Dallas brushes a thumb across my cheek, slow and careful, almost reverent.
“You’re something else,” he says quietly, scraped raw. “Faith… you’re…”
He doesn’t finish.
He doesn’t have to.
Because he pulls me around to face him, steadying me when my knees wobble, hands warm and sure on my hips. I’m still half laughing, breath catching on the edges, when he leans in.
I clutch his jacket and kiss him back, the lake behind us whispering against the shore, the faint echo of the party carrying across the water. We’re still pressed close, the night cold around us, but his body warm and solid, grounding me in ways I’m not ready to understand.
When his lips part mine again, it’s slow.
Lingering.
Like neither of us is willing to let go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dallas
January 20th
Some kids throwtantrums when they’re upset.
Mine goes… quiet.
Not the good kind of quiet, either. Not the “busy coloring a masterpiece” or “building a horse ranch out of blocks” quiet. No, this is the heavy kind. The kind that settles on her as a too-big coat.
It starts at breakfast.
Lila just sits there, chin in her hand, poking a fork at her scrambled eggs. Normally, she’s narrating her meal as a cooking show host or asking me if chickens are proud of themselves for making eggs.
Today? Nothing.
“You okay, Beanpole?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
She shrugs. Doesn’t look up. Takes one mechanical bite, chews as if it’s a chore, and lets her gaze slide off somewhere toward the window.
That’s clue number one.
Clue number two arrives that afternoon, after school, when she drifts into the living room and drops her backpack in the middle of the floor. Not normal, she’s weirdly particular about putting it on the hook, and collapses on the couch. No TV request. No cookies, no “Daddy, look what I drew.”
She just curls up under the old patchwork quilt Mom made, the one that’s seen more winters than I want to count, and stares at nothing.
I stand in the doorway with a dish towel over my shoulder, watching her. The ranch is quiet in that just after chores way. Stock fed, trucks parked, brothers scattered.
“Hey, Beanpole,” I say, crossing to the couch. “You feeling okay?”
She lifts one shoulder, barely. “I’m fine.”
That word again. The worst word a five-year-old can use.
I sit at the end of the couch and nudge her foot with my knee. “You know that’s what grownups say when they’re absolutely not fine, right?”
A ghost of a smile tries to show up, then gives up halfway.
She tucks the quilt tighter under her chin. “I’m just tired.”
