"Don't give that man in Dallas the power to ruin this, too."
She went back to her desk. Started typing like she hadn't just performed open-heart surgery without anesthesia.
I picked up my tea. Drank it. The Preston program that had been running in my head all morning — the jealousy, the suspicion, theof course he's not really yours— went quiet. Not gone. But quiet.
That evening. Maisie in bed. The house settling around me.
I should have been working. Discovery documents, Savannah's notes on a land dispute. I opened my laptop.
Instead — without fully deciding to — I typedUT Law School admissionsinto the search bar.
The page loaded. I didn't close it.
I read the requirements. The deadlines. The tuition. I clicked on the curriculum and felt the part of me that Preston had locked in a box shift and stretch and press against the lid.
I could do this. Savannah had said it last month:"You should think about law school, Cal. You'd be terrifying in a courtroom."And I'd laughed it off, because wanting things for yourself was the luxury Preston taught me I couldn't afford.
I read about the online program — designed for working adults, most coursework remote. Financial aid. Application timeline. I sat at my kitchen table and let myself want this.
I closed the laptop. Not because I was shutting it down, but because I needed to sit with how big this felt.
My phone buzzed. Clay:Coming over if that's okay. I have news.
I typed back:Door's open.
He walked in smelling like hay and soap. His boots came off at the door — my door, where his boots now had a spot — and he padded into the kitchen and stopped when he saw my face.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm scared," I said. "Not of you. Of how much I want this."
He didn't move. Didn't close the distance. Just held the counter and held my gaze and let the words sit between us without rushing to fix them.
"I heard about Amber Dawson," I said.
"I shut it down."
"I know. Bev told me." I pressed my palms flat on the table. "That's not the point. The point is that for about forty-five minutes today, my brain convinced me you were just like Preston — untrustworthy. And I know you're not him. Iknowthat. But the wiring doesn't care what I know. It just fires."
"I'm scared too," he said. Low. "I've never done this before — not real, not like this. I've never had something I was terrified of losing." He uncrossed his arms. "But I'm not going anywhere. You set the pace."
I studied him. The green eyes. The jaw with a day's worth of stubble. The hands — big, scarred, hands that had held my face and my daughter and my entire catastrophic world with the same care.
The threat assessment came back clean. Notabsence of dangerclean.This is the safest place you've ever stoodclean.
I crossed the kitchen.
This kiss was mine.
I kissed him like a woman who had stopped asking for permission and started taking what she wanted. My hands went to his shirt — fisted in the cotton, pulling him down to me — and his hands went to my waist and then my hips and then he gripped me hard enough that a sound came out of me, low and raw, and he caught it in his mouth and gave it back.
"Tell me this is okay," he said against my lips.
"This is so far past okay."
"Tell me what you want."
"You. All of you. Not careful. Not slow. Just —you."
