We move together. Our breathing getting heavy.
The rhythm picks up faster and faster until she moans and tells me she is coming. We finish together as both of our body's arch with moaning sounds coming out of both of us.
Afterward she lies beside me in the dark, her head on my chest, her breathing evening out. Her hand rests flat over my heart like she's checking that it's still there.
I look at the ceiling.
I look at her.
I don't think I'm in trouble anymore.
I’m just falling in love.
That thought should probably scare me more than it does.
It doesn't scare me at all. Some people wait their whole lives to feel like this. I got this feeling in a matter of weeks.
Chapter ten
Morning After
Laney
Iwake up before the alarm.
This is not unusual. I've been waking up before the alarm for four years, my internal clock calibrated to ranch time, whether I want it to be or not. What is unusual is the way I wake up. Not sharp, not already moving toward the day.
Just slow, quiet, warm in a way that takes me a moment to figure out where I am.
Beckett is asleep beside me, one arm loose across my waist, his breathing deep, his face completely unguarded in the early light in a way it never quite is when he's awake.
The controlled, composed version of him that faces the world every morning is entirely absent. He just looks like a man who slept well for the first time in a long time.
I lie there and look at the ceiling.
I feel good.
That's the problem.
Not good like a decision that made sense in the moment and needs to be managed in the morning. Good like something that has been missing for a long time just came back. Settled into its proper place so naturally that I didn't even feel it arrive. Good like warm coffee on a cold morning, like the first day after a drought when the rain finally comes in, and the whole ranch exhales.
That kind of good.
I have not felt that kind of good in longer than I can remember and that is exactly what terrifies me.
His name was Cole. He was a ranch hand two counties over with an easy smile and a good laugh, and he told me he wasn't going anywhere. He lasted eight months before a job offer in Wyoming made a liar out of him. He left on a Tuesday. Texted me from the road.
Before Cole there was Marcus. Smart, funny, completely committed to his life in Austin, which he neglected to mention was non-negotiable until I was already three months in and starting to picture things. He was kind about it when he ended it. That almost made it worse.
Before Marcus there was my mother's example, which I grew up watching like a masterclass in what not to do. She loved completely, every time, held nothing back, and every time the thing she loved walked out the door, she rebuilt herself from scratch with a cheerfulness that broke my heart more than the leaving did.
By the time I was sixteen I had made myself a quiet private promise.
I would not be her.
I would not hand myself over completely to anything that could leave.
I have kept that promise through careful management of my own heart, a very clear sense of what I will and won't let myself want, a ranch that needs me and doesn't leave, and has never once sent me a goodbye text from the highway.
