"All saved," he announced with a grin that was pure male satisfaction. "Crisis averted."
"My hero," she said, and meant it more than he probably realized.
They ate dinner at her kitchen table, trading casual conversation about their days, but she could feel the tension building. The way he kept checking his phone. The way he avoided looking at her directly. The way his jaw kept clenching like he was working up the courage to say something difficult.
Finally, she set down her fork and looked at him directly. "What's wrong?"
He was quiet for a long moment, staring at his plate. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful. "Jake called today. There's a rodeo in Oklahoma next weekend."
Oklahoma. The word hit her like cold water. "Okay."
"Entries close tomorrow night. He needs to know if I'm going."
Tomorrow night. She'd known this was coming. Had known from the first day that Dustin Fleming was a man who belonged to the road, not to one place. Not to her.
But knowing and accepting were two different things.
"Are you going?" she asked, keeping her voice level.
"I don't know." He looked up at her then, and she saw genuine conflict in his eyes. "Part of me thinks I should. My ankle's healed, I'm missing money sitting on the sidelines, and it's what I've been doing for ten years."
"And the other part?"
"The other part doesn't want to leave you."
The words hung in the air between them, raw and honest and terrifying. She wanted to reach for him, to tell him to stay, to beg him not to go. But that wasn't fair. She couldn't ask him to give up his life for her when she had nothing solid to offer in return. No job, a mortgage she was three weeks behind on, a future that was more question mark than plan.
"You should go," she said, and watched his face fall.
"Vanessa..."
"No, listen." She leaned forward, needing him to understand. "This is your career. Your life. I can't ask you to give that up for me, especially when I don't even know what I'm offering in return."
"You're offering everything I want."
"Am I? Because right now I'm unemployed, broke, and one missed mortgage payment away from losing this house. That's not stability, Dustin. That's not a future."
"I don't care about any of that."
"But I do." She stood up, needing to move, to pace, to do something with the energy coursing through her. "I care that Ican't promise you anything. I care that asking you to stay feels selfish when I have nothing to give you."
He stood too, crossing to her and catching her hands. "You have everything to give me. You're what I want, Vanessa. Not the rodeo, not the prize money. You."
"Then why do you look like you're already halfway out the door?"
The question stopped him cold. She could see him wrestling with it, with the truth of what she'd said.
"Because I'm scared," he admitted finally. "I'm scared that if I stay, you'll realize I'm not what you need. That I can't give you the stability you deserve. That I'm just a cowboy with a broken-down truck and no prospects beyond getting thrown off horses for money."
"And I'm scared that if you go, you won't come back." She pulled her hands free, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm scared that this has meant more to me than it has to you. That I've fallen in love with someone who's going to leave."
The words were out before she could stop them, hanging in the air between them like a confession and an accusation all at once.
"You love me?" His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Yes." There was no point in denying it now. "I love you. And I don't know what to do with that, because loving you means letting you go if that's what you need to do."
He stared at her for a long moment, and she could see a dozen emotions crossing his face. Then he closed the distance between them and kissed her, deep and desperate and full of everything he wasn't saying out loud.
