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I glance over my shoulder at Lainey, and my chest turns soft and stupid. In the past, that feeling never ended anywhere good. Yet Lainey isn't scaring me, so I fixate on her instead of getting dressed.

Her lips are parted, one hand curled loose against the pillow, and there's a faint pink mark on her collarbone I put there sometime around two in the morning. The longer I stare at it, the more it brings feelings I'm not ready to name.

I don't want to leave. That's the plain truth of it, no dressing it up. I want to stay right here, pull her back against me, and let my father handle the fence and any other issue for one morning of my life. But I know that isn't reality.

And I'm sure Mason will be just as smug and irritating as usual since he had to warn me last night. By supper, the whole family will have a story about how I let a woman distract me from an actual emergency. Then it'll follow me around for the next six months whenever anyone wants to remind me I'm not as reliable as I like to think I am.

I force myself out of bed, careful with every movement, and reach for my jeans off the floor where they landed. I put them on then I lace my boots halfway and glance back at Lainey. My heart pounds harder.

She shouldn't wake up alone in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a cold spot in the sheets to explain where I went.

I'll leave her a note.

I glance around the room, and there's nothing. No pen on the nightstand, no notepad shoved in a drawer, nothing but my phone, my keys, and a half-empty glass of water from last night sitting untouched.

I need to get some paper in this place.

I check my phone for a second, considering texting her, except I never got her number.

I really am an idiot.

A few hours of talking, a kiss that put fire in my belly, and an entire night I'm not going to forget as long as I live. Now, I don't even have her number to leave a message on her own phone in case she wakes up wondering where I am.

I could wake her up right now and ask.

It'll only take ten seconds.

I reach for her and stop.

She's curled up soft and unguarded in a way she wasn't letting herself be for most of last night. And she looked tired by the time we finally stopped talking long enough to sleep, and tired in the good, worn-out way from laughing too hard and staying up too late doing things that had nothing to do with rest. Waking her up to ask for her number feels like trading magical for practical, so my gut screams don't do that to her, not after a night like this one.

Shit. What kind of asshole doesn't have a pen and paper in his apartment?

I search the kitchen drawers, come up with a grocery receipt and a stub of a pencil that barely still has lead in it, and scratch out three lines on the back before I lose my nerve or my patience.

Back soon. Have to deal with a family issue. Don't go anywhere!

Jagger

I set it on the pillow next to her, close enough that she'll see it the second she rolls over. Then I stand and stare at her longer than I should, memorizing the particular way her mouth curves in deep sleep.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I silently groan and pull it out.

Dad: Did you leave yet?

I release a pissed breath, grab my hat off the floor, and kill the noise from my boots as best I can, crossing the wood floor. I let myself out the door as quietly as I know how and lock it.

The cold outside slaps some sense back into me. The second I hit the stairs, and by the time I'm in my truck, the heater blasts, and my breath fogs up the windshield. My mind splits clean in half between the fence waiting on me and the woman I just left sleeping in my bed with a receipt for an explanation.

I'll be done before she wakes up.

The drive out to the ranch takes twenty minutes. I spend it arguing with myself the whole way, replaying every word she said last night, wondering when exactly I turned into a man who leaves handwritten notes on grocery receipts because he can't stand the idea of a woman waking up confused. I've never once done that. Not with anybody. And I don't have the first idea what to do with the fact that it didn't even occur to me not to.

The gate's closed when I pull up. My gut drops. It's normally open at this time of morning so ranch hands can enter quicker.

I click the opener, wait for the gates to open, drive through, and close it behind me. I head across the ranch.

Dad's standing near the south pasture with Mason and two of our hands. All four of them wear the same grim expression men get when the problem in front of them is bigger than what they hoped. The morning sky's just starting to lighten up. Gray and pink dust the edges, and it's bright enough to see the fence line's not just down in one spot. It's down for a good hundred yards, with posts snapped clean at the base. The wire's coiled and twisted, like it was dragged.