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The old saloon was drenched in golden light filtering through its grimy windows, motes of dust dancing lazily in the air, oblivious to the electric tension humming between the two women at its center. Wooden floorboards creaked under boots as patrons shifted uncomfortably, each person holding their breath, as if exhaling might spark the explosion everyone felt coming.
Amanda tilted her weather-beaten cowgirl hat down low, the brim casting a deep shadow across her face. Only her lips were visible, tight, tense, twisted in a sneer. Her gloved hand hovered above the polished silver revolver clipped to her belt, fingers twitching with anticipation. Her eyes, hidden behind the brim, bore into the figure at the other end of the saloon.
Across the room, leaning with infuriating ease against a wooden support beam, stood Angela. Her eyes sparkled with mischief and something unspoken, regret, maybe, or arrogance; it was hard to tell. A crooked, almost playful grin curved her lips as if this reunion were some casual social call, not a powder keg waiting to blow.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Amanda drawled, her voice cold and laced with venom. “Never thought I’d see your face again, Angela.”
Angela let out a soft chuckle, unfazed. “What, you’re not happy to see me?” she said, clicking her tongue with mock disappointment. “After all we’ve been through?”
The saloon was dead silent. Even the piano player in the corner had frozen mid-note. The bartender, Chanse, stood behind the bar with a half-dried glass in one hand, watching the scene unfold with weary eyes. He had seen bar brawls and shootouts, heartbreaks and reconciliations, but nothing quite like Amanda and Angela.
Amanda’s laugh was hollow, bitter. “You mean after you framed me? After you left me for dead with the sheriff locking me up?”
Angela shrugged, brushing a strand of hair from her face with casual indifference. “That silly thing? Come on, Mandy. I knew you’d get away. You always were the fastest draw in the West.”
The murmurs among the patrons began to rise. Just whispers, but enough to add pressure to the room, like air thick with a coming storm. Everyone in that saloon knew the stories. Outlaws, rivals, lovers, enemies. Depending on the day. And everyone knew the rules: you stayed out of their business if you valued your life.
With a single fluid motion, Amanda unsheathed her pistol, the metal flashing in the low light. The barrel locked onto Angela’s chest. In a heartbeat, Angela mirrored her, her own gun aimed with equal precision. Neither flinched.
“Every damn time,” Chanse muttered under his breath, setting the glass down with a loud clink. “Can’t you two handle your lovers quarrel somewhere else?”
Amanda flicked a warning glance at Chanse just for a second. But that second was all Angela needed.
She launched forward, a blur of movement that knocked Amanda’s pistol from her hand with a sharp slap. It clattered to the floor. Amanda’s eyes went wide, breath caught in her throat as Angela pressed the cold barrel of her revolver against Amanda’s forehead.
The tension in the room snapped like a taut rope.
“Anything else you want to get off your chest?” Angela asked, her voice low and firm.
Amanda stood still, the weight of betrayal and confusion writ across her face. Words caught in her throat, stuck behind emotions too raw to name.
Angela’s eyes softened. She sighed and lowered the gun. “I didn’t come here to shoot you.”
Amanda blinked. “Then why did you come?”
Before Angela could answer, the saloon doors burst open with a dramatic crash. Every head turned.
Framed by sunlight stood Sheriff Damien, a mountain of a man in a dust-streaked coat. His boots struck the floor like gunshots as he marched forward, handcuffs glinting in one fist, a revolver holstered on his hip.
“Angela,” he barked. “You can’t run forever.”
Angela swallowed hard. The cocky smirk fell from her face as the weight of reality crashed down. Amanda’s breath hitched. Angela hadn’t come for closure. She’d come for help.
Damien slipped the cuffs back into his coat and drew his pistol. “We both know you won’t go down without a fight.”
Angela didn’t wait. She bolted, crashing over chairs and skidding across tabletops. Gunshots rang out, sharp, echoing cracks that rattled windows. Splinters exploded into the air. One bullet grazed her cheek, drawing a thin line of blood.
