Look at my hand.
Look at him walking away in his work boots with mud on his jeans, his hat pushed back, moving through the ranch like he was always supposed to be here.
The terrified part is still there.
But right now the happy part is winning.
The afternoon moves the way good afternoons on the ranch move.
Steady, purposeful, full enough that there isn't much room for overthinking. I have a list of tasks that needed doing before the water line situation bumped everything back two hours. So, I work through them with the focused efficiency of a woman who is absolutely not replaying a thumb against her jaw on a loop in the back of her mind.
I am absolutely replaying it.
Remy catches up with me at the equipment shed around two, returning tools from the fence repair with the unhurried energy of a man whose afternoon has gone well. He stacks them in the right place without being reminded, which means he's in a cooperative mood, which means he wants something.
"So," he says.
"No," I say.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're about to."
He leans against the shed wall with his arms crossed and the grin he deploys when he's decided something is funny and wants full credit for noticing it. "Beckett fixed the north water line today."
"We fixed it together."
"Silas said you two were down in that creek bed for forty minutes."
"It was a thorough repair."
"Silas also said," Remy continues, with the careful deliberate pace of a man laying out evidence, "that when you came back up from the creek you were both muddy, which is normal, and that Beckett was smiling at the back of your head the whole walk back to the barn, which is less normal."
I organize a shelf of tools that is already organized.
"He smiles," I say. "He's a person. People smile."
"At the back of your head specifically."
"Remy."
"I'm just reporting what Silas observed."
"Silas should observe fewer things."
"Silas observes exactly the right number of things." Remy pushes off the wall, picks up his hat, resettles it with the easy confidence of a man wrapping up a successful meeting. "I'm glad," he says simply. The grin is still there, but underneath it is something genuine.
"He's good people, Laney. Better than he looked on day one, which I'll admit was not a high bar given the khakis situation."
Something loosens slightly in my chest.
"Don't read into things," I say.
"Already read. Already filed." He heads for the door. "Already rooting for you both, for what it's worth."
He leaves before I can answer.
I stand in the equipment shed for a moment in the particular quiet he left behind.
