I wanted to tell him yes. I wanted to say that I was ready, that I could handle anything. But all I managed was, “Don’t let them get hurt. Not for me.”
He brushed his thumb across my cheek, tracing the line of the collar. “They’re not doing this just for you, Bo. They’re doing it because it’s the right thing.”
I nodded, but the truth of it hadn’t sunk in yet.
He pulled me in, forehead to forehead, and just held me there. I felt his heartbeat, fast and steady, and the knot in my chest loosened a little.
Outside, the world was waking up—the clatter of a feed bucket, the sound of Ma’s laugh cutting through the morning air. I could smell bread baking, cinnamon and yeast and home.
Jo’s hand slid under the hem of my shirt, thumb rubbing the skin above my hip, like he wanted to memorize every inch.
“You ever think we’d end up here?” I asked, voice small.
He grinned, the old cocky bastard, and kissed me, slow and deep. “Yeah. I always did.”
We stood in the silence, letting the world spin around us. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I had to run.
I was already home.
And nothing—no one—was going to take that from me again.
Chapter Fourteen
~ Josiah ~
Knox caught me halfway to the woodshed, right as the evening started to go gold and the last of the sunlight flared off the barn roof like a warning shot. He didn’t say a word—just pointed, flat-palmed, to the barn, and waited while I weighed whether to ignore him or make it harder on myself by running.
I went, because that’s what men like him expected, and because he was blocking the only path to the house and Bodean. My boots hit the packed dirt in a line of echoes behind him.
The old wood barn stood at the far edge of the yard, two stories of McKenzie history, dust and rot, and the kind of smell that makes your lungs feel like they’ve grown roots.
Inside, the hayloft beams cut the air into sharp stripes, every one of them alive with floating dust motes. The place wasn’t empty—never was—but today it felt like an ambush.
Ransom leaned against a support post, arms folded, chewing a toothpick and radiating the kind of quiet malice you only get from a lifetime of being the third-eldest and the meanest.
Quiad hung back by the tack room, silent and motionless as a winter river, eyes hooded, watching the space between us like he expected it to catch fire.
Harlow was perched on a sawn-off hay bale, his big frame bent forward, boots planted wide like he was bracing for a tornado.
They didn’t need to say anything. I could read the arrangement of their bodies, the triangulation of their stares. I was the lone animal at the auction, and they were deciding whether to break me to harness or just send me to the butcher.
Knox stopped in the middle of the floor, waiting for the others to close the circle before he turned to face me. He crossedhis arms, the muscles in his forearms writhing under the skin, and set his jaw in a line that could’ve split a cinderblock.
“We’re doing this now?” I asked, voice low.
“We’re doing it while there’s still a chance to stop you from fucking up my brother’s life,” Knox said, his voice quiet but sharp enough to draw blood. “That means now.”
I glanced around, looking for a sign of Bodean—his paint-stained hands, the edge of his laugh, the way he’d lean on the doorjamb when he was nervous—but he wasn’t there. He’d been excused from the execution, apparently, or maybe they wanted to keep his hands clean if things got ugly.
Knox didn’t waste time. “I want to know what exactly your intentions are with Bodean.”
I’d seen this move before—cop face, judge voice, the years of disappointment turned into something harder and meaner than love.
I waited for the rest.
He delivered. “I’ve seen what you put around his neck. I saw the fucking collar, Josiah. You want to explain to me how that’s any different from what Westbrook did to him?”
The words hung in the barn like the aftermath of a gunshot—nobody moved, not even to breathe. Ransom’s eyebrow went up, all skepticism and challenge. Quiad didn’t move at all, but the tension in his knuckles was visible even in the dim. Harlow looked at the floor, lips moving like he was working out a problem with too many variables.
