The space between us wasn’t peaceful. It hummed, charged and unsettled, like ground waiting for another storm. And the worst part was knowing that avoiding him didn’t quieten anything—it gave everything more room to grow.
Like last night, when I was heading to bed and he wasleaving the shower. A towel slung low around his waist, water still beading on his skin, dark hair damp and curling at the ends. He smelled clean and sharp and undeniably male, and for half a second neither of us moved.
My body reacted before my brain caught up. Heat, sudden and humiliating, pooling low in my gut. I looked away too late, pulse thudding, painfully aware of how hard I’d gone just from the sight of him. Jesse’s jaw tightened; his eyes flicked over me and then away, as if he’d touched something hot.
“Sorry,” he said, voice clipped.
“Yeah,” I managed, which was not an answer to anything.
He stepped past me, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine, close enough that I had to bite the inside of my cheek and focus on breathing until he was gone. Heart racing, furious with myself for wanting him even now—especially now—I shut myself in my room and got myself off to thoughts of what we’d done on the stairs, and just how much it was the hottest freaking thing I’d ever been part of.
I walked the ranch a lot—anything to burn off the tension—spending a lot of my time there, always with at least two thermoses filled with coffee, sitting in the middle cabin with the bookshelf. I’d even brought over some of the blankets from my first night, and made a kind of nest in one corner, keeping my eReader powered and losing myself in Tolkien’s world while sipping hot coffee. I tried to read a western romance but gave up on page ten because it was all too on-the-nose. No cowboys inThe Hobbit’sworld, and no, Strider did not remind me of Jesse in any way.
Not at all.
Going back to the ranch house after one of these quiet times was always hard, as if the weight of everything was pushing me down, and today was no different, so I took a convoluted way home.
I rounded the corner of the nearest building and almost walked straight into a confrontation.
An older man had a younger one backed up against the side of a cabin. Miguel! His shoulders were hunched, hands half-raised, not in threat, not in defense, just caught. The older guy was too close, crowding his space, finger jabbing toward Miguel’s chest.
I caught the end of it as I got closer.
“I don’t want that faggy shit here,” the man snapped, and it threw me back to the hate I’d had from my grandfather when he’d refused me a home out here.
“Sir…” Miguel pleaded and, then, added something low, something I couldn’t quite hear, although I heard the “please,” but the other one let out an ugly laugh.
“Figures,” he said. “You gonna cry, girly? You’re all the same. Should’ve known.”
I recognized the tone before the words finished landing, the way people decided who you were and what you deserved in the space of a breath. I’d had that same tone aimed at me often enough when people decided what I was before I ever opened my mouth. Gay. Queer. Wrong.
I didn’t think. I moved.
“Hey,” I said, loud enough to cut straight through it. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
They both turned. Miguel’s eyes widened. The otherman’s expression hardened, chin lifting as if he had every right to be there.
“Mind your business,” he said.
“I am,” I shot back. “Because this stops. Right now.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I own this place,” I snapped, and the abuser turned on me, looking me up and down slowly, the way men like him did when deciding whether intimidation would work.
“You don’t own shit,” he said at last. “This ranch is Old Man Barrett’s.”
Huh?
“No, it’s not,” I said. My voice didn’t rise, but something in it landed, because Miguel flinched and the older man’s mouth tightened. “Walter Barrett is dead—so legally, as his grandson, I own it. And even if I didn’t, I don’t know who you are or why you’re acting like this because you don’t get to talk to anyone like that. Ever.”
He scoffed, stepping closer, close enough that I could smell tobacco and old coffee on his breath. I tried to make myself bigger, but he was still easily six inches taller than me, and heavier too. “We’ll go find Walter, and he can fix this shit.”
“I’m the Barrett who owns this place.”
“I’m the foreman!” he yelled at me, and his eyes were unfocused, and for a second, with his hands in fists, I thought he might take a swing at me. I braced without meaning to, muscle memory from a different life kicking in. But instead, he laughed, harsh and joyless.
“I’m going to tell you this once,” I said, easing my body between the young man and the hate. “I don’t know who youare, but if I hear you talk like that again—to someone who works for me—you’re gone. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re gone.”
