Page 47 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

He was so deep in his own head that he didn't hear his brothers approach until Colter's voice cut through the noise. "You're staring at her like she's a rare unicorn."

"I'm observing."

Eli draped one elbow over the fence post. "Observing? Hell, Boone, you've been eye-fucking her for the last five minutes."

"She has a boyfriend," Boone grumbled.

"Not what I heard," Colter said. "She dumped his ass."

Boone went still as the word that spun around in his brain, ricocheting off all the sides of his skull like a pinball machine.

Single.

"Where'd you hear that?" he asked, keeping his voice even.

"From the horse's mouth," Eli said. "If you hadn't been so busy giving her hell about her ideas maybe she would've told you herself."

Little did his brothers know that she’d had the chance, yet, she hadn't told him. Yesterday, he'd apologized, tried to show her that he respected her, tried to undo the damage—and she still hadn't told him.

He didn't blame her. He just didn't like what it said about where he stood.

He squared his shoulders. "Good for her. She deserves better."

His brothers exchanged a look. Grins twitching.

"Deserves better?" Eli said. "You're full of shit. You've been grinning like an idiot ever since she came to town."

Boone scowled—but the warmth in his chest betrayed him, and they all knew it.

"Doesn't matter. She's leaving."

Colter whistled low. "First she's taken. Now she's leaving. What's next? She's too pretty?"

Eli stepped closer, voice dropping. "You've built a career on overcoming obstacles. You can wrangle cattle, survive a bucking bronco, run this whole damn ranch, and you're telling me you're going to let her walk out because you're scared of what comes next?"

"She's not a problem to solve," Boone said flatly.

"No," Eli agreed. "She's better than that. Which is exactly why you're terrified."

Boone's jaw tightened because he had no response for that—which was its own kind of answer.

"This isn't about Kayla," Boone said and regretted it immediately, because where the hell had that thought even come from?

Eli raised an eyebrow. "Who said anything about Kayla?"

"You might not have said it, but you were both thinking it," Boone said.

Kayla had left a fracture in the part of him that trusted people. He wanted to believe he was done with that chapter. But watching Vivi out there, pulling people together, pulling him back toward something he'd locked away, he wasn't sure anymore what he was protecting himself from and what he was just afraid of.

There was a difference. He just couldn't figure it out right now.

"Well," Colter said, pushing off the fence post with a self-satisfied grin. "The woman you're “not interested in” is heading over."

Boone straightened without meaning to. "What?"

"That's what I thought," Colter said.

Eli's voice was quiet but edged with something that sounded a hell of a lot like amusement—asshole. "Real bad, brother. You've got it real bad."