She dove behind an overturned table, breath ragged, heart hammering. The world narrowed to the sound of her own pulse and the sting on her skin. She wiped the blood away, smearing it across her palm. Her fingers trembled.
She peeked out, just enough to aim.
One shot.
Damien roared in pain as her bullet tore through his shoulder. He staggered, gritting his teeth, but didn’t go down.
Angela didn’t wait. She scrambled up and made a dash for the door. Her hand outstretched with the door within reach—
BANG!
A white-hot bolt of agony screamed through her leg. She collapsed, crying out, blood pooling beneath her.
She dragged herself forward, inch by inch. Gritting her teeth, clawing at the wood, leaving streaks of red in her wake. She had to move. She had to.
A heavy boot slammed into her back, forcing her to the ground. She whimpered, the pressure grinding against her wounds.
“No need to drag this out,” Damien growled, leaning down with the cuffs. “It’s over.”
She struggled weakly, but her body was done. Her spirit wasn’t, but her limbs had quit.
CRACK!
A single gunshot silenced the room.
Blood sprayed across Angela’s back as Damien’s body jerked and collapsed beside her, lifeless. A perfect bullet hole in his head.
Angela stared, dazed, unsure if this was a hallucination or salvation.
Smoke curled from Amanda’s revolver as she stepped forward, her expression unreadable. Not anger. Not regret. Something more complicated.
“Oh, shit,” Chanse blurted, scrambling behind the bar. He tossed a first-aid kit to Amanda, who caught it without looking.
Amanda knelt beside Angela. “You’re not dying here,” she said softly, her voice suddenly stripped of venom.
Angela blinked slowly. The pain was a blur now. So were the voices. The saloon faded around her. All she could focus on was Amanda’s face hovering above hers, sharp with worry.
For a moment, Angela let herself believe she might live. That Amanda might still care.
—————————————————————
Five Years Ago – The Outskirts of Crimson Hollow
The sky was a burning shade of orange, the sun bleeding into the distant horizon as a warm wind stirred the dust across the rocky plains. Amanda sat cross-legged on the hood of a rusted-out pickup near an abandoned rail station, a cigarette dangling from her lips, though it had gone out half an hour ago. She didn’t care. It was the feel of it, habitual, familiar.
Angela approached with her usual swagger, her coat billowing behind her like a cape. She had a skip in her step and a smile that could knock the wind out of a man twice her size. Amanda looked over, feigning indifference, but her eyes betrayed her, lighting up just a little too fast when she saw Angela.
“You’re late,” Amanda muttered, watching the cigarette tip with mild interest.
Angela plopped down beside her, brushing her shoulder lightly against Amanda’s. “Traffic was horrible. Had to steal a horse halfway through.”
Amanda cracked a grin despite herself. “Of course you did.”
There was a pause between them, one of those heavy silences that felt more like a conversation than any words. Amanda finally reached into her jacket and pulled out a small folded map. She handed it over.
Angela glanced at it. “This is the bank blueprint.”
“You said you wanted to pull out of this town with enough money to disappear,” Amanda said, voice quiet. “That’s the best shot we’ve got. Thursday, just before sundown. One guard at the vault, two on patrol. You and I, we could be ghosts in there.”
Angela stared at the map for a long moment, then folded it back up and slid it into her pocket.
“I don’t want to run alone,” she said softly. “I want to run with you.”
Amanda looked at her then, really looked. The wind tugged strands of hair from beneath her hat, brushing them across her face. “You mean that?”
Angela nodded. “I do.”
Amanda leaned in, and for the first time in months, their lips met, not desperate or rushed, but slow, searching. Amanda felt something melt inside her, the ironclad walls she kept around her heart softening in Angela’s touch.
They sat there for a while longer, bathed in sunset and silence. For that moment, the world outside the desert didn’t matter. Just two women, outlaws with ghosts in their past and a future too uncertain to name, clinging to a rare spark of hope.
But hope has a way of curdling.
