“Alright,” he says. “We start basic. Cameras on every choke point. Motion alerts. I want eyes on the south fence repair by nightfall. We’ll audit your orders and call in markers at the co-op. And we’ll put a body between you and trouble.” He looks at me last, which makes it hit first. “Delaney, do you have a place you’re sleepin’ that locks? And a plan if someone tries to spook you into making bad choices in a hurry?”
“Yes,” I say. “And also no.”
The truth is I fell asleep on my childhood bed last night with a box of old ribbons at my feet and woke up in the predawn to Daddy’s boots in the hall and the wordtractorspoken into a phone like it was a curse. The truth is I have a plan for everything except for the hollow spot under my ribs that gets bigger when I stand in this barn and smell what I love and think about the ways it can leave.
Gray’s hand is already on his phone. He scrolls, thumb decisive. “You got a lot of good folks,” he says to Daddy, almost gently. “And maybe a snake. Either way, I’m not leaving this to luck. I’m sending you the best I’ve got.”
“I can do it,” Daddy protests automatically, which is Dad fordon’t you spend money on me.
“I’m not charging you full rate,” Gray says, and when Daddy opens his mouth, Gray lifts a palm. “And before you argue: Josie wants to keep riding here. She’ll be real mad if I let the place she loves go to hell because I wouldn’t lend a hand.”
Daddy grumbles, which is Dad forthank you, but I’m going to make noise about it so I feel better. He slides his hat back and scrubs a palm over his scalp. The sweat line on his shirt tells me he’s been out since sunup. It’s two in the afternoon now, and the Texas heat sits like a fat cat on a porch swing, smug and unmovable.
Gray’s already dialing. He turns, bracing a shoulder against the doorframe, eyes going distant while the phone rings. “Hawthorne,” he says when the line clicks. Just the name, nothing else, like it’s a key that fits more than one lock. He listens. “Need you at Coleman Ranch. Now.”
Coleman Ranch is a place inside my skin. Coleman Ranch is the creek and the rope swing and a dock post carved with a promise we made because we were kids who believed our words could keep storms from crossing fence lines. Coleman Ranch is also where he used to meet me on summer nights when I couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t stop pacing.
Nash Hawthorne is a before and an after.
I look down at my hands so nobody sees it on my face. My palms are dirty. My nails have hay chaff under them. My ring finger is bare. My lipstick lives in a city bag I haven’t unpacked. I left Valor Springs a girl who wanted the world. I came back a woman who knows what the world costs.
“You sure?” Daddy asks Gray, but his look slides to me, checking for the flinch. He knows. Everyone in this town knows, or thinks they do. Nash and I were a comma that never got its period.
Gray pockets his phone. “He was headed in anyway,” he says. “Was at the range. He’ll be here in ten.”
My heart does something traitorous. The fireflies under my sternum wake up and start blinking messages I haven’t wanted to decode in years.
I leave the feed room because standing still feels like the wrong choice. In the main aisle, the barn cathedral is full of dust motes doing slow ballet in the light shafts. Peanut noses bump my shoulder for treats. Penny leans on a broom near Stall Six, a fierce auburn ponytail spilling from her cap, watching me like she doesn’t miss much.
“You okay, boss?” she asks.
“Define okay.”
“She means do you want me to body-check him with a muck fork if he makes you cry,” Rafe says, appearing like a shadow from the tack room. He’s a quiet wall of a man with hands like rope burns and a heart that’s better than he thinks.
“I can body-check my own ghosts,” I say, but I smile so they know I heard them. “You two check the south fence sensors, please? Gray wants eyes on it.”
They peel off in a practiced choreography. I drop a hand to Buttercup’s velvety nose; she exhales into my palm, warm and sweet with alfalfa. “We’re gonna be fine,” I tell her. “We are. We always are.”
Lies taste like pennies. Truth tastes like dust.
The diesel rumble comes first. Then the crunch of tires over the dirt road leading to the creek. I blink against the white-hot slap of the afternoon sun.
The truck is black, but it wears the road. No shine, just clean lines and work. It noses up by the small parking area and idleslike a thing that knows its job and doesn’t need an audience. The door swings open.
He unfolds out of the cab with a kind of quiet power that makes the air rearrange to accommodate him. Nash Hawthorne always did move like that—like he was listening to something most folks can’t hear and adjusting accordingly. But there’s more weight to him now. More angles, more story. The boy I knew could fly off a rope swing and hit the water laughing. The man who steps onto the dirt looks like he’s jumped into darker places and come up meaner than what tried to drown him.
Big Stetson pulled low, brim cutting the sun in a clean line across his eyes. Jaw shadowed, mouth carved in a way that says he hasn’t smiled easy in a while. The kind of beard that happens because shaving is an afterthought. A thin white scar kisses the edge of his left cheekbone. T-shirt clinging to a chest built on labor, not vanity. Old jeans that have known saddle leather and asphalt. Forearms the color of late wheat, corded and nicked, veins like roots. His hands make a fist and release once, a reset I remember from every time the world tilted under him and he steadied it by will.
He tips the brim a fraction at Daddy. “Sir.”
“Nash.” Daddy’s voice is rough with relief he won’t admit to. “Appreciate you comin’.”
Gray’s handshake is a silent language: welcome, go, I trust you. “Hawthorne.”
“Calhoun.”
Then Nash turns, like the magnet was there all along and resisting it was just theatrics, and finds me.
