“I know,” I said, and my voice sounded like gravel.
Dani tilted her head, studying me. “Do you?”
I met her eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
Silence held for a beat, thick and charged.
Then Dani said quietly, “She signed papers.”
My stomach dropped. “I know.”
Dani’s brows lifted, surprise flickering. “You know?”
“I know,” I repeated, and my hands curled at my sides, restrained. “I got the call.”
Dani’s face hardened. “So you’re here to yell.”
“No,” I said immediately, because the word felt wrong in my mouth. “I’m here to give her her home back.”
Dani’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I was the buyer, and as of this morning, the debt’s paid, and Tessa is the sole owner of Callahan Ranch.”
After a long moment, she nodded once, sharp. “Okay.”
I walked down the hall on legs that felt too heavy. My palms were damp. My heart thudded loudly in my ears. I stopped outside the bedroom door, stared at the wood, and for a second, I was back in that other hallway, the day I told her Ray was dead.
Back then, I’d knocked and changed her life in one sentence.
Now I was about to knock and ask her not to leave mine.
I lifted my hand and I knocked once.
Then a faint shuffle, like someone shifting in bed.
The door opened, and Tessa stood there in an oversized shirt that looked suspiciously like one of mine. Her hair amess, eyes still heavy with sleep and something deeper. She looked smaller in this space, paler, like she left part of herself under that prairie sky and hadn’t found it again yet.
Her gaze hit mine and froze.
I felt it in my chest like a punch.
“Wyatt,” she whispered, and my name sounded like a bruise.
I didn’t move. I didn’t reach for her. I kept my hands at my sides because Dani was right and because Tessa looked like she’d bolt if I breathed wrong.
“I needed to see you,” I said quietly.
Her eyes flicked over my face, over my jacket, over the line of my jaw like she was checking for anger, for judgment, for the things she expected.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and her voice tried to be hard. It wasn’t.
“I brought Maddy back,” I said. “And then I came here.”
Something shifted in her expression at Maddy’s name, a flash of guilt, maybe, or tenderness. She swallowed.
“You shouldn’t,” she murmured. “You shouldn’t have come.”
I held her gaze. My chest ached. “I’m not good at staying away.”
