Jack nodded. "Same."
Hunter didn't speak. He stepped forward, put his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed once. Hard. The Blackwood handshake — the one Dad taught us, the one that meantI'm here, and I'm not going anywhere.
Liam pushed off the rail and pulled me into a hug. Not the quick back-slap kind — the real kind, both arms, the kind we hadn't done since the night I'd retired from the PBR and stood in a parking lot trying to figure out who I was without the bulls. He held on for a beat longer than necessary and when he stepped back his eyes were bright and he didn't try to hide it.
"You're the best man I know," Liam said. "And those two girls are lucky to have you fighting for them. Even if one of them can't see it right now."
I pressed my hand over my face. Breathed. Held it together by a margin so thin you could see through it.
"Okay," I said. "Okay."
We stood on the porch while the dark settled over the ranch and the horses moved in the paddock and somewhere inside Momma started the kettle and the house did what it always did — held us.
Momma found me later. Drying the last plate at the kitchen window, looking at the dark paddock. She stood beside me, dish towel over her shoulder, watching the same dark I was watching.
"You can't argue someone out of fear," she said. "You can only outlast it."
"How long?"
She put her hand on my arm. Squeezed once. "As long as it takes, baby."
Wednesday. I drove to the cottage after Maisie's bedtime.
Callie let me in. She was in sweatpants and one of my flannels — the one I'd left on the back of her door weeks ago — and the sight of her wearing my shirt while she pulled away from me was its own kind of cruelty.
Two mugs on the counter, side by side. Except her mug was on the far side now. Three inches of counter space that used to not be there.
We sat on the couch. She left a cushion of distance between us — not obvious, not pointed, just enough that I'd have to reach to touch her. I didn't reach. I'd stopped reaching because every time I did, I felt her stiffen for a fraction of a second before she softened, and that fraction was worse than if she'd pulled away entirely.
I told her about the Oklahoma buyer — the first real external validation of the program. A prospect Maisie would love to see, the sorrel filly she'd been tracking, the one with the cow sense.
"Maybe," Callie said.
Maybe."Maybe" from Callie used to meanconvince me.Now it meantno, but I still love you, and this is already killing me.
I wanted to say:You're doing exactly what he wants. You're shrinking yourself small enough that Preston can't see you, and the only person that punishes is you.
I didn't say it. Because pressure was the language of the man she'd spent years surviving.
So we watched something on TV that neither of us saw. A cooking show. Someone making risotto, the host saying the secret was patience — low heat, constant stirring, never rushing the process — and I stared at the screen and thought about how patience felt like standing still while something I loved was being taken apart in slow motion.
"I should go," I said. "Let you sleep."
She nodded. Walked me to the door. Kissed me — quick, closed-lipped, her hand flat against my chest for one second before she pulled it back.
"Goodnight," she said.
"Goodnight."
I stood on her porch. The light was on — the light I'd told her to leave on, the one that meant someone was home and someone was waiting — and something in my chest knew it wouldn't be on much longer.
Thursday. The paddock. Five a.m.
I threw myself into work because work was the thing I could control. The Oklahoma buyer was coming Saturday. The yearlings needed to be in peak condition. I mucked stalls, checked stock, ran them through their paces in the early light — my body remembered how to function even when my brain was stuck in a loop of Callie's face at the door and the three inches of counter space between our mugs.
Hunter was there. Always there. He'd shown up at dawn without being asked — because that's what Hunter did, he appeared in the places where work needed doing and did it without discussion. We mended a section of fence in the north paddock. Worked side by side in the pre-dawn dark with the yearlings breathing fog in the cold air and the only sound the clink of tools and the creak of fence wire.
An hour in, Hunter spoke.
