I came hard, muffling the noise against my bicep, but not enough. I heard myself say his name, soft at first, then louder, until it was the only thing I could hear. The sheets were a mess, sweat and spit and come, and my heart wouldn’t slow down.
For a long time I just lay there, panting, skin cooling in the night air. The ceiling was still there, unchanged, but everything else felt different. Or maybe just more true.
I wiped myself off with the hem of the sheet, rolled onto my side, and stared at the wall. I thought about what it wouldmean to actually let him in. To cross the line, to admit what I’d been burying all this time. The idea was as terrifying as it was inevitable.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, voice raw and ragged.
But I couldn’t stop picturing it. The weight of him, the heat, the way he’d laugh if he knew just how much I wanted it.
I closed my eyes and counted my breaths, hoping that if I did it long enough, the need would go away.
It never did.
Chapter Five
~ Ransom ~
I always liked the barn at this time of day—just after dinner, when the light through the west windows turned every dust mote into gold and made the ancient timbers look like bones under the skin of the world.
It was one of the few places on the homestead where nobody asked me about my future, my relationship status, or the “bad attitude” my grandfather swore was going to land me in the penitentiary.
Here, I could lean against the stall, rhythmically brush down Old Blue’s mottled hide, and pretend for five minutes that I belonged in my own skin.
Old Blue didn’t care that I’d moved out, that I’d inked half my body, that the closest thing I had to a significant other was the guy who’d arrested me three times before we were legal adults. He just leaned into the bristles, eyes half-shut, and let me work the dust out of his coat. He was the only living thing in the valley older than the rumors about my moral character.
I’d almost relaxed—almost—when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. Not the lazy, rolling crunch of a family car, but the slow, calculated roll of a county-issued SUV. Engine low, doors heavy, tires way too expensive for what the taxpayers wanted to believe.
My pulse jumped. I set the brush on the ledge and ran both hands over my hair, tucking the strays behind my ears. Blue flicked an ear and grunted like he knew who was coming, too. I didn’t need to look to know the exact make, model, and paint oxidation pattern of the rig pulling up.
From across the yard, my mother’s voice rose over the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. “Ransom, you’ve got a visitor!” Like I needed an engraved invitation.
I could have pretended not to hear, could have ghosted out the back and made Floyd chase me through the orchard. But I stayed put, hands on Blue’s withers, waiting for the door to open. I wanted to see how long he’d hesitate at the threshold, if he’d track me by sound or sight.
Boot-steps on the concrete. A pause, just long enough for him to square himself. Then the door swung open, catching on the warped jamb, and the air changed—same barn, same evening, but charged with static that prickled my arms.
Sheriff Floyd Hardesty in the flesh, looking like he’d been cut out of a recruitment poster and dipped in starch. Even off the clock, his uniform never had a wrinkle. He surveyed the room with that cop gaze, registering horse, hay, cluttered saddle racks, and me, all in one pass. He kept his arms loose at his sides, but I could see the tension in his fists, the way he flexed each finger before he took another step.
“Evening,” he said, voice flat as a two-by-four.
I grinned, showing a little more teeth than necessary. “Sheriff. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Official visit,” he said, and produced a notepad from his shirt pocket. The movement was crisp, automatic. “I’m supposed to ask if you’ve noticed any unusual activity out this way. Couple of the neighbors reported seeing trucks on the access road after dark.”
“Is that so,” I said. I let my accent drag a little, just to watch his eyebrow twitch. “I’ll keep an eye out, boss.”
He gave me a withering look, the kind designed to flatten a perp or make a rowdy kid piss himself. It never worked on me. I’d seen that face pointed at me from the time I was thirteen and shoplifted beef jerky from Miller’s General. It was the only look he had, as far as I could tell.
“Not here to bust your balls,” Floyd said, “just need the facts. You see anything, you let me know.”
He glanced at Old Blue, then at my hands, like he was counting for evidence of dirt under my nails. I wondered if he wanted to touch me as badly as I wanted to mess up that perfect part in his hair.
“You can relax,” I said. “No meth labs out back, unless you count the yeast Dad uses to homebrew.”
He didn’t smile, but the edge of his mouth softened. “You’d be surprised what counts as probable cause these days.”
“Try me,” I said, and took a slow step forward, closing the gap between us to two feet. In the barn, that’s intimate. In our world, it’s a challenge.
He didn’t back up. He never did. He just set his jaw and looked down the bridge of his nose at me. “I am trying you, McKenzie.”
