Nothing.
The screen stays black. Doesn’t light up or buzz, just sits there, face up, exactly the way he left it. And I stand there staring at it, like an idiot, waiting for something that isn’t coming.
Nothing.
What the fuck.
I stare at my own phone. The message shows delivered, so whoever is on the other end of that number got it. But Colt’s phone doesn’t show any sign of a new text message.
Moments later, he comes back around the barn with the last of the tools, loads them into the bed, and shuts the tailgate. Then he picks up his phone without looking at it and slides it into his back pocket.
“Can you drive?” I ask.
Colt nods, and we load up into the truck. He pulls out onto the dirt road, heading toward the east pasture, and I sit in the passenger seat with my phone in my hand, staring out the window, trying to figure out what I actually feel right now. Relief, maybe? Relief that the person watching me, sending those texts, narrating my life back at me with that particular knowing cruelty it isn’t the man sitting two feet away from me.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown Number:
Who do you think I am?
I go very still.
Unknown Number:
You just tested me, didn’t you. Watched his phone. That’s smart, Rhett.
My jaw locks as my eyes move to the side window, the fence line scrolling past the open land. There’s no cars behind us. Nobody on the road.
Unknown Number:
Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone what I know. Where’s the fun in that
The last message sits there, without a question mark, and that missing punctuation does something to the air in my lungs.
“You good?” Colt asks, eyes on the road.
“Yeah.” I flip the phone face down on my knee. “East post first.”
“Yep.”
The east fence needs three posts reset and two sections of wire re-strung. I set the first post alone while Colt watches and learns the technique. This is mine—this land, this work, this competence.
Here, I know exactly who I am.
We move to the second post together. I hold; he drives. Then, we switch. The sun is full up now and the heat is brutal. I’ve soaked through my shirt in a matter of twenty minutes, but it’s the kind of physical labor that clears your head, and I’m grateful for it.
Colt works hard.
I’ve noticed that about him, and I wish I hadn’t—wish I could write him off as useless out here, the way I’d half expected he would be when this started. But he knows how to work. Hedoesn’t complain, he doesn’t perform, and he doesn’t look to me for approval after every task the way some ranch hands do.
On the third post, we end up closer than necessary. The ground is soft, and the post keeps wanting to lean, and I’m trying to hold it straight while Colt re-checks the level, his arm reaching past mine to hold the tool steady, both of us braced against the post from opposite sides.
His forearm is right there. The ink, the veins running under it, the particular way he’s frowning at the level with full focus and no awareness whatsoever of what’s happening inside my skull.
Something settles in my chest.
That’s the only word for it.
