Sadie’s on the floor building some kind of Lego ranch that appears to have a dragon stable “just in case.” Boone’s stretchedon the couch with one arm over his eyes, boots still on, clearly in that fifteen-minute window between ‘I’m fine’ and ‘if I move I’ll die.’ Silas is at the table with his laptop, cursing under his breath at spreadsheets. Caleb’s nowhere visible, which means he’s either in the barn or avoiding eye contact with me. Both likely.
Boone’s arm shifts enough that one blue eye squints at me. “You taking your phone?”
“Yes, Dad,” I say automatically, and then flush, because,wow, brain, maybe don’t say that to the man you’ve had your tongue in.
He doesn’t react outwardly, but his mouth does that quick tightening that means he’s thinking too much.
“Text if you’re gonna be late,” he says instead.
Silas glances up, grin crooked. “Don’t fall off the mountain, honeybee. I’ve put too much effort into your coffee order.”
“I’ll do my best,” I mutter, and slip out the door before anyone can see how hot my face is.
The air outside hits me like a reset button. Cool and clean, edged with the sweetness of sun-warmed grass and that faint metallic tang you only get when there’s still damp earth somewhere in the shade. The sky is a clear, endless blue that would make a postcard jealous.
Sunridge Ranch stretches out in front of me in soft gold and green. Pastures roll toward the tree line. Horses graze with that lazy, arrogant grace that says they know they’re beautiful.
I suck in a breath so deep it hurts a little.
Okay. Walk first. Panic later.
The Lookout Trail starts past the far fence, where the property gives way to the thicker forest that climbs the mountain. It’s one of those winding, well-worn paths that everyone in Coyote Glen seems to know by muscle memory. Boone mentioned once that his dad used to take him andCaleb up there “to remind them they weren’t the only things in the world that mattered.” Silas called it “prime make-out real estate.”
Both seem true.
I cross the back pasture, wave to one of the ranch hands on a quad, and slip through the small gate that leads into the trees. The path narrows immediately, pine needles muffling my footsteps. Shafts of light spear through the branches, turning floating dust motes into lazy galaxies.
I tuck my hands into my jacket pockets and walk.
At first, my brain does what it always does when given a sliver of downtime: replays every embarrassing thing I’ve done in the last decade.
Boone’s mouth on mine, the way he’d cupped my face like I was precious and breakable and worth risking his carefully ordered world for.
Silas’s shameless laughter in the doorway, how he’d just taken in the entire scene as if he’d walked into his favorite show mid-episode.
Caleb’s expression in the kitchen days before, hurt and wary when I’d told him not to look at me like he cared, like I’d somehow punished him for the crime of noticing.
I walk faster.
Birds chatter overhead. A squirrel scrambles up a tree to my left, chattering what I choose to interpret as encouragement and not judgment.
What am I even doing?
I came here to start over, not to collect men like they’re new kitchen gadgets. Not to build a life that looks suspiciously like the messy, boundaryless one that detonated my old world.
I’m supposed to be rebuilding. Healing. Learning that I can exist as a whole person without centering my life around a man.
Men. Plural. Great.
The trail begins to climb, the incline forcing my attention down into my legs and lungs. Good. Let my body burn off some of the static my brain keeps generating.
By the time the first switchback hits, my breathing is heavier, my cheeks warm, my ponytail damp at the nape of my neck. My thighs remind me that standing all day at a stove is not the same as hiking up a mountain, no matter what my past self insisted.
I’m rounding a bend, head down, counting steps, when something flashes in the corner of my eye.
Movement. Fast.
For half a second, pure city-bred panic spikes.Stranger, attack, headlines. But then the shape resolves into a man in a dark running shirt and shorts, long stride eating up the trail.
