Her breath catches, audible even over the engine.
“I just want real.”
She falls silent for a moment, then rests her boot on the dash and says, “You may come to regret that statement, cowboy.”
The snow crunches beneath the tires, and silence stretches between us.
It should feel awkward, two strangers driving through the dark toward a cabin after just signing a contract. Instead, it feels like the calm after a storm, as if we both stopped holding our breath.
Then she smirks. “But if I find out you have a dungeon in that cabin, I reserve the right to flee into the woods.”
I smile, slow and sure. “If you run, I’ll catch you.”
She hums thoughtfully. “Guess we’ll find out if I want to be caught.”
Twenty minutes to the cabin. Twenty minutes filled with her questions, laughter, and noise I usually avoid. But I don’t want to avoid it. I want to drown in it. And that’s how I know I’m already in over my head.
Chapter 3
Jane
The drive to Tex’s cabin is twenty minutes of darkness, pine trees, and silence that propels my mind into overdrive. Not a scared kind of overdrive, more like my brain finally has the space to process what my body just did.
I signed a contract with a stranger to live in his cabin for a week.
A very tall stranger with broad shoulders and lean muscle, like he’s built for work instead of show. Texas drawl like honey over whiskey. His dark hair is tucked under his cowboy hat, and his green eyes don’t miss anything but somehow feel steady instead of sharp.
What the hell, Jane?
I don’t sign contracts with strangers. I don’t uproot my life on a whim. I don’t let men with quiet voices and steady hands look at me like I make sense.
And yet here I am. In his truck. On my way to his cabin.
The truck’s heater hums softly, and the wipers whisper across the windshield, brushing aside the lazy snowflakes driftingdown. Tex drives one-handed, steady and alert. No wasted movement, no radio, no tapping fingers, no restless leg.
It’s infuriating. Meanwhile, my leg bounces, my fingers pick at the seam of my skirt, and my mind cycles through every possible way this could go wrong, while he remains still. Calm like a lake. As if that’s something people can just be. Must be nice.
“So,” I say, unable to bear the silence any longer, “is this the part where you take me to a remote cabin in the woods and reveal your collection of human teeth?”
He grins. “If I had a collection of human teeth, I wouldn’t keep it where guests could find it.”
“That’s... not reassuring.”
“I’ve got a collection of something, though.”
My head snaps toward him. “What?”
“Horseshoes.” His mouth twitches. “Hundreds of ‘em. Organized by year and horse.”
I stare at him. “That’s either endearing or serial-killer adjacent.”
He shrugs. “Bit of both.”
That surprises a genuine laugh from me, and something in my chest loosens.
My hat is in my lap now; I took it off when I got into the truck because wearing a hat indoors feels strange, even if ‘indoors’ is a vehicle. My fingers continue to play with the seam of my skirt.
Tex glances at my hands, then at my bouncing leg, and back to my hands. “You fidget a lot.”