One Week Later – Crimson Hollow Bank
The plan was flawless. Amanda had run it a hundred times in her head. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight of sheriff’s deputies already waiting when she kicked in the back door of the bank. Nothing could’ve prepared her for the snare that clicked around her ankle. nothing, except betrayal.
Handcuffed, bleeding from a bullet graze, Amanda saw Angela across the street, standing calmly on the porch of a general store, her arms crossed, watching with a cold detachment that didn’t match the woman who had kissed her under the dying sun.
Their eyes locked. Amanda’s rage surged up her throat like bile.
Angela’s expression shifted, just for a moment, guilt, regret, something twisted. Then she turned away.
The sheriff shoved Amanda forward. “Angela told us everything,” he said. “Looks like your little romance didn’t pay off.”
Amanda didn’t speak. She just burned that moment into her memory, promising herself that if she ever saw Angela again, it wouldn’t end in a kiss.
It would end with a gun.
⸻——————————————————
Present – Back in the Saloon
Angela’s body lay limp beneath Amanda, breathing shallow, her skin pale and blood-slicked. Amanda pressed bandages to the wound, hands trembling.
“I should let you die,” Amanda whispered, more to herself than anyone else. “After everything you did. After you sold me out.”
Angela stirred, barely conscious, but her lips moved.
“I didn’t… I didn’t have a choice,” she murmured.
Amanda paused.
“You always had a choice,” she said bitterly. “You just never chose me.”
Angela’s eyes fluttered open, dull with pain but flickering with something else. remorse. Maybe even love.
“I’m choosing you now,” she rasped.
Amanda looked down at her. The blood, the pain, the weight of years gone wrong. She didn’t speak again. She just kept applying pressure to the wound, keeping Angela breathing.
Whatever came next, they would face it together. Even if it killed them.
Angela lay sprawled on the hardwood floor, blood seeping from her leg in heavy, pulsing waves. Her breath came in shallow gasps, lashes fluttering against pale cheeks. Her skin was slick with sweat, and her whole body trembled like a wire pulled too tight.
Amanda knelt beside her, a bloodied bandage pressed hard against the wound. Her hands were firm and steady, but her face was unreadable, somewhere between fury and anguish.
Chanse was crouched behind the bar, peeking out, still stunned silent.
“Stay with me,” Amanda muttered under her breath, her voice low but sharp. “You bleed out on me now, I’ll kill you myself.”
Angela gave a weak, breathless laugh. “Sounds… like you’re still mad.”
Amanda didn’t answer. She kept pressure on the wound, jaw clenched, hands red with Angela’s blood.
Angela groaned, blinking up at her. Her voice came out hoarse, raw. “I… I need to tell you. Before it’s too late.”
Amanda looked down at her, eyes narrowing. “Tell me what?”
Angela’s lips trembled. “Why I did it. Why I betrayed you.”
Amanda froze.
Angela continued, voice shaking but insistent. “It wasn’t the money. It wasn’t fear. It was John.”
Amanda’s brows furrowed. “Your brother?”
Angela nodded slowly. Her eyes were wide, haunted. "Sheriff Damien had him. Said John was caught looting a railcar. Said he’d hang him unless I gave him someone more valuable.”
Amanda’s hands went still, the pressure on the bandage faltering for a second. “So you gave him me?”
Angela’s voice broke. “I thought I could save you. I told myself you’d escape, that you always had a way out. I thought I was choosing the lesser evil. My brother… he didn’t know what he was doing. I couldn’t watch him die.”
Amanda’s breath hitched, but her face remained hard. “And what happened after? You disappeared.”
Angela swallowed, her throat dry. “I tried to go back for John the next morning. But Damien… he lied. He’d already hung him. Left his body out for show. He never intended to let him go. He just used me to get to you.”
Amanda stared at her, the world falling away into silence. The only sounds were Angela’s ragged breathing.
