Beckett's arm shifts slightly across my waist.
He pulls me closer in his sleep, unconscious and certain, like even in his dreams he knows where he wants to be.
Something in my chest cracks open at that.
I stare at the ceiling, and have a very quiet, very honest conversation with myself. I am not panicking about last night. Last night was real, deliberate, chosen with both eyes open. I don't regret a single second of it.
What I am terrified of is how much I want it to continue.
Cole left on a Tuesday.
Marcus left kindly.
My mother's loves left repeatedly.
Beckett Wilder owns the ranch I've built my entire life around and if he decides Texas isn't for him there is no version of that story where I come out whole.
That is what I'm lying here with in the dark.
Not regret.
Fear.
The specific, bone-deep fear of someone who has learned the hard way that the things you want most are exactly the things that cost the most when they go.
My alarm on my phone goes off at five-fifteen.
I reach over and silence it carefully.
Beckett sleeps through it.
I lie there for exactly sixty more seconds letting myself have this. The warmth, the quiet, the feeling of being exactly where I want to be.
I get up.
Because wanting something that much also means protecting it.
Even from yourself.
I make it to the barn by five-thirty.
This is a victory considering I spent ten minutes standing in Beckett's kitchen, drinking coffee and talking myself out of going back upstairs. I did not go back upstairs. I consider this a demonstration of genuine personal strength.
The barn is quiet, cool, the horses moving softly in their stalls in that unhurried early morning way they have before the day picks up. I start the feed rounds the same way I always do. Same order. Same routine.
The familiar rhythm of it settles around me like something I can hold onto.
Biscuit looks considerably better than he did at midnight.
I check him over carefully, run my hands along his neck, check his water bucket. He bumps my palm with his nose and goes back to his hay with the complete contentment of an animal who has entirely forgotten last night's drama.
"Must be nice," I tell him.
He ignores me.
Remy arrives at six with his hat on straight, which is unusual, and two coffees from the bunkhouse kitchen, which is also unusual. He stops in the barn doorway and looks at me.
His entire face does something he tries to arrange into neutrality and fails at completely.
