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“Hey,” he said. “Be careful.”

“Daughtry,” she said. “You’re always so concerned.”

Her words twisted around his throat, echoed inside of him. Because it was true. He was always so concerned. Always. Because he had to be.

And right now the thing he admired most about her was the thing he feared the most in himself. This need to be free. This wild thing within her. He was a police officer, because he knew it was the only way to be sure that he kept an accounting of right and wrong. Because he lived his life in black-and-white, and Bix was shades of color. All the rainbow in between. Not gray, everything golden and bright and glittering.

He had been mistaken. Thinking she was growing more and more civilized.

She was growing more and more into herself. The woman he had met had only been a sliver of the Bix that she became. And even all the stages after, there had been fear. Uncertainty. Insecurity. But this woman right here, this washer.

Certain and sure in a way he wasn’t entirely certain he’d ever been of himself.

But then, when Bix made mistakes, she didn’t hurt people.

When she tasted freedom, it wasn’t a sick, twisted joy in power.

And as for himself, he simply couldn’t trust it.

Then Bix scampered up to the ridgeline, and grabbed hold of a low-hanging tree branch.

“Bix...”

“I’m reaching for the stars, Sheriff,” she said, grinning at him, and then she hefted herself up into the trees, and disappeared.

“Dammit, Bix,” he muttered as he set his own beer down and went to the tree. Went up after her. Compelled to do so, even as there was something in him that demanded he not do it. That demanded he get back down immediately.

Instead, he followed her little ass right up the tree. He looked up, and saw her a few branches above. She peered down at him. “Well, look at you, Sheriff.”

“Look at you, you feral little beast.”

She smiled. “Born and bred. And... proud. Of where I’ve managed to get myself to.”

His heart hit the front of his breastbone. He liked hearing that. That she acknowledged her own achievements here. Her own triumph. That she truly understood that she herself was great. That she wasn’t just saying she owed him. There was something different about her tonight, and it was stunning.

She was proud of herself.

Bix would always be whiskey in the shape of a woman, poured out and lit on fire. A shot of something far too strong for just anybody to handle.

She would always be this.

And he would only ever bring her down to earth. He didn’t want that for her.

More than that, he knew he couldn’t spend too much time up here with her.

He knew himself.

And what he didn’t know, what he had never known, was when you crossed the line so far that you could no longer look at the face of a terrified little girl and feel guilt.

He had been his father’s muscle.

He had thought that they were smarter than everybody else. That they were better. That they inherently deserved the money that they had because they had outsmarted the idiots who had agreed to do business with them. The arrogance that came from something like that was astonishing. If you had too much confidence in your own moral compass, it could be pointing due south, and you wouldn’t even know anymore.

Wouldn’t know that you’d lost north so many miles ago that you were off course so damned far you were about to walk into the sea.

The water would be up over your head before you ever realized it. Before you ever admitted that you had taken a wrong turn.

Bix had a compass inside her that worked just fine.