“I’ve hated myself every day since,” Angela whispered. “I see your face every night in my head, chained, bleeding, staring at me like I was nothing but a knife in your back. I didn’t come here to trick you, Amanda. I came here to make it right. I knew Damien would find me. I just… I wanted to see you. One last time.”
Amanda looked away, her jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. Her hands resumed their work on the bandage, but gentler now. Slower.
“I would’ve helped you,” she said, voice rough. “We could’ve saved him. Together.”
Angela’s eyes welled with tears, and this time they fell freely. “I know. I know that now.”
Amanda wrapped the final strip of gauze around Angela’s leg and tied it off. Her hands lingered there, bloodied fingers resting just above the wound.
Angela’s voice dropped to a whisper. “So… what now?”
Amanda looked at her. Beneath the blood and sweat and pain, there was still the woman she’d once fallen for. The woman who made her believe in something soft amid the grit of the world.
“I don’t know,” Amanda admitted. “But you’re not dying today. That’s a start.”
Angela gave a small, cracked smile. “Still soft for me, huh?”
Amanda didn’t smile back, but her eyes said enough.
Then she stood and turned to Chanse. “Find us a wagon. And something stronger for the pain.”
Chanse, still wide-eyed, nodded and rushed off.
Amanda knelt again and brushed the hair from Angela’s damp forehead.
“You’re not done paying for what you did,” she said quietly. “But you’re not alone anymore.”
Angela closed her eyes. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
One Hour Later – The Edge of Crimson Hollow
The night had swallowed the town whole, the moon casting cold silver light across the empty, dirt-caked streets. The saloon sat dark behind them, its windows shuttered, its door slightly ajar. Inside, the floor was still stained with Angela’s blood.
Amanda gripped the reins of the rickety wagon, its wheels creaking beneath them as it trundled slowly down the back alleys of Crimson Hollow. Beside her, bundled under a thick blanket, Angela lay curled on a pile of burlap sacks, pale but conscious, her breath slow and strained.
The old mule pulling them huffed with every step, a sluggish but steady pace that Amanda prayed would hold.
“Wagon smells like horse piss,” Angela muttered weakly, lips dry and cracked.
Amanda glanced over. “Good to know your sense of humor’s still intact.”
Angela winced as the wagon jostled over a rock. “Barely.”
Amanda’s eyes swept the shadows. The main roads would be crawling with sheriff’s men by now. Damien may be dead, but his deputies would still be out for blood. She’d made too big a scene, and Angela had too big a target on her back.
They only had one shot: Dustveil Ridge. There was an old maintenance rail there, long abandoned, but sometimes freight trains slowed just enough to hop on. That was the plan. After that… no plan. Just distance.
“Think we’ll make it?” Angela whispered.
Amanda didn’t answer at first. Her eyes were sharp, scanning every rooftop and alley as they moved.
“We don’t have a choice,” she finally said.
A shout rang out behind them.
Amanda swore under her breath. “Hold on.”
She snapped the reins, and the mule surged forward with surprising speed. The wagon jostled violently, Angela letting out a gasp as pain shot through her leg. Behind them, lantern lights flared up, three, maybe four riders chasing fast.
“They found us,” Amanda growled.
Gunshots cracked through the still night. A bullet slammed into the wooden frame beside Angela’s head, splintering it. Amanda reached for her pistol and fired behind them without looking, just to slow the riders.
“Faster!” Angela hissed.
“We’re going as fast as this damn mule will go!”
Another shot hit the wagon wheel, but it held. Amanda turned the corner sharply, cutting down a slope that led to the old mill road. Dust flew up behind them. Angela clutched the sides of the wagon, biting back a scream as her wound throbbed with each jolt.
The train whistle echoed in the distance.
“There!” Amanda shouted. “It’s coming!”
The tracks came into view, the faint glow of the train’s headlight cutting through the darkness like a promise. The train was already rolling, slow but steady, wheels grinding steel. They had one chance to make it.
Amanda jumped from the wagon, landing hard on the dirt. “Angela, get ready!”
Angela’s eyes widened. “What, are you crazy?”
