"Weston is interested in anything he thinks he can't have. It's a personality type."
Beckett is quiet for a moment. He pulls the wire taut on the next section, checks the tension, moves to the next post. "Has he always been like that with you?"
"Weston is harmless," I say. "He's just competitive."
"There's a difference between competitive and showing up uninvited to someone else's ranch, standing too close to their ranch manager." He stops.
I look at him.
He looks at the fence wire.
"To their ranch manager," he finishes, carefully.
The afternoon sits quiet around us. A hawk is doing something lazy and unhurried over the south pasture. The fence wire catches the light. Somewhere behind us Maisie's voice carries across the yard, followed by Remy's laugh.
"Beckett."
"Mm."
"What were you going to say?"
He pulls the wire. Checks it. Sets the tool down. Turns and looks at me with that steady, direct gaze that has no business being as unsettling as it is. "Something I'm not ready to say yet," he says. Honest, plain, no performance in it.
I hold his gaze for a moment that stretches slightly past comfortable.
There are approximately fourteen things I could say right now. I know this because I've been having this conversation in my head for three weeks and I have cataloged the options thoroughly. Some of them are smart, some are honest, one of them is something I'd regret in the morning.
I pick the safe one.
"The wire tension on section three is still a little loose," I say.
Something moves through his eyes. Patience, maybe. Or recognition. "Right," he says quietly. "I'll fix it."
He turns back to the fence.
I stand there for a second longer than I need to.
Then I walk back toward the barn and tell myself that was the right call.
It takes me until the barn door to halfway believe it.
The almost kiss in the kitchen was one thing.
That was Rowdy's fault and circumstance, and cooking together in a warm kitchen at the end of a long day. I filed it under situational and moved on and mostly believed myself about it.
This is different.
This has been building all day in the way that things build when you're paying attention to someone you're trying not to pay attention to. Every look across the fence line. Every moment where Beckett almost said something real and didn't.
Every time Weston positioned himself too close, I felt Beckett notice it from twenty feet away without moving a muscle.
I'm at the round pen after dinner, doing a final check on Copper, when Beckett finds me.
He comes around the barn corner with his hat in his hand, sleeves rolled up, wearing the expression of a man who has made a decision about something. He stops at the round pen rail and looks at me across it and doesn't say anything immediately, which with Beckett means he's choosing words carefully.
I keep brushing Copper.
"I owe you an apology," he says.
