hands, the warmth of his dark brown skin, the straight pillar of his spine. The gold flecks dappled in the brown of his eyes that are as rich and bright as the sun, lit by the clever spark that’s always in Sawyer’s gaze.
Tex wants to tell him just how brilliantly his beauty burns but he’s flying backward before any final confessions can leave his lips.
He has time to recognize that the plan worked, if in a roundabout way. Sawyer is safe, but it was his bullet that left his gun first. He even has time to be proud of Sawyer, for his uncharacteristic quick draw, before life starts to blur at the edges.
He thinks he hears someone scream his name, more gunshots, the sound of hooves, but Tex is too busy focusing on breathing to register more than the broadest details. He can’t see a thing other than the clear blue sky above him. His left hand twitches on the ground, dirt getting underneath his fingernails, until it finally finds the top of his revolver. The metal is warm to the touch, heated by the sun that’s been beating down on him all day.
Tex tries focusing on that warmth, on the comfortable curve of the hilt underneath his palm, instead of the throbbing pain that’s suddenly overtaken his right shoulder. He thinks his arm is wet, but it’s going numb so fast he can’t tell. He pulls out his pistol, just enough to run his fingertips on the inside of the wood grip, tracing the familiar, comforting carving there.
The sun is getting darker in the cloudless sky and Tex has just enough life left in him to close his eyes and be grateful that he did something right for once. That he stood between Sawyer and death, and that he got to look at Sawyer, one last time, while he did.
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