They would land somewhere on the property—not the main yard, not where they could be seen from the road, but close enough that they could reach the house in minutes if they needed to.
Gerald was still out there—patient and funded and certain he was owed something. He had resources most civilians couldn’t begin to access. He had men who moved in a way I recognized from my own time in the service. And he was closer to finding Jasper than he had been twelve hours ago.
But whatever came next—whatever Gerald brought with him when he returned—Jasper wouldn’t face it alone. He would have the ranch, the people, and the protection that came from belonging somewhere. He would have Rawley’s resources and Burke’s connections and Macon’s quiet competence. He would have all of us, standing between him and whatever came next.
And he would have me—not as a handler or an escort or a problem to be solved, but as something closer to what I’d been before: a man who knew exactly what he was protecting and why it mattered.
Jasper’s breathing had evened out again, his weight growing heavier against me as he drifted toward sleep. His hand had gone still on my ribs, thumb finally at rest against my skin.
In the thin light from the window, the bruise on his cheek had darkened to a smear of purple that would take weeks to fade completely.
I kept my arm around him, hand resting at the small of his back, and didn’t move to leave. The wrongness of what had beendone to him—the job loss, the men Gerald sent, the absolute conviction that Jasper was property rather than a person—sat between us, not solved but acknowledged, given a shape we could work with rather than a shadow we had to guess at.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. Whatever came next, we would face it together—not as a problem to be solved or a situation to be managed, but as people who had chosen each other, who had built something worth protecting.
Jasper’s breath was warm against my chest, his weight solid against my side. I lay there listening to his breathing slow into sleep, and the chapter closed on the dark of the room—the ranch quiet outside, Sterling somewhere in the sky above Montana—and me still awake, holding on, not moving to leave.
Chapter Eleven
~ Jasper ~
I woke to Decker’s absence, but didn’t panic. The fact registered with me before anything else—that I was alone in the bed, and my heart hadn’t tried to climb out of my throat in response. Decker’s pillow still held the impression of his head, the sheets on his side rumpled but cool.
He’d been gone for a while.
Morning light cut through the curtains at a low angle, painting the bedroom in thin, pale gold. Outside, the ranch was already awake—I could hear distant voices, the creak of the barn door, and the occasional snort from the horses. The smell of coffee and wood smoke worked its way under the bedroom door, a combination that was becoming familiar despite how short a time I’d been here.
I lay still, letting the quiet of the room settle around me. Several nights at Black Butte, and already the space felt different—not like mine exactly, but no longer entirely someone else’s.
The carved wooden horse from my grandfather sat on the nightstand where I’d placed it before bed, its wooden body catching the light through the window.
My body was still registering the fact that Decker had been here—the tenderness between my legs, the small bruise forming at the base of my throat, the other, less definable sensation of having been seen completely and not turned away from.
I ran my palm over the sheet where Decker had lain and tried to make sense of what had happened between us. What did it mean, that I’d said yes without hesitation when he’d asked me to stay?
I hadn’t answered with words—just a kiss pressed to the edge of Decker’s jaw, a touch that contained both “yes” and “maybe”and something harder to name. But I’d meant it—the certainty that I could see a life here, if I had a good reason to stay.
I’d had reasons to leave places before—the job in Omaha that had disappeared because one man decided I belonged to him, the house in Nebraska that was no longer safe, the life that had been stripped down to a duffel bag and a bruise on my cheek. But reasons to stay—those were newer, less familiar.
I thought about what Decker had offered in the dark—not just his body, but the way he’d looked at me, like I was a decision he’d already made rather than a problem he was solving.
I thought about the ranch—Rawley’s quiet acceptance, Burke’s quick understanding, and the way the community had made room for me without being asked to.
I didn’t regret it. The certainty sat in my chest like a physical thing—not dramatic or overwhelming, just steady and present, a fact I could count on.
I got up and pulled on clothes from the dresser—jeans Carter had lent me, a flannel shirt that had probably been Decker’s at some point, socks from the drawer I’d emptied my duffel into.
My reflection in the small mirror on the closet door showed a man I was still getting to know—hair rough from sleep, the bruise on his cheek fading from purple to yellow at the edges, eyes that looked slightly less hunted than they had mere days ago.
I made the bed with careful movements, tucking the corners and smoothing the quilt, the habit of a man who’d learned that small routines kept the larger chaos at bay.
Then I went to the kitchen.
The room was running on a different frequency than usual. Rawley and Burke were at the table with mugs and a hand-drawn map spread between them, their heads bent together over something Burke was tracing with one finger. The map was clearly of the ranch—I could make out the gravel road fromthe highway, the main house, the equipment barn, the tree line along the river. Rawley was marking something with a pen, his movements quick and precise.
“It needs to be the eastern corner,” he was saying as I came in. “The sight line is better, and they won’t see the second from there.”
Burke nodded, reaching for his coffee without looking up from the map. “And you want Jojo and Ethan in the basement if it goes loud.”
