“I know,” I cut him off. “It’s fine.”
He reached for the box of tissues on the side table and cleaned me up with careful hands, wiping the come from my skin with a gentleness that contrasted with the intensity of what had just happened.
When he was done, he pressed a kiss to the center of my stomach, his stubble rough against my skin. “You good?” he asked, looking up at me.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He stood, tucked himself back into his pants, and reached for my hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you dressed.”
I let him pull me to my feet, his hand steady at my elbow as I found my balance. We’d done this enough times over the past months that he knew exactly how much support to offer—enough to help, not enough to make me feel like I was being handled.
He helped me into my loose joggers first, kneeling to guide my feet through the leg holes, then standing to pull them up over my hips. My shirt came next, pulled carefully over my head, his hands smoothing it down over my stomach once it was in place.
“There,” he said, his voice softer now. “Better?”
I nodded again. “Yeah.”
He brushed a strand of hair from my forehead, his touch lingering. “You sure you’re okay? I didn’t—“
“I’m fine,” I said. “Better than fine.”
Something in his expression eased. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
He took my hand again and led me back to the couch, settling in beside me instead of across from me. Close enough that our shoulders touched, his thigh pressed against mine. Not the distance we usually kept. Not the careful space we’d maintained for months.
Something had changed. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, but I could feel it in the way he looked at me, in the deliberate press of his body against mine. Like he’d made a decision while he was gone, or maybe like he’d finally admitted something to himself.
After cleaning up and getting dressed without ceremony—Cruz helping me with my boots since bending over had become more of a production than it was worth—we settled onto the couch.
Cruz pulled me back against his chest, both of us facing the room, his arms wrapped around me from behind. It was the kind of position that would have made me uncomfortable three months ago, all that contact, all that closeness.
Now, with five and half months of baby between us and a month of empty house behind me, I let my weight settle against him without thinking twice.
Cruz’s hands settled over my stomach and began stroking slow circles—the same unconscious habit he always fell into when he was in contact with it, like he couldn’t help himself. His breath was warm against the back of my neck, his chest solid against my shoulders.
Outside the window, the valley was going quiet in the late afternoon light. The greenhouse glass caught the last of it, throwing amber reflections across the pasture. Another hour and the light would be gone completely, the mountains to the west already throwing long shadows across the lower fields.
“We hit Hughs,” Cruz said finally, his voice low and matter-of-fact. “The team ran a targeted operation against his financial network.”
I shifted slightly, trying to turn to look at him, but his arms tightened, keeping me where I was. “Hughs?” I asked. “As in Gerald Hughs? The guy behind Peterson? The same one that was after Jasper?”
Cruz nodded, his chin brushing the top of my head. “Yeah. Peterson was just the muscle. Hughs is the one who’s been quietly funding the legal pressure campaigns, the contracted harassment—everything that came before the physical attacks on the ranch.”
I let that sink in. We’d known there was someone behind Peterson—someone with money and connections—but putting a name to it made it more real somehow. More threatening.
“Hughs has been acquiring land through shell companies for the past decade,” Cruz continued. “Not just here—in three states. He identifies properties with water rights or mineral access, then uses a combination of legal pressure and targeted harassment to drive the owners out. Most people sell when their fences start getting cut, or when they find dead animals on their property. The ones who don’t—“
“They get visits from people like Peterson,” I finished.
Cruz’s hands paused for a second, then resumed their slow circles. “Yeah. Peterson and her team are contractors. They get paid per property, with bonuses for the ones that require...extra persuasion.”
The way he said it made it clear what that meant. I’d seen enough of Peterson’s work to know exactly what kind of persuasion they preferred.
“We took apart his financial network,” Cruz said. “Every shell company, every hidden account, every connection to the contractors. It’s done. The money’s gone.”
I leaned back against him, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest. “And Hughs?”
“Dealing with federal charges,” Cruz said. “Enough to keep him tied up for years. And without the money, Peterson’s got nothing to work with. No funding means no team, no equipment, no reason to keep coming after the ranch.”
