“I’m fine,” I say.
She hums like she doesn’t buy it.
Then she steps even closer and reaches up with the rag in her hand.
Before I can ask what she’s doing, she wipes the grease off my cheek.
I freeze.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
Her fingers graze my skin for half a second. A half-second too long. Her breath hitches. Mine does too. We stare at each other like we’re both remembering a life where this kind of touch wasn’t loaded with land mines.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispers.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
I keep my voice level. “We’re already in it.”
“Don’t make it harder.”
I step back—barely—giving her the space she’s asking for without saying it outright.
“Copy that,” I say.
She looks relieved. She also looks disappointed. That’s the kind of contradiction that makes a man lose religion.
A truck crunches over gravel in the distance—one of the hands arriving early. The spell breaks like a thin sheet of ice.
Delaney clears her throat and turns toward the tool kit. “Alright,” she says briskly. “Let’s finish this before the town files a formal petition for our wedding venue.”
I pick up the staple gun. “Deal.”
But as we work, my gaze keeps sliding to her profile, and the question stays anchored in my head like a hook I can’t shake: If someone is willing to hurt this ranch to get what they want…
how far will they go once they realize Delaney Coleman is the real leverage point?
I glance toward the house, toward the barn, toward every stretch of land that belongs to the Colemans and now—by proximity, by promise, by some old rope swing vow that never fully died—belongs to me too.
I will find who is responsible.
And I will end this before Delaney ever has to learn what it looks like when the war in my head decides to fight for something worth keeping.
SEVEN
DELANEY
Old secrets in this town settle like sediment in the creek—out of sight, but still shaping how the water runs.
I spend most of the afternoon at Daddy’s desk, the big oak one in his office that smells like pencil shavings and lemon oil, flipping through file drawers that go back farther than I do. Nash is out walking the north fence with Rafe, checking for more “accidents.” My job, apparently, is paperwork archaeology.
“Watch for anything that feels off,” Daddy said before he headed out again. “Old easements. Water rights. Loan notes. We’ve pissed off a lot of the right people over the years.”
He wasn’t wrong.
