Clients came and went, their needs pedestrian: a watercolor feather, a set of wedding bands on ring fingers, a cancer ribbon for a dog. None of them registered. Every time my hands stilled, my mind jerked back to the look on his face—want and fear, need and guilt, like he was trying to swallow his own name.
In the slow minutes between appointments, I caught myself cleaning the same counter twice. I reorganized my pigment shelf three times, then undid it all and started over. When my hands itched, I went for the notebook and tried to sketch somethingthat wasn’t a six-foot-tall lawman with a death wish for self-destruction. It didn’t work. Even when I started with a skull, it curved into his jawline; even when I drew a goddamn rose, it turned out like a badge.
Around two, my phone buzzed. Harlow, with the only text that could cut through my haze:Something’s off out here. Tracks by the north fence. Could be nothing, but I don’t like it. Pa wants you to check it out.
I sat with that message for a while. My family’s land had been the stage for every major drama of my life—childhood, rebellion, first heartbreak, and now this weird, relentless sense of siege. The idea that someone was out there, watching, made me want to set the whole valley on fire and start fresh.
I thumbed a reply:I’ll swing by after closing. If it’s just a stray, I’ll send it home.
Harlow responded with a thumbs-up, but I could hear the worry behind the emoji. He was never the anxious type, which meant it was real.
The rest of the afternoon crawled. At 5:30, I had a walk-in with a “complicated” design that amounted to three initials and a date of birth. By six, I was alone again, stacking the day’s cash in the safe and checking the window locks like a man expecting the wolves to come down Main Street. I tried to tell myself I was just being careful. That I wasn’t overreacting.
By seven, I couldn’t take the waiting. I texted Floyd:Tonight’s still on?
The reply came quick:After midnight. Don’t park out front.
I stared at the message for a long time, letting the words settle. The secrecy was starting to chafe, but I wanted him enough to play along.
For now.
I closed up an hour early, set the alarm, then lingered on the shop floor, looking at the rows of ink and the clean white of thewalls. I felt the urge to vandalize my own space—leave a mark, a message, something that said I’d been here and I wasn’t hiding. But in the end, I just turned off the lights, locked the door, and walked into the night.
The air outside was cool, with a hint of smoke from someone’s backyard burn barrel. The street was empty except for my bike and the sheriff’s cruiser parked three blocks down, pretending to watch for speeders. For a second I wondered if it was him, if he’d loop the block just to see me.
I almost hoped he would.
I got on my bike, started the engine, and let the idle rumble in my chest. I told myself I’d go check the fence, just like Harlow asked. But when the time came, I knew I’d end up at Floyd’s, secrets and all.
I was reckless, maybe. But sometimes the only way to get what you want is to break your own rules. And if it blew up in my face, at least I’d have the burn to remember him by.
Chapter Seven
~ Floyd ~
I spent the better part of an hour prepping the house for a guest no one would ever know about. I vacuumed the runner twice, lined up the shoes in the entryway so the toes pointed in militant formation, and wiped down every horizontal surface in the living room, then did it again.
It was pointless, but I did it anyway.
Midnight wasn’t my hour. By midnight my body was programmed for three fingers of bourbon and the predictable ache of insomnia. Tonight, I’d skipped the bourbon and replaced the ache with something worse: expectation. My hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting.
I checked the lock on the front door three times, then the window. At 12:01, I checked the time on my phone, the oven, the wall clock, and the digital on the microwave, all in the span of sixty seconds. None of them matched.
Out front, the street was a deep black. Every house along the block was dark except for the McElroys two doors down, who left their porch light on year-round to warn away raccoons or Satan or, more likely, their own daughter’s boyfriends. I killed my own porch lamp—don’t be an amateur—and watched the glass for any sign of headlights.
At 12:04, my phone buzzed. I checked it so fast I almost dropped it.
Here.
I exhaled. My palms were sweating.
The knock came exactly three seconds after, low and deliberate, a rhythm that made me think of Morse code. Or a confession. I opened the door on a crack, then all the way.
Ransom stood on the mat in a black henley and jeans, nothing else, hair still wet from the shower. Water beaded on hisjawline and made his neck look carved from marble. His eyes were clear and focused, locked on me like I was the last thing standing between him and whatever he’d come for. I expected sarcasm or a cutting joke, but all I got was silence.
He stepped inside, slow and sure, and pushed the door shut behind him. He didn’t even look at the house. All that intensity was for me alone.
I felt the urge to say something—anything—to regain footing, but I couldn’t. He was taller, broader, and, right now, hungrier. His hands flexed, restless at his sides, like he was deciding whether to shake me or hit me or just fuck me right there against the entryway wall.
