“Goodnight, Caleb.”
Her voice follows me out onto the porch.
Back in the barn, the horses shift as I walk by, blowing warm breath into the cool night. I pause by one stall and rest my forehead against the wood, listening to the calming sound of chewing.
The tack room is dim when I go back in. The cats have rearranged themselves. My book is still wedged where I left it.
I pull it out. Flip it open to where I left off.
He held her like she was something precious…
I shut it again.
Because tonight, what sticks with me isn’t the words on the page.
It’s a woman standing at my kitchen sink, hands in soapy water, listening to me talk about belonging as not a thing I have to earn every day.
It’s a kid’s face lighting up over real bread and magic gravy.
It’s the way the house felt… fuller.
We’ve been missing a piece we didn’t know we needed.
I rub a hand over my jaw and sit back down on the hay bale, the barn wrapping around me as it always does.
The animals I understand. Their wants are simple. Food, safety, consistency.
People are messier.
And still, as I listen to the quiet and stare at the book in my hands, one thought keeps circling in my head:
The new chef is going to be trouble.
Not the kind that wrecks things.
The kind that makes you hope for more.
That’s the dangerous kind.
And she’s already here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Delaney
It takes foreverto fall asleep.
The sheets are soft. The pillow smells faintly of fresh laundry and cedar. The house creaks and settles, the distant murmur of Boone’s low voice and Sadie’s softer one trailing off down the hall. Somewhere outside, a horse snorts.
I close my eyes, determined to rest.
Ten minutes later, my thoughts have circled back to Caleb’s hands more times than I would like to admit.
The way they held that dish and his fingers brushed mine once when I passed him a glass, just enough contact to send a little jolt up my arm.
This is ridiculous.
I roll over. And then again. Flip the pillow. Try counting backwards from a hundred.
