It nearly went by unnoticed.

Nearly.

“Does anybody need another drink?” she said, pushing her mane of hair out of her face and treating him to a smile.

“Your friends might want one,” he pointed out.

She cast a glance back at the dance floor. Then she made a dismissive noise. “They’re not in the running to becoming my friends,” she said.

He was relieved to hear it, even though he wouldn’t ever say.

Sammy was everything wild and free. Everything that he never would be.

He had no desire—ever—to try and bottle up that freedom and use it for himself. To limit it. Whatever he thought about it sometimes.

“I’ll get the drinks,” Colt said, getting up from his seat.

One of the cousins that had grown up with them, Colt was only a couple years younger than Ryder. He’d been fifteen when their parents had been killed. His brother Jake had been seventeen.

Reining in the older kids had been one of the harder parts of the whole thing. Because how did you tell someone who was basically your age that they needed to quit staying out all night and maybe try a little bit harder at school?

Well, you just said it, but it didn’t always go down well.

Ryder had been a teenager, not a parent. It wasn’t like he’d been a model for anything good or decent. The only reason he had kept his grades up when he was in high school was because he wanted to stay on the football team. That had been his life.

And he had been untouchable. Golden.

Until he wasn’t.

Until he had discovered that his family was more than touchable. They were breakable.

Until he had to give up college scholarships and other aspirations so that he could take care of everyone.

Not that he would have made it into the NFL after college. He just would have been able to use football to get through school.

It didn’t matter. He had never wanted to be a rancher. He wanted to get out. He wanted to leave home and see the world and have something different. Different than his uncle, who had lived on one plot of land for his whole life.

Different than his father, who had been the police chief of the town he was born in. The town he’d never left.

And here he was. The same. Just the same. And only about ten years younger than his dad had been when he’d died, too.

That was a real parade of cheer.

It didn’t take Colt long to return with drinks, and he passed around bottles of beer. Pansy took one and stood.

His younger sister was pocket-size. A petite anomaly in a family that was otherwise of above average height. Pansy had followed their father’s footsteps. She was currently the youngest police chief Gold Valley had ever had. And the first female. He was damned proud of her. But he didn’t believe for a moment that it was down to something he’d done right.