It was, objectively, the most ridiculous situation I'd ever been in.
I laid my cheek against his chest anyway.
His chin came down to rest on the top of my head. I felt him exhale—long and slow, like he'd been holding something and finally set it down.
We didn't talk. Just moved in slow circles while the song bled into another and then another, the radio DJ's voice cutting in between with the lazy drawl of a man who'd been doing small-town radio for thirty years and wouldn't choose any other way of life.
"—and folks, don't forget, we are just three weeks out from the Meagher County Summer Rodeo. This year's bull riding lineup is something special. We've got returnin' champion Dean Briggs, Cody Walsh out of Billings, and making his return to the Montana circuit after four years on the national tour—" a dramatic pause, the DJ clearly relishing it, "—Wyatt Cole."
My feet stopped moving.
The barn didn't change. The radio kept going, the DJ prattling on about ticket prices and sponsor names, the horses standing quiet in their stalls, the cicadas still singing outside. Everything exactly as it had been ten seconds ago.
But my lungs had forgotten what they were for and my hand had gone rigid in Brody's and there was a sound in my ears like water rushing in from a long way off.
Wyatt Cole.
Here.
In three weeks.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
Her feet had stopped movin'.
I noticed it the same moment the DJ moved on to ticket prices, her whole body goin' statue-still against mine, hand rigid in my grip. I pulled back just enough to look at her face.
She wasn't lookin' at me. Wasn't lookin' at anything, really. Just starin' at some fixed point past my shoulder with an expression I'd never seen on her before. Not the armor. Not the viper. Somethin' underneath both of those things. Somethin' blank and lifeless.
"Hey." I dipped my head, tryin' to find her eyes. "You okay?"
"Fine." Clipped. Automatic.
"Calvin—"
She kissed me.
Not like last night or this mornin'. Nothing like just a few hours ago when I'd shown up unannounced. This was different—fast and purposeful, both hands fistin' in my shirt, walking me backward before I'd registered we were movin'. The back of my knees hit the old wooden bench along the barn wall, and I sat down hard.
"Hey, what?—"
She was already reachin' for my belt.
"Calvin." I caught her hands. "Hold on a second. What just hap?—"
She looked up at me then and whatever I was about to say dissolved completely. Her eyes were dark and intent and givin' nothing away. The armor was back. Fully fitted, not a gap in sight.
"Do you want me to stop?" she asked.
The question landed flat. Practical. Like she was askin' if I wanted cream in my coffee.
That was what snagged in my chest, even as my brain was losin' the thread entirely. The flatness of it. Two minutes ago, she'd had her cheek against my chest and her eyes closed and her whole body soft and easy in a way I was startin' to understand she didn't let herself be very often. Now she was lookin' at me like I was somethin' to be managed.
I didn't know what had just happened.
But she was watchin' me with that careful, neutral expression. Her hands were on my belt and I was a man, not a saint.
"No," I said.
