As I turn and head toward my office, the noise of the school wrapping around me again. I try to settle back into the version of myself I’m still building here. The one who is supposed to have answers, who helps other people sort through their messes without letting it bleed too much into her own. Even if I still feel like I’m figuring out where everything fits.
But this time it’s harder.
No matter how much I focus on schedules and sessions and keeping everything running the way it should…
Part of me is still back at that ranch.
And I have a feeling it’s not done with me yet.
I close my office door behind me and lean back against it for a second. Letting the quiet settle in a way the hallway neverallows, and it should be enough. This space, this routine, this version of me that knows exactly how to handle other people’s problems without letting them take root.
But he doesn’t stay out of my head.
Jace.
Even thinking his name feels like opening a door I’d rather keep shut, but it’s already there, already working its way through everything I’m trying to focus on. The more I try to push it aside, the clearer it gets.
I press my fingers lightly against my temple, exhaling slowly. Those are the parts that make this harder than it should be. The parts that don’t match the version of him I held onto for five years. The one that made it easier to stay away, easier to justify doing this on my own.
Reckless men don’t soften like that.
They don’t crouch down and make themselves smaller so a kid doesn’t feel overwhelmed.
They don’t let a little girl wrap herself around them without pulling back.
They don’t look at her like she matters before they even understand what she is to them.
And that’s the problem.
Maybe he’s not that man anymore…
I don’t know who he is.
I push away from the door and move to my desk, setting my bag down and flipping open my planner. I force myself into something concrete, something structured, but even as I scan the names and times, my mind drifts right back to the ranch.
To the way he said he wasn’t going anywhere.
To the way it didn’t sound like a line.
I don’t trust that.
Not yet.
Words are easy in a moment like that, when everything is new and unexpected and charged with emotion. I’ve seen what happens when that fades, when real life settles in and things get complicated.
People leave.
People change their minds.
People decide it’s too much.
My grip tightens slightly on the edge of the desk, grounding myself in the solid feel of it. “Not happening,” I mutter under my breath, more to myself than anything. I can’t afford to build anything on what I saw yesterday, no matter how real it felt in the moment.
Hadley deserves consistency, not potential.
She deserves something that holds.
And I’m not risking that on a man whose life revolves around eight seconds on the back of a bull, no matter how steady he looked standing in that yard.
