But as I walked back to my cabin, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing toward the north pasture, where that cabin sat among the trees. I couldn’t stop wondering if Wyatt was there, alone with the ghosts of what we used to be, or if he had someone waiting in the home that was supposed to be ours.
The windmill creaked its evening song, a steady heartbeat against the fading light. Somewhere, a mockingbird ran through its stolen melodies. The ranch settled into its nighttime rhythm, and I stood on my porch, caught between the urge to run and the stubborn need to stay.
“I know exactly where to step,” I’d told him.
That was a lie. Once upon a time, his hand had shown me the way. Now, every step felt like it might trigger a landmine of memory. Every breath carried the scent of what we’d lost.
Still, I was here. Still, I would do the work. Still, I’d face whatever came next.
Even if it broke me all over again.
Chapter 8
Wyatt
Rain had been building all afternoon, the kind of slow, heavy pressure that made the cattle restless and old-timers swear their bones could predict the weather. The kind of storm that crept under your skin and sat there, waiting.
Thunder rolled low across the hills. Still distant, but close enough to feel in my chest.
I was in the chute barn, checking the pregnant heifers, doing my best to focus on anything buther. But it was useless. Everything smelled like Ivy now.
Her shampoo lingered in the hallway of the main house—something soft and expensive, all citrus and rain and memory. The tack room still held the ghost of her perfume, mixed with the damp scent of leather where she’d passed through yesterday. Even the damn air felt charged, humming with the same electricity that used to spark between us just from standing too close.
I ran a hand down the flank of a restless heifer, more for something to do than anything else. She shifted beneath my touch, unsettled by the weather—or maybe by me. Hell, I was unsettled by me.
Yesterday, I did the right thing. Gave her the tour. Showed her the barns, the lab, the land. Played polite, professional, steady. Then we’d ridden pastthehouse.
The one I’d built for her.
The one that had sat alone for ten years because I couldn’t bring myself to live in it until Mom and Maggie finally wore me down and convinced me to move in last year.
I’d seen Ivy's face when she realized what it was. The way her eyes had gone glassy. The way her chin quivered. The way she’dlooked at that porch like she could see the ghosts of the life we were supposed to have. How her voice broke on my name.
And I’d felt something break open all over again.
My carefully constructed walls, gone in one look.
So yeah, I was pissed. Pissed at her for coming back. Pissed at myself for still wanting her like oxygen. It was why I made that childish, stupid jab at her in the barn.
I told myself it didn’t matter. She was here for work, nothing more. I had a ranch to run. But then I woke up this morning and imagined her scent in my goddamn sheets because I’d dreamed of her—again—and I knew I was lying to myself.
Lightning flashed outside, bright enough to bleach the world white for a heartbeat. I counted—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—before thunder cracked hard enough to rattle the rafters. The sky was breaking open, same as me.
I bent to check the last heifer, muttering to myself,Focus, Blackwood.
And that’s when the barn door slammed open.
Ivy stood there, soaked to the bone, her hair clinging to her face, a clipboard raised like a weapon. Water ran down her neck, slipping beneath her shirt, and I felt my pulse hit like a hammer.
She looked furious. Beautiful. Alive in a way that made the rest of the world feel pale.
“You changed my embryo schedules,” she growled, voice tight and cutting, waving that clipboard like she meant to take my head off with it.
I straightened slowly, deliberately, taking my time. “I adjusted them.”
Her eyes sparked like lightning in a bottle. “You had no right?—”
“I had every right.” My tone came out rougher than I intended. “This is my ranch. These are my cattle.”
