1
Maggie
Wild Creek | One Week Before the Rodeo
The meeting ran forty-seven minutes longer than it needed to.
I knew this because I watched the clock on Carl Hensley's wall tick past every single minute mark while slowly suffocating on the scent of microwaved leftover tuna casserole.
Carl droned on about pipe gauges and water pressure and soil absorption rates like I hadn't done my research. But I smiled. I nodded. I asked the right follow-up questions because that's what Maggie Blackwood did.
She handled things.
"Now, the PVC versus HDPE question," Carl unfortunately continued, leaning back in his chair with the air of a man who had all the time in the world. "That's where it gets interesting."
It was not interesting. Nothing about irrigation pipe had been interesting for the past hour and twelve minutes. But the north pasture expansion wasn't going to water itself, and Wyatt sure as hell wasn't going to handle the details. My brother's ideaof project management was saying "make it happen" and then getting annoyed when reality required more than sheer force of will.
We'd been arguing about timelines for three weeks now. Three weeks of clipped conversations and the kind of sibling tension that made everyone else in the family suddenly remember somewhere else they needed to be.
I loved Wyatt. I really did.
I also wanted to drop a hay bale on his head.
"The HDPE has better flexibility for your terrain," Carl said, pointing at something on his computer screen that I was supposed to find enlightening. "But the initial cost?—"
"Is offset by the reduced maintenance over a fifteen-year lifespan," I finished. "I know. That's why I specified it in my original request."
Carl blinked at me.
I smiled wider. "I did send the specification sheet. Three days ago?"
"Right." He cleared his throat, and began rifling through the papers in front of him. "Right, yes. Well. Let me just pull up those numbers..."
Twenty-three minutes later, I escaped into the parking lot. The sun was already setting, and I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
It was the kind of tired that settled into your marrow and took up residence like it was paying rent.
The past few months had been... a lot.
That was the word I used when anyone asked. A lot. It covered everything without explaining anything, which was exactly how I liked it. Because if I actually started listing what "a lot" meant?—
Wyatt and Ivy's explosion. The separation that almost destroyed both of them. The slow, painful rebuild that I watchedfrom the sidelines, holding my breath, ready to catch whatever pieces fell.
Then Stephanie.
God, Stephanie.
I couldn't think about those weeks without my chest going tight. Liam's face when he got the call that a fan had broken into her house—I'd never seen him look like that before. Like someone had reached into his chest and ripped out everything that made him human. Not since his parents died and my parents adopted him and Sophia.
I sat with Stephanie through the nightmares after he brought her home. Held her hand when she woke up screaming. Made her tea at 3 a.m. and didn't ask questions she wasn't ready to answer.
And through it all, I kept the ranch running. I managed the logistics. I ran interference. I showed up and handled things and held everyone together with both hands and sheer stubbornness.
I stood in that parking lot with my keys in my hand and the weight of everyone else's crises sitting heavy on my shoulders, and I made a decision.
I wasn't going home.
Not yet. Not tonight.
