The Outsider by Rosalyn West Read Free Book Online

into? You’re becoming just like him!”
    That got a reaction. He froze up, a tragic twist of horror working his expression. But it was fleeting, too fleeting for Starla to hope she’d reached him. His eyes narrowed in accusation.
    “How could you say that to me?”
    “How could you make me think it? Tyler, we’ve only spent a few minutes together, and already I can see the changes in you. I don’t like them; they frighten me.”
    His smile was thin, even cruel. “I thought you said you didn’t scare easy anymore, baby sister.”
    She didn’t waver. “I do when I see the shadow of a monster in the brother I love.”
    “Then look away, Star. It’s too late for me to turn back time. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. Seems I can’t manage to get nothin’ right.”
    “Don’t—”
    “Don’t what? Cry over my sorry lot? I won’t. I’m paying the price for the choices I’ve made, and I’m not going to wail over them now. I made mistakes, big mistakes, but I did what I thought I had to—for you, for us. But I won’t have you paying for ’em too. I won’t let you join me in hell. So you get on that train and you don’t look back, you hear? If you can’t go back to New Orleans, pick someplace else—anyplace else! ‘Cause if everything I’ve done, I’ve done for nothin’, I don’t think I could live with that.”
    “I’m staying.”
    The flare of his temper was so sudden and severe, Starla cried out in alarm when he gripped her forearms. “For once in your selfish life, think of someone other than yourself! I didn’t throw away my future so you could come waltzing back here on a whim, thinking you can make everything better with a pretty smile. Damn it, Star, you’ll do what I tell you, and you’ll do it now. I don’t have any more of my soul to sell to protect you from your foolishness.”
    A cold chill came over her, a rigid denial of his battering words and bullying tactics. With an abrupt movement she broke away from his grasp.
    “I’m not asking you to,” she spat at him. “I don’t want any more of your sacrifices thrown up in my face as if they’re all my fault. You’re not the only one who had to make them. You made your choices, Tyler; now I’m making mine.”
    She swept out of the gazebo, away from the turmoil of guilt and gratitude he wrung through her. And when he called out her name, she kept walking,ignoring the panicked vulnerability wrenching through his voice, though it was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Because if she was going to stay to reclaim her life, it was obvious to her now that she’d have to do it alone.
    He heard a sound in the other room. Night noises wouldn’t normally bring him out of bed pistol in hand, except that those noises were coming from the interior of the bank where half the town kept its money.
    Dodge shrugged a shirt on over his long underwear and reached for his crutches. A frugal man of few creature comforts, he’d made a home for himself in the back rooms of the bank, saving rent and face before the town—well knowing none would provide him with accommodations. He doubted that movement in the main room meant someone was bent on robbery, but he checked the rounds in his pistol just the same. A constant victim of vandalism since he’d reopened the bank’s doors, he had a sense of humor that was growing dangerously thin, especially when it came to pranks in the middle of the night.
    As he swung awkwardly through the doorway into the bank proper, two things were immediately apparent: his intruder was seated in his desk chair enjoying one of his cigars, and the man’s identity was a mild surprise.
    “Mr. Fairfax. Kinda late to be doing your banking. If you’d care to come back during regular hours, I’d be happy to talk business with you.”
    Tyler sent a perfectly round smoke ring spiralingtoward the ceiling. His manner was relaxed, almost affable. “I ain’t here on bank business, Yank.”
    “Oh?” Dodge