“I don’t belong anywhere, Laura,” I say softly, stepping in close enough she can smell the sweat and dust still clinging to me from the barn. “But it also means I don’t have anything to lose. Can you say the same?”
Her jaw tightens, but she doesn’t respond.
And then a voice cuts through the tension like a blade.
“That’s enough.”
Colter.
I glance over and find him standing a few feet away, arms crossed, expression stone cold. He’s not looking at me.
He’s looking at her.
Laura’s mask cracks for half a second. Long enough for me to see the flicker of embarrassment and fury.
“Come now,” she says, turning her body slightly toward him, one hand going to her hip. “I was just saying hi.”
Colter’s eyes don’t soften. “Say hi somewhere else.”
Laura hesitates, then flips her hair over her shoulder and gives me one last glare before strutting off toward the pool like she didn’t try to gut me in broad daylight.
I watch her go, then turn to Colter.
He’s still staring.
I cross my arms. “You always swoop in like that? Or are you pitying the poor orphan girl?”
His jaw ticks.
“That what you think this is?”
I shrug. “I don’t know what to think with you. One minute you’re cold. The next, you’re… whatever that was.”
He takes a step closer, then another, until there’s barely a foot of space between us. His voice drops low, almost a whisper.
“That was me not letting her get away with treating you like shit.”
“Why?” I ask, honestly. “Why do you care?”
Colter doesn’t answer right away. His eyes search mine, like he’s looking for a crack in the wall I’ve spent years building.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low. Gritty.
“Because whether you like it or not, you’re one of us now.”
My stomach twists. His words should feel like safety. Belonging.
But it sounds a lot more like a warning.
And I’m not sure which part scares me more.
15
The fuckers downat Weylon Ranch are going to get what’s coming to them. If they think they can nudge into the market without paying their dues, they have another thing coming. There is no way in hell we are going to let them simply waltz on in.
My father is pissed, and as the next in line to take over for him, fixing this mess rests on my shoulders. Pace took Lee and Jackson to run through some of our security footage. The Weylon boys have been poking the bears for months—buying up feed contracts out from under us, sending their men to sniff around our fence lines, and now pushing into our arms territory like they’ve earned a place here.
They haven’t.
