The call ends with a soft chime.
I stare at the screen for a long moment, her name still glowing there. My thumb hovers over it. I might call her back and say,never mind, don’t bother, I’ll just juggle flaming chainsaws of emotional damage on my own.
Instead, I lock the phone and set it on the counter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Delaney
I wakeup tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.
Not the bone-deep exhaustion of a double shift or the pleasant ache after a long day on my feet. This is heavier. Quieter. As if someone turned the volume down on me and forgot to turn it back up again.
I go through the motions.
That’s what the days have become. Me moving through the ranch like a ghost who still knows how to cook.
I get up before dawn, because my body doesn’t know how not to. I shower. I dress. I braid my hair the same way every morning because it requires no thought. I make coffee that tastes of nothing. I open the kitchen windows to let the cold air in and tell myself it’s good for me.
I prep. I cook. I clean.
I smile when spoken to.
I don’t look at my phone unless I have to.
The Facebook group still exists. The gossip still simmers. But it’s lost its sharp edge, not because it stopped, but because I stopped letting myself feel it. I scroll past messages from friends with careful fingers. I ignore anything with my name in it. I tell myself I’ll deal with it later.
Later has become a flexible concept.
The only time I feel real is with Sadie.
Sadie, who doesn’t know or care about scandals or captions or comment sections. Sadie, who wants dinosaur pancakes and extra syrup and insists on helping stir even when she spills flour everywhere. Sadie, who wraps her arms around my waist and tells me I smell of cookies and sunshine.
With her, the fog lifts a little.
I laugh more easily. I kneel on the floor without thinking about how exposed it makes me feel. I let myself be soft.
Everyone else seems to sense the change.
Boone is careful in a way that feels worse than anger. He checks in, asks how I’m doing, but never pushes. His eyes follow me sometimes, dark and intense. He’s measuring distance he doesn’t know how to cross.
Caleb… Caleb gives me space.
The good kind. The kind that saysI’m here without asking you to perform for me.He brings me water when I forget to drink it. Leaves notes about feed schedules and lets his shoulder brush mine in passing, like an anchor point I can choose to lean on or not.
Silas is the hardest.
He’s still Silas. Still warm, still smiling, still throwing jokes into the quiet, but there’s restraint there now. A carefulness I’ve never seen in him before. He doesn’t flirt. Doesn’t crowd. Doesn’t fill the silence the way he used to.
It’s like he’s waiting.
I don’t know for what.
By the end of the week, I feel scraped raw. Like I’ve been holding my breath for days without realizing it.
That’s when the car pulls up.
I’m in the kitchen mid-morning, elbows deep in dough, palms dusted white, when the sound reaches me through theopen window. Tires on gravel. An engine that doesn’t rattle or complain the way Boone’s truck does. Not Caleb’s either. No familiar cough, no diesel growl.
