CHAPTER 1
Liam
I hadeverything I'd ever wanted—except someone to want it with.
The sunrise was doing that ridiculous golden thing over the mountains, spilling light across the pastures like it had somewhere better to be and decided to show off on the way.
Three hundred acres of Murphy land stretched out beneath it, green and gold and perfect. From here, I could see the barn full of healthy horses, fences that still held, and the farmhouse that had sheltered four generations of my family. It had good bones. Always had.
And there was me, standing in the middle of it. Alone. Again. Still.
Twenty-four hours on shift had left my bones hollowed out, that deep, marrow-level exhaustion you don't fix with sleep so much as endure until it loosens its grip. The horses didn’t care about my schedule. Dawn meant feeding, and I was already halfway to the barn before my truck finished ticking in the driveway.
The smell hit me first. Hay and horse and old wood, the particular sweetness of grain mixed with the earthier notesunderneath. I'd been breathing this air since before I could walk. My father used to carry me out here in the mornings, let me "help" with the feeding when helping meant sitting on a hay bale and watching him work. I don't remember his voice as well as I should. But I remember how his hands looked scooping grain: calloused, sure, gentle with the animals even when he was tired.
I grabbed the feed bucket and started my rounds.
The first horse was Ranger. He nickered when I reached his stall, shoving his gray nose over the door like I might forget him. "Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m late." I measured his grain, checked his water, ran my hand along his flank while he buried his face in breakfast. He had been my grandmother's horse before he was mine. Seventeen years old now and still going strong, which was more than I could say for myself most mornings.
Buck came next, then Dusty, then the newer rescues I'd taken in over the past two years. Each one got grain, water, a quick once-over for injuries or illness. The routine steadied something in me that twenty-four hours of sirens and smoke had knocked loose.
Then I finally reached her.
She pressed against the far wall the moment I appeared, ears flat, whites of her eyes showing. Twelve weeks, and she still flinched when I moved too fast. Still watched me like I might turn into something dangerous if she looked away.
“Easy, girl.” I kept my voice low and my movements slow. Unlatched the stall door with exaggerated care. “It’s just me.”
I set the grain down just inside the door and stepped back, giving her space. She watched me retreat, trembling, before inching toward the bucket. One step. Two. Her nose finally dipped toward the grain, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
Some damage takes longer to heal. Some trust has to be earned one morning at a time.
I understood that better than most.
The mudroom door stuck when I shouldered through it, the way it always did when the humidity climbed. I made a mental note to plane it down next weekend and added it to the list of projects that never seemed to shrink. I was always thinking about them—the new boards on the south fence. Patching the barn roof. The slow, necessary maintenance of a place that required constant attention just to stay standing.
I kicked off my boots, hung my jacket on the hook by the door, and that's when I saw it.
The empty hook.
Third from the left, right next to mine. The one where Claire's jacket used to hang, back when she still came home on weekends. Back when home still meant something to her.
I stood there longer than I should have, staring at a bare wooden peg like it owed me something. Three months, and I still hadn't moved the other jackets over to fill the gap. Three months, and some part of me was still waiting for her to walk through that door.
The memory surfaced before I could stop it.
Three months ago. Denver. The restaurant she’d chosen—white tablecloths, low lighting, the kind of place where the menu didn’t list prices and I spent the first ten minutes pretending I knew what half the words meant. I’d worn my good jeans and a button-down that never quite felt like me, no matter how many times she said I looked nice.
Claire had looked flawless. Manicured. Polished. The kind of woman who belonged in that space now, who fit it the way she never quite fit here anymore. She’d held her wineglass by the stem, lipstick perfect, eyes steady in a way that set my nerves humming before she even spoke.
“Liam,” she’d said, voice calm, almost kind. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
I’d known then. The way you know when a call drops before the line goes dead.
“The ranch,” she continued. “The small town. The kids you want.” A pause. A breath. “It’s not the life I want anymore. I’m up for partner. I’m not giving that up to move back to the middle of nowhere.”
Anymore.
That word had done the most damage. Not the leaving. The revision of history. The quiet admission that she’d wanted it once. Wanted me once.
