“I don’t flinch,” I tell her.
“I also need someone that can help me elevate this ranch to the next level.”
“I can do that, too.”
She looks at me for a long beat. “Good. The job’s yours if you want it.”
Something in my chest cracks open. I nod. “I want it.”
“You can start Monday. That give you enough time to settle your life?”
I swallow hard, then smile. “I think this is me settling it.”
We shake hands, her grip strong, no-nonsense, but there’s something solid in it. Like a promise that this won’t be easy, but it’ll be real. She leads me across the yard, boots crunching gravel, past the equipment shed and a row of rusted stock trailers, then up a narrow set of stairs on the side of the garage.
“This is yours,” she says, unlocking the door to a small apartment above. “It ain’t fancy, but it’s clean, and the AC works most of the time. Should be all right for the workweek. Too far to drive back and forth every day, anyhow.”
I step inside, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe. It’s small. A kitchenette, a couch, a bed tucked under the eaves. The furniture doesn’t match, and the yellow curtains are a little faded. But it’s warm. Peaceful. And most importantly, it’s mine. No shared silence. No tension curling under the covers. No pretending someone wants to stay when they’ve already let go. Just four walls and a door that locks behind me.
“I love it,” I say softly, my fingers brushing the edge of the windowsill.
Connie smiles, and it’s the first time I see the steel behind her ease. “Welcome to Connie’s Ranching Company, Olive.”
And just like that, I feel the tiniest flicker of something I thought I’d lost somewhere back in Broken Heart Creek.
Belonging.
After I leave the ranch, I drive in silence. No music. Just the hum of the road beneath me and the ache building in my chest like a storm gathering strength.
The cemetery is quiet, the wind stirring the grass in soft waves as I walk the familiar path toward our family plot. My boots crunch over gravel, then soften against the earth. My breath catches when I see it. The row of gravestones. Our grandparents, the space reserved for Mom and Dad someday, and then hers. Opal’s.
It still doesn’t feel real. Sometimes I think it never will. This place… it held the past and a future that was stolen too soon. It was never supposed to be for me and Opal. Not for a long time, at least.
I sit on the bench Dad built with his own hands, the wood smoothed by weather and years. It faces the stones like it was meant to hold all the words we never got to say.
“Hi, Sis,” I whisper, my voice catching. “I’ve missed you.”
Tears blur the edges of everything—sky, grass, the sharp lines of her name carved into marble.
“I got the job,” I say, trying to smile through it. “It’s a cattle ranch. Real work. Real people. Connie runs it. She’s tough as nails. You’d like her. She doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
I let out a shaky breath, eyes fixed on her name. “I wish you were here. I wish I could hear you yell at me for letting things get so bad with Liam. Or laugh when I told you I ran like hell instead of fighting for him.”
A breeze stirs the leaves overhead.
“But I’m trying, Opal. I really am. I don’t know what comes next, but for the first time in a long time I’m choosing me.” I leanback, tilting my head to the sky, letting the tears fall freely now. “You were the brave one. But maybe I’m finally learning.”
The wind picks up, lifting strands of my hair across my face, and for a second, I swear I can feel her nearby. Not in the way that breaks me. In the way that helps me breathe.
A soft hand touches my shoulder, grounding me in the middle of my grief. I look up and find Mom standing there, eyes brimming with tears, her face lined with that quiet, knowing ache only mothers carry.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask, voice rough and thick.
She kneels beside me, her hand never leaving my back. “Long enough,” she says softly.
That’s all it takes. I break. Sobs rip through me ugly, unfiltered, years of grief and weeks of heartbreak crashing out of me all at once. She pulls me into her arms like she used to when the world felt too big, and I let her.
“I miss him so much, Mom,” I choke out. “But I can’t be with him. Not like this.”
