Boone’s eyes flicked up, searching his face. “Why do you care? Why does it matter to you what happens to me?”
The question sat there between them, demanding an answer Walker wasn’t sure he could give. His chest went tight. He’d been avoiding this truth since the day Boone arrived, but there was no dodging it now.
“Because I need you here,” he said finally, the words coming slowly, each one dragged from someplace deep and vulnerable. “Because I can’t build this place without you.”
Boone’s eyes widened slightly, surprise breaking through the anger.
“This ranch, this... whatever it’s going to be,” Walkercontinued, gesturing vaguely toward the house. “It’s not just about giving guys like us a second chance. It’s about building something that matters. And I can’t do it alone.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “And because you’re not alone anymore. You have family here.”
The word ‘family’ landed like he’d hoped it would. It was exactly what the kid needed, and they both knew it. A real family, not the fucking Goodwins and all of their holier-than-thou bullshit.
Boone flinched, his hands gripping the folder so tightly the pages crumpled. “You’re not my family.”
“I can be, if you let me. Johanna, too. Family isn’t always just blood.”
Something in Boone snapped. His shoulders caved inward, and a sound broke loose from somewhere deep. He covered his face with one hand.
Walker didn’t reach for him. Didn’t say it would be okay. Didn’t even scoot closer or pat the guy’s back. He just stayed put, still and solid in the passenger seat, letting Boone fall apart in peace. Some things you couldn’t fix. Some pain demanded you just shut up and let it burn through. He could do that for Boone. Let the kid break without shame.
Outside, snow kept falling, erasing everything. Every tire track. Every ugly truth. Just a white world swallowing up the scars and making everything new. Inside the truck, something else was happening, something raw and ugly and honest—a bridge getting built, plank by crooked plank, between two busted-up people.
After a while, Boone straightened up and scrubbed his face on his jacket sleeve. They didn’t talk about the crying. Didn’t need to.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Boone said, voice muffled and shaky.
“Neither do I,” Walker said, and it was so honest it almost hurt. “We’ll have to figure it out together.”
They just sat there, not talking. Engine running, window fogging, Boone’s breath coming in ragged and uneven.
Finally, Boone reached forward and turned the key. The engine died, plunging them into a silence so profound that they could hear the soft patter of snow on the truck roof. It felt like a decision had been made, though neither of them had spoken it aloud.
“Come inside,” Walker said quietly. “It’s Christmas.”
nine
Boone woke with a jolt, his neck stiff and his mouth tasting like he’d been chewing on cigarette butts and old pennies. Sunlight cut through the curtains, a strip of it slashing across his face and forcing his eyes shut again.
Where the hell was he?
Not the bunkhouse.
A couch.
Walker’s couch, he realized. The one with the springs that dug into your back.
Last night came back to him in fragments—the truck, the snow, the folder with Crystal’s story inside. Walker saying things Boone hadn’t been ready to hear. Family. The word still burned in his chest, uncomfortable and foreign.
He shifted, feeling something scratchy against his face—the ancient afghan Walker kept folded over the back of the couch. Someone had draped it over him after he’d passed out. His last memory was stumbling into the house behind Walker, the older man’s hand steady on his shoulder, guiding him like he was some lost kid instead of a grown man who’d spent four years in a cell barely big enough to stretch out in.
A soft exhale, warm and damp, brushed against his dangling hand.
He froze.
Slowly, he cracked one eye open and found himself staring directly into a pair of deep brown eyes. A dog. A large German Shepherd with a graying muzzle lay on the floor beside the couch, watching him with an intensity that felt uncomfortably like judgment.
“The hell?”
The dog’s ears perked up, but he didn’t move otherwise, just continued that steady, unblinking stare like he was waiting for something. Like he had all the time in the world.
