Bran’s hand is on mine before I can type—big, calloused, covering my fingers on the trackpad. His palm is warm. He doesn’t squeeze, just…settles there. Holding me in place.
“Hey,” he says quietly. “Look at me.”
It takes effort to drag my gaze away from the screen, like peeling Velcro.
When I finally do, his eyes are right there, steady and annoyingly gentle. There’s nothing soft about the rest of him—hard jaw, hard shoulders, hard lines—but his eyes are a different story entirely.
“He’s one man behind a machine somewhere,” Bran says. “You’re not standing in front of him. You’re not on a cliff. You’re in a room, on a damn fancy horse farm, with a lock on the door and people who would happily break his bones if he tried to take one more step toward you.”
I swallow. His thumb has slid, almost unconsciously, to the inside of my wrist. My pulse hammers against it like it’s trying to prove a point. We both pretend we don’t notice.
“I hate that he gets to talk to me like that,” I say. “Like I’m this…project he’s proud of.”
“He’s trying to rewrite what you were,” Bran says. “You were the person who shined a spotlight on the graves he and his brother left behind. You were the one who helped get his name out of a file and into a courtroom, even if he wasn’t the one sitting in it. He hates that. So he’s trying to make himself the one who made you important, instead of the other way around.”
My throat tightens. The room feels too warm. Or maybe that’s just him, all six-foot-whatever of Irish furnace pressed along my side.
“He doesn’t get to define you,” Bran says quietly.
Emotion claws at my chest in an ugly, unfamiliar way.
“Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” I blurt, which is stupid and way too honest and absolutely not something I meant to let out. “I don’t even know who the hell I am, really.”
I want to snatch the words back and shove them somewhere private.
Bran just holds my gaze. His thumb strokes once, barely there, over the thrum of my pulse.
“They should have,” he says. “You’re whoever you want to be. You’re brave and you’re scared, and you’re perfect and you’re flawed, and you…you fucking shine, Tink.”
Oh my god.Every insecurity I’ve ever had collapses in on itself under the weight of his approval, and something inside me stretches and preens andpurrswith utter contentment.
We sit there like that, eyes locked, his hand still covering mine on the desk. Somewhere down the hall, a radio plays soft country music under the sound of Cotton singing off-key in the kitchen. The heater ticks. A horse whinnies faintly outside, like the rest of the estate is reminding us the world still exists.
For a second, there’s nothing else. No Henry. No mountain. No Falls.
Just this.
“I—”
My laptop pings again, interrupting what I might have confessed. The bubble of almost-softness pops.
“Text Brady,” Bran says, voice tightening. “Screenshots. Then we’re done with him for today. I mean it.”
“And if I argue?” I ask.
He squeezes my hand—just once, just enough that I feel it everywhere. It shouldn’t feel like anything. It does.
“Then we argue,” he says. “But right now, I’m asking, not ordering.”
It shouldn’t make a difference.
It does.
“Okay,” I say, exhaling. “Okay.”
I take screenshots. I send them to Brady with a bare-bones summary:contacted again, no response yet, we’re at Cotton’s.
Then, for the first time since this started, I hit the little X in the corner of the chat window and close it.
