I couldn’t even be embarrassed. “No man on earth could stop from coming in his boxers with you grinding on top of him, Stephy.”
Her cheeks reddened a little more.
"We should get up," I said, not moving. I didn’t want to move, to leave this moment, but there were chores to be done.
"We should," she agreed, also not moving. But then her stomach growled, loud and insistent.
“Pancakes? After I clean up, obviously,” I added with a chuckle.
The corner of her mouth curved upward. “Always pancakes.”
The rest of the day passed in a haze of sexual tension and studied normalcy. Owen and Louisa stopped by for breakfast, and if they noticed anything different about us, they didn't comment beyond Owen's knowing smile and Louisa's extra-motherly fussing over Stephy.
We worked the ranch—fixing fences, checking water troughs, moving hay—and every accidental touch burned, every shared look held weight. The awareness from the morning hadn't faded; if anything, it had intensified, like a storm building on the horizon.
I was repairing a gate hinge when my phone rang. LAPD.
"Walker here."
"Ranger Walker, this is Detective Harrell. I wanted to update you on the Wilson case."
"Go ahead, Detective.” Stephy tensed from where she was holding the gate steady. I put the phone on speaker.
"I wish I had better news. We've processed all the evidence from the scene, but we're coming up empty. No DNA matches in the system, the surveillance footage from neighboring houses shows nothing useful. Guy knew what he was doing—avoided every camera angle."
"What about the letters? The photos?"
"Generic printer paper, standard ink, no fingerprints. Photos were taken with a telephoto lens, no metadata. This guy's either very smart or very lucky."
"He's still out there," Stephy said quietly.
"Ms. Wilson?" The detective sounded surprised. "Yes, ma'am, I'm afraid so. But we're not giving up. We've increased patrols in your neighborhood, and we're working with the FBI on similar cases. These guys always slip up eventually."
"Eventually," she repeated, hollow.
After I hung up, I watched something shift in her face—not fear exactly, but a kind of weary acceptance.
That evening, we sat on the porch with glasses of whiskey while the sky bruised purple over the western hills.
The air shifted first—beforethe lightning, before the thunder—building that unmistakable tension that made the tiny hairs on your arms lift as if the world were holding its breath.
It felt alive. Alert. Watching.
A charged hum threaded through the air, the kind that sinks into your bones and whispers:something’s coming.
Lightning flickered in the far distance—silent forks of white that illuminated the undersides of the storm clouds like a warning.
Stephy pulled her knees up in her chair, fingers around her glass. “You feel that?” she asked, voice low. “The air. It’s…thick.”
She wasn’t wrong. It felt like the minutes before a fight—everything tight, stretched, waiting.
“He’s never going to stop looking for me,” she said, eyes on the horizon. “Even if they catch him, someone else will come. That’s fame. You put yourself out there and hope the wrong person never decides they own you.”
The wind rose in a slow spiral, bringing that metallic scent of rain—the smell before lightning hits dirt.
“You don’t have to go back to that life,” I said.
She let out a breath that was half laugh, half ache. “I’m under contract. Three albums. Two tours. The whole damn circus.”
