The sky is smeared with pink and orange hues as the soft glow of the rising sun spreads across the horizon.
I’ve grown to love this quiet and unhurried beginning of the day, when the world is still half asleep. The calm before guests fill the empty spaces and the guys head out to work cattle and lead rides.
Each day feels like a reset. A fresh start.
When I breathe in, I can almost convince myself it’s a normal morning.
ThatI’mnormal.Untouched.
Footsteps crunch down the dirt path. I turn, expecting Heath—but it’shim.
Wesley strides toward me, the morning light catching along the sharp line of his jaw, the shadow of stubble, the permanent furrow between his brows. His gaze catches mine—unreadable but heavy, making my stomach knot even tighter.
Everything is fine.
He’s holding his thermos of coffee in one hand, the other shoved deep into his coat pocket, shoulders moving with that effortless confidence he always seems to have. I straighten my spine, pretending my pulse isn’t throbbing.
“Oh. Hi.” My voice comes out lighter than I mean it to. “I wasn’t expecting to see you. Where’s Heath?”
He takes a slow sip before answering, eyes still on me, as if he’s waiting for something. As if he canseethe imaginary marks from their mouths on my skin.
“He asked me to give you the rundown for today.”
So much for polite conversation. A shiver crawls up my spine, from the chill in the air and from the way his eyes linger, like he’s piecing together something he wishes he didn’t see.
“Oh. Alright,” I murmur, crossing my arms over my chest.
He studies me for a moment too long. Just long enough for the back of my neck to warm.
Then he looks away and gestures toward the neat stack of hay bales lined against the exterior barn wall.
“You just have to move these around to the other side.”
I blink at the mountain of bales. “From the left side to the right? Why? That seems…a little redundant.”
Usually, the guys put them in the hayloft. But maybe there’s an event coming up? I turn to ask, but he’s already walking away.
No explanation. No goodbye.
A moment later, his truck door slams. The engine growls to life and he pulls away.
The second his truck disappears down the road, the silence drops heavy around me—thick enough that I can actually hear the leftover echo of my hammering pulse.
I take a slow breath.
Then another.
Then one more, because apparentlyseeing Wesley for fifteen secondsis now enough to scramble my entire nervous system.
I pop my earbuds in, scroll to my playlist, and tune out the world around me. Work. I just need to get lost in my work. Physical tasks. Sweating. Literally anything except remembering the way it all feltso real.
His hands.
His mouth.
Hisbrother’smouth.
My own breathless, desperate sounds caught between them both.
