"Looks like y’all are having a good time," she says coolly, voice coated in something that burns.
Melissa, bless her oblivious heart, chuckles. "Didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just reminiscing."
Avery doesn’t respond. She just turns to Emmy with a practiced smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Come on, sweetheart. Let’s grab those popsicles."
They disappear around the corner, and I swear I feel the temperature in the store drop ten degrees.
I don’t chase her.
I know better than to make it worse right now.
But as Melissa hums and flutters off to the checkout like she didn’t just set a stick of dynamite in my morning, I realize something brutal
In Wilder Creek, reputation doesn’t fade, it festers.
And mine just caught fire again in Avery’s eyes.
The ranch feels different when I get back. Quieter. Like the wind’s holding its breath.
Avery’s not in the kitchen, not in the barn, not out walking Dusty with Emmy. She’s gone invisible, and it punches me square in the chest.
I spend the rest of the day pretending not to look for her, checking the barn, walking the trail past the creek, even circling the house twice under the guise of clearing tools. But she’s nowhere. Not in the garden, not with Emmy, not even on Dusty’s usual route.
The absence gnaws at me. It’s not just about finding her, it’s needing to know she’s still within reach.
By late afternoon, I find her on the far side of the pasture, sitting on the fence with her arms folded tight across her chest. The sun paints her in gold, but she might as well be carved from stone.
"You avoiding me?" I ask, keeping my voice light.
She doesn’t look at me. "Just getting some air."
"Want company?"
"Not really."
I lean against the post beside her, the silence thick as the Texas heat. "That thing at the store—"
"Don’t. It’s fine. You don’t owe me anything."
The words are too casual, too rehearsed. And they hit harder than any shout.
"I wasn’t flirting," I say. "Melissa’s just... Melissa."
"It’s not about her. It’s about you. About this place. About everyone thinking I’m just another name in your long, charming list."
Her voice trembles slightly, and I hate how true her words sound in the air.
"You’re not," I say, too fast. Too desperate.
She finally looks at me, and her eyes are clear but hard. Her jaw tightens, and she crosses her arms slowly, like she’s wrapping herself in armor. "Then maybe you should stop acting like you’ve got something to hide."
The space between us stretches wide.
And for the first time in days, I don’t know how to cross it.
I stay there, watching her watch the horizon like it might offer her a better answer than I ever could. And just like that, I’m back to a different fence line, years ago, barely sixteen, sitting beside my old man while hespit sunflower seeds and told me women were like horses.
They’ll bolt if you pull too hard, boy. And if you don’t hold the reins at all, they wander.' He laughed like it was wisdom, but all I felt was confusion, and a quiet wish to be nothing like him. I thought I’d buried that memory, but watching Avery now, I feel it crack open.
