Chapter 2
Ethan
Four-thirty in the morning, and I’m checking the south fence line for the second time, even though nothing is wrong with it, but I need something to do with my hands.
Scout picks her way along the ridge in the dark without so much as a nudge from the reins. She knows this route, every dip, every loose post, and spot where the ground softens after rain. I trust her feet more than my eyes out here. The sky stretches in shades of ink and charcoal, and the silence is so complete that I can hear Scout’s breathing sync with mine.
I’ve already done this loop once. Nothing is out of place. Fence solid, cameras clean. The motion sensor on the north pasture tripped at 2 a.m., but it was a deer. Checked, confirmed, reset. Went back to not sleeping.
The not-sleeping is becoming a pattern.
Last night, Jenna laughed at something I said about a cow and a screen door, and the sound went through the phone and into the base of my skull and stayed there. I’m still carrying it. Hertired laugh, the real one, not the one she uses at work. I know the difference now.
Jenna’s coming to the ranch next week. I haven’t told anyone. Not Daniel, who’d run a threat assessment on my life choices, nor my younger brother Gabriel, who’d turn it into a joke. Not Maggie, who’d start cooking for twelve and ask pointed questions about bedding arrangements. I haven’t said it out loud because saying it makes it real and real means a woman I’ve been talking to every night for six months is going to walk through my front door and I’ll see her face and she’ll see mine and we’ll find out whether this thing survives open air.
The mare sidesteps a loose rock, and I correct without thinking, knees steady, weight centered. A thousand mornings of this. My body knows the work even when my head is somewhere else.
I don’t know what Jenna looks like, but I’ve memorized the sound she makes when she forgets to be careful—a startled, unguarded thing, like someone kicked a door open inside her. I’ve learned that her blood sugar crashes at 4 p.m., and her breathing changes when she’s thinking, becoming slower and more measured, as if she’s rationing the air.
Every night I hang up and press my hand flat against my chest, like I can keep her voice inside my ribcage.
She’ll see my room and the cats and the tech setup I run from the barn loft and the version of me that doesn’t fit the frame—the one with glasses and cold coffee and three browser tabs open at midnight tracking soil data. The ranch version is easy. Contacts in, hat on, fence line and cattle. The other version is the one I don’t show people because cowboys don’t hunch over laptops at 2 a.m. or rescue feral kittens. Cowboys don’t fall in love withwomen they’ve never seen over the phone, like characters in the books she reads.
Except I did. And she’s coming. And if I stop moving, I’ll have to sit with the size of what I’m feeling, and I don’t have a fence on this ranch big enough to hold it.
The mare stops. Her ears flick forward and her head lifts, her senses attuned to something ahead.
Following her gaze, I see a car in the ditch, nose down, driver’s side crumpled against the fence post I replaced in March. One headlight still throws a weak beam into the scrub.
I dismount, already moving down the slope, boots sliding on the dew-wet grass. My hands become steady, as they always do in emergencies, as my training kicks in. Ordnance training. You don’t shake until after.
The driver’s door is open, and the airbag has been deployed. I can see blood on the steering wheel—not a lot, but enough.
The driver’s seat is empty.
I grab my flashlight from the saddlebag and switch it on, scanning the ditch. The halo of light falls on broken glass, skid marks, and a woman’s canvas bag lying in the dirt. I grab it and sling it over my shoulder. Ten feet from the car, half hidden in the scrub brush, a woman lies on her side, knees drawn up, arms around herself. For one second, I think she’s dead. Then her ribs move.
I’m on my knees beside her in an instant. “Hey. Can you hear me?”
No response. I gently place my fingers against her neck to check her pulse. It’s fast but strong. She has a gash on her temple,the blood now clotting. My gaze moves over her, along with my hands, as I carefully check her for further injuries. Her hands are scraped raw, and dirt is ground into the heels of her palms. She crawled out. Pulled herself from the wreck, dragged herself into the brush, and stopped here, curled tight, like an animal finding cover.
Like someone who knows how to hide.
I check for breaks. Nothing. She’s intact. Battered and unconscious, but intact.
I startle as a goat suddenly appears from the darkness and licks her hand. Dorito. Progeny of Cheese Puff and Biscuit, he’s an unholy little terror like his mother. He pushes his mouth against her jacket pocket, sniffing with the single-minded devotion of a goat who has detected a crumb.
“Not now.”
He licks her hand again.
Straightening, I grab the keys from the ignition and quickly return to the injured woman.
It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the house. I can’t mount the horse with her in my arms, so I slide one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders, and lift. Her head tips against my shoulder, and her warmth seeps into me through both our jackets. I absorb everything about her in a heartbeat—the curve of her waist under my arm, the smell of her hair beneath the road dust. My body notices every point of contact, filing data my brain didn’t authorize, and I can’t make it stop.
The mare follows without being led, and Dorito trails behind, like a chaperone nobody asked for, his hooves kicking up dust.
The sky is opening up, becoming pink at the edges. The ranch house is a dark shape on the hill. My arms burn as I carry my burden, but I don’t adjust my grip. I hold her exactly the way I picked her up because the way she’s settled against me feels like a lock clicking into place.
