~ Decker ~
I came awake in the pre-dawn dark, the kind of alertness that happened when my body decided it had slept enough regardless of what my brain thought about it.
Jasper was fully against my side, one hand loose and open on my ribs—not gripping, not bracing, just present. The deadweight of a man who’d stopped guarding himself in his sleep.
I stared at the ceiling, cataloging the physical details: Jasper’s face against my shoulder, the warmth of him along my right side, the weight of his leg thrown over mine. My arm had fallen asleep where it was tucked under his back, but I couldn’t bring myself to move it.
The thought came with perfect clarity, not sleep-muddled: last night had not been something I’d talked myself into. It had been something I’d stopped talking myself out of. Those were not the same thing.
The distinction felt important—a line between want and permission, between what the body decided and what the mind allowed.
I’d wanted Jasper from the first—had known it the moment I’d pulled him out of that side yard, with his split lip and bruised ribs and the carefulness of a man who’d learned the hard way that his body wasn’t his own. But wanting wasn’t the same as acting on it, and permission wasn’t the same as consent.
I’d needed to be sure he was choosing this—not the ranch, not safety, not even me specifically, but the unusual fact of someone who saw him as a person rather than a problem to solve. And he had—had reached for me in the dark with both hands, had said yes without hesitation or qualification.
The morning light was just starting to creep in around the edges of the curtains—thin gray at the eastern window, the quality that preceded actual dawn.
I worked through what I owed Jasper now, in the full light of day: not less than last night, not more than I could deliver. Honesty, if he asked for it. Protection, always. The presence that came from seeing a person completely rather than selectively.
The alarm on my phone was set for 5:30. I turned it off before it could ring and gently extracted my arm from under Jasper, working with the careful movements of someone who didn’t want to wake him. He stirred slightly, made a sound low in his throat, but didn’t wake—the deep sleep of someone whose body had decided it was safe enough to really rest.
I grabbed my clothes off the floor, hurried back to my room, and dressed in the gray light without making noise—jeans, socks, a clean shirt from the dresser, the series of motions that came from years of not wanting to be the loudest person in the room.
I closed the door with a careful click and went to the kitchen. Rawley’s boots were gone from the mat. The coffee pot was half-empty but still warm, a thin curl of steam rising from its surface.
I poured what was left into a mug and set the pot back on the burner, adding water and grounds without thinking about it.
I stood at the kitchen window with my mug warming my hands and watched the sun come up over the eastern pasture—a thin line of gold along the horizon that slowly expanded, turning the gray sky to pale blue. The light hit the equipment barn first, then the corral, then the main house before settling in my chest.
I ran the problem while I watched it: Gerald Hughs had been in Montana for three days. His men were moving—checking hotels, rental properties, hospitals. They hadn’t found the ranch yet, but that was a matter of time, not possibility. The road from town was the only approach for vehicles—everything elsewas either river or dense enough forest that movement would be visible.
The property had clear sight lines in three directions. Rawley knew what was coming, had the background to understand exactly what kind of threat we were facing.
I’d been treating this as a problem with distance left in it—something we could handle with planning and preparation and the methodical approach I brought to everything. But Gerald had changed the timeline, had moved from “possible” to “immediate” in the space of a three-minute phone call.
The coffee in my mug had gone cold by the time I finished working it through. I dumped it in the sink and poured a fresh cup, adding cream the way Jasper had taken it the day before—not a gesture, just the simple acknowledgment of something I’d noticed and remembered.
I was halfway through the second cup when footsteps sounded behind me. I didn’t turn—my body recognizing the footsteps before my brain had processed who they belonged to.
Jasper came into the kitchen dressed in the same jeans he’d been wearing when we left Nebraska, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. His hair was rough from sleep, pushed up on one side and flat on the other.
He moved with the careful awareness of a man who didn’t yet know what the rules were and the wariness of someone who’d learned that expectations changed without warning.
He stopped in the doorway, eyes doing a quick read of the room—me at the counter, the coffee pot, the morning light filling the windows—before crossing to the table and pulling out a chair.
“Morning,” he said, voice neutral in a way that spoke of practice rather than calm.
I reached for a second mug without looking at him, filled it with coffee, added the same amount of cream I’d put in mine, and set it on the counter near where he was sitting.
“Gerald’s been in Montana for three days,” I said, keeping it factual. “His men are checking hotels, rental properties, hospitals. They haven’t found the ranch yet, but they’re moving. It’s a matter of when, not if.”
Something moved behind Jasper’s eyes—not quite fear, but adjacent to it. He nodded once, quick and tight. “I understand.”
I turned to face him directly, keeping my posture neutral, my hands relaxed at my sides. “Last night wasn’t nothing to me,” I said, the words coming out in the same register I used for everything that mattered. “I don’t operate that way.”
Jasper looked up at that, eyes meeting mine directly, something working behind his expression—the quiet calculation of a man deciding how much to trust and how quickly. He wrapped both hands around the mug, then nodded once—a short, definitive movement that carried more weight than its single syllable should have been able to.
“Good,” he said.