Amanda sprinted to the side, grabbing the back of the wagon with one hand, her other holding Angela as the mule started to veer away from the tracks. “You want to die here or die trying?”
Angela gritted her teeth and nodded.
Amanda timed it perfectly. As the train clattered by, she hoisted Angela from the wagon and toward the open freight car. Angela reached with all she had, grabbing the metal frame. Amanda followed, slamming her boots against the steel as she clambered inside.
They both collapsed in the dark of the boxcar, the wind roaring outside as the train picked up speed, carrying them away from Crimson Hollow.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, just gasping, coughing, alive.
Angela broke the silence. “You… pulled me onto a moving train with a bullet in my leg.”
Amanda let out a shaky laugh. “And you didn’t scream. I’m impressed.”
Angela reached out with her hand, fingers brushing Amanda’s. Amanda didn’t pull away.
Outside, the lights of Crimson Hollow disappeared into the desert haze, swallowed by distance and darkness. Whatever waited on the horizon, new names, new towns, they would face it together.
And this time, there’d be no more running alone.
The wind howled through the slats in the freight car, but inside, it was still. The metal groaned beneath the weight of their silence, the rhythmic clatter of the train tracks like a heartbeat, steady, distant, grounding.
Amanda sat with her back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. Her coat was draped around Angela, who rested beside her, half-reclined on a folded tarp and sack of grain, her wounded leg bandaged.
Angela’s breathing was calmer now, but shallow. She looked up at the rafters above them, her face washed pale in the moonlight filtering through the cracks.
Neither of them had spoken in a while.
Angela finally broke the silence. “Still mad?”
Amanda didn’t answer right away. She looked down at her hands, dried blood still crusted in the creases of her knuckles. “I don’t know what I am. Mad. Relieved. Tired.”
Angela chuckled weakly. “That makes two of us.”
Amanda turned back toward her, her voice lower now. “You should’ve told me. About your brother. About Damien. You think I wouldn’t have ridden into hell for you?”
Angela closed her eyes. “I know you would’ve. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t bear it if you died too. Not because of me.”
Amanda leaned her head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “You ever think maybe I didn’t care about the danger? Maybe I just wanted to be with you, no matter the cost.”
Angela looked at her, and for a moment, the sound of the train faded beneath the weight of everything unsaid.
Amanda turned to face her. “You broke my heart, Angela. And I’ve hated you for it. But the truth is… I never stopped looking for you. Even when I told myself I was just trying to settle a score.”
Angela’s lips trembled. “I never stopped loving you.”
Amanda’s eyes met hers, filled with something fierce and aching.
“I don’t know if I can trust you yet,” Amanda whispered. “But I want to.”
Angela pushed herself up a little, despite the pain in her leg. Her hand found Amanda’s.
“I’ll earn it,” she whispered. “If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll earn it.”
Amanda didn’t pull away. She squeezed Angela’s hand gently, her thumb brushing over her fingers.
For a moment, the boxcar felt like its own world adrift in the desert night, away from blood, bullets and betrayal.
Angela looked at her, eyes searching, waiting for permission, for forgiveness, for something sacred.
Amanda leaned in slowly, their foreheads brushing, breath mingling.
“You’re lucky I’m still soft for you,” Amanda murmured, her voice a breath against Angela’s lips.
Angela smiled, just a whisper of it. “I’m lucky for a lot of things.”
Then Amanda kissed her.
It was slow. Tender. A kiss full of everything they hadn’t said in years. Regret. Forgiveness. Hope. Amanda’s fingers threaded through Angela’s hair as Angela pulled her closer, as much as her wounded body would allow. The kiss deepened for a moment and then softened again until they finally broke apart, breathless.
Angela rested her head against Amanda’s shoulder, her body curling close.
“Stay with me,” she murmured.
Amanda pressed her lips to Angela’s hair.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Outside, the train rolled on toward the unknown. But inside that boxcar, beneath the night sky and the scent of gunpowder and dust, two broken hearts beat as one.