Because for one split second in that sprint across the grounds, before I saw her standing there safe and whole, I didn't know.
And that not knowing…did something to me that calm and practical and in control cannot touch.
I'm not okay.
I'm just not going to say it yet.
The thought comes quietly.
That's the thing about the decisions that matter most, they don't arrive loud.
They don't announce themselves with urgency or drama. They slip in under everything else, patient and certain, settling into the space your fear just cleared out.
We should go.
I think it, standing there on the edge of the grounds with Hadley's hand in mine. Watching Jace and Colt exchange words I can't fully hear from here. Watching the careful way Jace keeps his body angled and his temper at bay. He's always between Colt and us, even now. I think it while the rodeo continues behind us like nothing happened. Like the world didn't just show me exactly how thin the line is between everything being fine and everything not being fine at all.
We should pack up and go back to Austin.
It's not a panicked thought. That's what makes it dangerous.
It's logical. Measured. The kind of clear-headed reasoning I'm good at. The kind that got me through the last five years without leaning on anyone I couldn't guarantee would still be there in the morning. River Bend was supposed to be temporary.
I said that from the beginning, to my mother, to myself, to the small voice in the back of my head that kept pointing out all the reasons staying was complicated.
This was never meant to last.
Hadley hasn't started school here yet. We haven't signed a lease. My mother would understand, or she'd try to. Even if she'd ask the kind of quiet questions that were really statements in disguise. There's nothing tying us here that couldn't be untied in an afternoon if I decided to.
Except there is.
I look down at Hadley, at the way she's watching Jace across the distance with that calm, focused attention she gets when she's working something out. Like she's cataloguing him, adding tonight to whatever she already knows about him and filing it away somewhere important.
She said he was brave.
She said it the way children say things that are true before they've been taught to second-guess truth. It landed somewhere I haven't been able to dislodge from since.
I think about what it would mean to put her in the car and drive away from this. From him. From the way she reaches for his hand without thinking about it. The way he catches it like he was already expecting her to.
I think about what I'd tell her, what words I'd use to explain why we left without warning. I can't find any that don't cost something I'm not sure I can afford to pay.
She deserves to know him.
Even if knowing him scares me.
Even if this, all of it, the rodeo and the danger and the thing that cracked open in my chest when I didn't know if she was okay, is exactly the reason I built the walls I built.
The risk stops being theoretical.
It becomes a sprint across dark ground with your heart in your throat and no guarantee of what you'll find on the other side.
I tighten my grip on Hadley's hand just slightly.
And I think, very quietly, in the part of me that's still running the numbers…we could still go.
He finds me before I've finished my thoughts.
That's the thing about Jace McCallister that I haven't fully accounted for. He reads a room the way other people read words, fast and certain and without having to work at it.
