The first hit is breath—how I forget to do it and then have to remember fast because oxygen is suddenly important. The second is memory—the way he looked at me on graduation night when we almost… and then tragedy cut the world in half. The third is the way the ground under my boots goes a little soft, and I have to lock my knees because falling would be too on-the-nose.
“Laney,” he says.
It’s my name, but he says it like a prayer and a curse got married and had a baby. He doesn’t step closer. He doesn’t have to. The space between us vibrates with everything we didn’t say and everything we shouldn’t say now.
“Nash,” I manage. It comes out steady, which is a tiny miracle.
For a beat we just look. The barn hums. The flies make their endless summer music. Somewhere a horse stomps. Gray’s phone buzzes and he ignores it. Daddy takes off his hat and puts it back on again.
Nash’s gaze drops, quick, to my hands—still dirty, nails wrecked—then ricochets to my eyes, holding. The brim of his Stetson shades him, but not enough to hide the shadows I don’t know by name. The man is built of dark corners and bright edges, and I don’t trust either.
“You look…” He stops, jaw flexing. Tries again. “Different.”
“So do you.”
“Good different,” he says, softer. It lands between us like a coin on a table—thin, heavy, stamped by a government we didn’t vote for.
Gray clears his throat, the kind of sound a man makes when he’s reminding two people the world exists. “We’ve got a situation. I’ll brief you inside.”
Nash doesn’t take his eyes off me. “I’ll handle it.”
“Handle me later,” I say before I can call the words back. My face heats. Daddy’s cough turns into a wheeze that’s definitely laughter.
I can’t believe I just said that out loud.
Nash’s mouth tilts, just the slightest bit, like I cut a seam he was trying to keep closed. The scar on his cheek lifts and settles. “Copy that.”
He steps past me, close enough that cedar and sun and something darker roll off his shirt and hit me square. Not cologne. Not soap. Man and heat and the kind of danger I used to run toward without checking for exits.
I let him pass. I let Gray follow. I stand in the doorway of the barn I came home to save and feel the pinky-swear on my finger like a ghost ring.
Always, we said.
The wind comes up and slips under the brim of his hat and lifts the edge just enough that I see his eyes when he glances back, a quick, involuntary check that I’m still there.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell the dust, and I’m not sure if it’s a promise or a threat.
Either way, it’s the truth.
I square my shoulders and step inside.
TWO
NASH
I clock three things the second I step into the feed room: the map spread on the wall, the smell of burnt brake lining clinging to the air like a warning, and Delaney Coleman standing there looking like trouble I want to volunteer for.
Good differenthits me like a body blow.
She was all colt legs and comet hair the last time I let myself really look. Now she’s… finished. Sharper at the cheekbones, softer at the mouth. City polish smudged by ranch dust in a way that makes my hands itch. A button-down rolled to the elbows, skin sun-pinked where her sleeves don’t reach, hair twisted up like she fought with it and won. There’s confidence in the way she sets her feet—hip-width, balanced, like she remembers how to brace against a kicking calf and a bad day.
And those eyes. Still creek-water green, still the first place I ever believed in “home.” Only now they’ve got the weight of things seen and survived. It’s a new kind of pretty—earned and a little dangerous.
I want to touch her. Full stop. The urge is primitive and inconvenient and immediate: palm at her waist to see if she still fits there; thumb at the corner of her lip to wipe away the dust she missed; knuckles down the tendon of her neck just to feel her shiver. I keep my hands on my belt instead, because I’m not the boy who jumped from rope swings anymore. I’m the man who knows how fast a good thing burns if you bring open flame too close.
“Inside,” Gray says, a low order with room for dignity. He’s good at that—getting people moving without making them feel handled. Mr. Coleman—Delaney’s father—nods once and leads us back into the room.
I take the corner where I can see the door, the window, the map, and Delaney’s face. Old habits die slow.
