“Want to get milkshakes?” I asked, desperate for a subject change.
Her whole face brightened. “Yes. Obviously. I’m practically wasting away.”
I shook my head, fighting a smile. She always managed to drag me back to centre, even when the inside of my head was running like wildfire.
But even with her beside me, I couldn’t shake the image of Tessa behind the barn. Water dripping down her neck. Her breath brushing my mouth. Her eyes blown wide with something that wasn’t anger anymore. My chest tightened.
Maddy leaned back, stretching her legs. “So what’re we doing while I’m here? Riding? Fishing? Avoiding the world?”
“A little of everything”
She hummed approvingly. “Love that for us. Two weeks, I can’t believe it.”
Milkshakes in hand, I took the highway out of town. The mountains rose in the distance. The air smelled like rain on dust. Maddy cracked the window and let the wind tangle her hair.
After a minute, she spoke again, quieter this time. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You sure everything’s okay out on the ranch?”
I paused.
She wasn’t oblivious. She’d grown up with a father whose attention sharpened whenever danger lingered around the edges. She recognized the signs. I didn’t want to lie. But I alsowasn’t going to drag her into the mess swirling around Tessa Callahan.
“We’ve taken some hits lately,” I said slowly. “But it’s nothing big.”
“You’ll fix it.”
I glanced at her, surprised.
She shrugged. “You always do.”
I didn’t feel like I could fix anything right now.
Not the stock waterer, or the fence she refused help with. I had no idea what the hell was stalking Tessa’s property lines. And definitely not the way I’d almost kissed her in the barn like a man who didn’t know better.
Maddy rested her head against the window, eyes half closed.
“I’m glad I’m here,” she murmured.
That one sentence worked its way under every bruise inside me.
“Me too.”
Twenty-Five
Tessa
Iwas mucking out the stalls when I heard hoof beats coming up the drive.
I set down the pitchfork and stepped out of the barn, shading my eyes against the mid-morning sun. A chestnut mare was cantering up the driveway, and the rider, a teenage girl with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, was sitting her horse with easy confidence.
I didn't recognize her.
The girl pulled her horse to a walk as she approached, and I could see her taking in the property, the barn that still needed paint, the fence line I'd been working on all week, the house that looked exactly like it had when Ray was alive because I hadn't had the heart to change much yet.
"Hi," she called out, bringing her horse to a stop near the paddock fence. "You must be Tessa."
