The word us mattered.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Adrian appeared first, then Tanner, both stopping when they took in the scene — notintruding, not withdrawing. Present.
She straightened slightly. “I should’ve said this sooner.”
“You said it when it mattered,” Tanner replied.
Adrian met her gaze, steady. “They’re not used to you standing firm.” “No,” she said. “But I am.”
Cole folded his arms. “Then we adjust.”
“To what?” she asked.
“To the reality that this isn’t just about keeping you safe,” he replied. “It’s about backing your choice.”
The weight of that settled slowly, firmly.
She hadn’t asked for protection.
She’d asked for room.
And without ever framing it that way, they’d given her more than that — they’d given her alignment.
Later, alone in her room, she lay awake listening to the familiar sounds of the house. Nothing had changed outwardly. The ranch was still quiet. The land still vast.
But something inside her had eased.
She wasn’t bracing any more.
Not because the danger was gone — but because she wasn’t carrying it by herself.
And that, she realised, was the difference between hiding and belonging.
**CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
The call came the next morning.
Not from the outside world, but from within the one she’d stepped away from.
She stood in the kitchen when her phone vibrated on the counter, the sound sharp in the quiet. The screen lit up with a name she hadn’t expected to see again — not because it was impossible, but because she’d stopped waiting for it.
Cole noticed immediately.
“You don’t have to answer that,” he said.
“I know.”
She picked up the phone anyway and stepped outside, the cool morning air grounding her as she accepted the call.
It was brief. Controlled. Carefully framed as concern rather than pressure.
An offer.
A compromise.
A way back that would make everything simpler.
When she ended the call, she stood for a moment longer, phone heavy in her hand.
