Lucas climbed out of the back, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His brows furrowed as he got his first look at the ranch.
“Well now,” Mama Mae said. “Aren’t you a sight.”
Lucas blinked. “Hi.”
“You hungry?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good answer.” She nudged her chin at one of the teenagers who’d come up behind us. He clapped a hand on Lucas’s shoulder and offered to take him inside to grab something to eat. Another boy asked if he rode horses. Someone else told him they would show him the creek.
Lucas hesitated, then looked at me.
I nodded.
Just like that, he was gone, swallowed into a pack of teenage boys who treated him like he already belonged there.
The tension that had been living between my shoulders for weeks eased. I hadn’t realized how tight I’d been holding myself together until it loosened. My breath left me in a shaky laugh.
Caleb heard it. He turned slowly, studying my face like he was seeing me for the first time. Not the woman he’d escorted through danger or held through fear, but the woman standing on his land watching her brother finally relax.
“You look lighter,” he said.
I glanced toward Lucas again. One of the boys was introducing him to a big horse closest to the fence. “He’s safe here, isn’t he?”
Caleb followed my gaze. “Yeah. He is.”
The words carried weight. He hadn’t just taken us somewhere away from Valor Springs. He’d delivered us into a world that knew how to protect its own.
Mama Mae followed my gaze. “He’ll be fine.”
I wanted more than anything to believe her, and a huge part of me already did. “I know. It just feels strange.”
“Strange good or strange bad, sugar?” she asked.
Neither seemed to fit. I bit down on my lip and tried to find a word that resonated. “I think it feels more strange safe.”
She smiled. “You’ll get used to it. That’ll pass.”
Caleb led the way toward the house, introducing me to his foster brothers along the way. There were men of all ages. Some were grown with families of their own who’d come back to help. Some were boys who’d only been there a year or two. All of them seemed grounded and solid, and they looked at me with something that felt a lot like responsibility.
When one of the men cracked a grin and asked if I was Caleb’s client or his girlfriend, he stopped short. Then he pulled his sunglasses off and made eye contact with each of the men who’d gathered. “All you need to know is that Marisol is under my protection.”
The air around us shifted. The way he’d said it made me wonder if he’d started to look at me like something more or if I was still just a job to him.
After she’d passed me coffee and I’d politely refused her offer of breakfast multiple times, Mama Mae turned toward me. “With all the boys here, the main house is full. The three of you can take the north cabin. You’ll be comfortable there.”
The three of us? She wanted Lucas and I to share a place with Caleb? Her tone made it clear she wasn’t making a suggestion.
“Let’s go. I’ll show you where it is so you and Lucas can get settled.” Caleb called for Lucas and ushered us back into the truck. We passed through a series of gates before stopping in front of a one-story cabin that looked like it had sprouted up right out of the surrounding land.
There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small but usable kitchen. The back porch looked out over pasture and the big Texas sky.
Lucas claimed the bunk room immediately. I laughed when he dove onto the bottom mattress.
Caleb turned toward me, something unreadable crossing his face. “You laugh like that often?”
“Like what?”
