It does. I know because I feel it every damn time I’m near her.
The kiss has replayed in my head more times than I’ll admit. The heat and curiosity I tasted on her lips. The way her breath hitched as she gave me her soft mouth, and how her response lit me up, right down to the bone.
I haven’t felt that alive in a long time.
But Jane has been quieter since then, as if she’s turned inward. She goes for long walks, saying that being in nature helps her head settle. I recognize it for what it is. Regulation. Grounding. A woman trying to make sense of too much input at once.
I respect it, even if it costs me.
Late this afternoon, she told me she was heading out again, boots already on, curls stuffed under her battered hat.
“I won’t be long,” she said, as if she owed me an explanation.
“You don’t owe me a schedule,” I told her.
She smiled faintly, then headed out.
A few hours later, I’m on my way to the side barn when I hear her laugh—too bright, too brittle.
Then I hear Jane’s voice.
“…and I said, ‘That man’s about the unluckiest guy I know. He could fall into a barrel of boobs, and he’d still come out sucking his thumb.’”
Raucous male laughter follows, then mumbled conversation.
I round the corner of the barn, and my gut clenches.
Jane is standing with two ranch hands. One of them is a young, cocky local, the type who thinks he’s charming because he hasn’t been humbled yet. He holds a cigar between the fingers of one hand like it’s a trophy, and a half-empty whiskey bottle dangles from the other.
“Come on, Cutter. You just downed a quarter bottle of whiskey like it was water, and you ride like you own the place. Don’t tell me a cigar scares you.”
Jane stands too close, chin lifted, eyes lit with something I’m beginning to understand. It’s not defiance; it’s desperation and the fierce need to belong overriding common sense.
She laughs. “It doesn’t scare me,” she says, her voice slurred.
I stop a few feet away, my jaw tight. They haven’t seen me yet.
This isn’t about the cigar. It’s not about proving she’s tough or impressing these men. It’s about belonging, about not being the outsider. Being one of the guys, because that’s what she learned, that being one of the men meant acceptance. Being soft meant being protected to death.
She’s trying to fit in. And these idiots are using that against her without even realizing it.
Before I can intervene, Jane takes the cigar from him. She lifts it to her lips, trying to appear casual. Except she hasn’t done this before. I can see it in her angle, the hesitation, the forced nonchalance.
She knows this is a mistake, but she’s going to do it anyway because backing down feels worse than failing.
She takes a puff and coughs hard enough to jerk her whole body.
The men laugh. Jane flips them off without missing a beat and tries again, stubborn as ever. The next puff makes her cough even worse.
Her face pales.
I step in. “Jane.”
She whirls, eyes flashing. “What?”
“Give me that.”
Her chin lifts defiantly. “No.”
