I showered alone for the first time since arriving. Hot water and lavender soap worked their way into my pores, washing off another layer of fear. My ribs still ached. My throat burnedwhere fingers had squeezed. My bruises had turned that ugly green-yellow shade that meant progress.
I picked clothes from the closet—soft jeans that had definitely lived another life and an oversized flannel that smelled like cedar and sunshine and one of the Blackwood boys. I didn’t know which one. Didn’t care. It felt like armor.
The little kitchen made me emotional all over again. Louisa had stocked it like she’d known exactly what I’d need. Actual coffee. Fresh bread. Fruit. Cream. Sugar. Comfort. Care. A kettle still warm. Mugs waiting.
I poured coffee with shaking hands. I set the kettle down with a gasp. God. My band. Were they okay? Were they pissed? Did they know? Management sure as hell wouldn’t tell them the truth—not when they’d been whispering about “optics” and “narrative control” while I was bleeding on my own kitchen floor.
Panic spiked. Fast. Sharp. Blinding. My breath hitched. My pulse climbed fast enough to make me sweat.
My gaze flicked around. I needed…I needed to find things to focus on instead. Things to take me out of this suffocating, squeezing feeling in my chest.
The sunrise through the window. The smell of cedar and coffee. The soft flannel on my skin. The safe quiet of Copper Creek.
And Liam. Just thirty feet away like he’d promised. Like he always had.
The panic eased, and I braced my hands on the counter, steadying my breath.
A few moments later, I stepped outside with my coffee.
And then—Jesus MaryandJoseph. My jaw actually dropped.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “What the actual fuck…”
There was Liam in the pasture with a young black stallion who clearly wanted to fight God and everybody.
And he was shirtless.
Completely. Gloriously. Unfairly.
Sunlight turned the sweat on his shoulders to gold, outlining every muscle in that sculpted, cowboy-warrior body. His jeans hung low on his hips, boots planted in the dirt, jaw set in that quiet, determined way he had when working with animals or calming storms inside me.
And he was beautiful.
No—he was lethal.
Every movement was smooth, confident, patient. He adjusted the lead rope, guiding the stallion through its panic, and watching him work made something low and deep inside me start waking up.
Not fear. Not dread. Not pain.
Want.
Pure, female-bodied, fully-alive wanting.
I sank into the porch chair because my knees forgot how to hold me upright.
And my mouth? Wide open.
Because have mercy?—
“Thank the good Lord I’m not dead,” I muttered under my breath. “Imagine missing this…”
Liam stepped to the horse’s side, voice low and steady, palm flattening against its neck, and I actually whimpered.
A goddamn whimper. Me. Stephanie Wilson. Whimpering over a man doing ranch work like a Pantene commercial for cowboys.
Heat rolled through me, warm and shocking and so very alive. My thighs pressed together on instinct. Not arousal I didn’t want—arousal that felt likeme. Like I’d gotten a piece of myself back.
I braced an elbow on the armrest, propped my chin in my hand, and watched him move. I noted the flex of his back, thecurve of his shoulders, the veins on his forearms, the way the muscles in his stomach tightened when the stallion jerked.
