“You left for the city fast,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. “After…”
Her shoulders go still.
I’m not trying to pick at the past for sport. I’m trying to understand the timeline. The pressure points. The shape of anything that could tie our personal history to the current threat.
But I can hear the edge in my own voice.
She sets her pliers down carefully. “I left because I needed to,” she says. “Not because I wanted to punish you.”
I nod once. “I wasn’t asking for a confession.”
“Good.” She meets my eyes, chin high. “Because you don’t get to audit my survival strategies now that you’ve decided to come home again.”
That one lands.
Fair shot.
I respect it. “Alright,” I say. “Then answer this instead.”
She raises a brow.
“Who’s got the most to gain from your dad being forced to sell in the next sixty days?”
She thinks, visibly. The strategist in her is as real as the ranch girl.
“Anyone who wants the rodeo grounds tied into that expansion corridor. That north pasture has the cleanest access to the highway. And we’re sitting on land that isn’t just valuable—it'ssymbolic. The last big family spread still refusing to be bought.”
“Symbolic is a trigger word for egomaniacs.”
“That’s Texas,” she says dryly.
I snort.
She flips the wire tensioner and tests it again. It holds.
Then she stands.
I’m already upright, but she’s close now—close enough that the sun catches the tiny freckles across her nose and my brain goes profoundly unhelpful.
There’s still a smudge of grease at her temple from where she pushed hair back with dirty fingers. The urge to wipe it away is overwhelming.
I don’t touch her.
I want to.
Want is a dangerous animal.
“You slept okay?” she asks, voice casual.
I hesitate a beat too long.
Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t?”
“I slept,” I breathe out.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I almost smile. This version of her is the same as the old one—sharp as a tack, soft underneath when she chooses to be.
