“Oh my God.” I sank into the chair at the desk.
Last night. The bar.Georgia.
I remembered now. The curious gleam in her eyes. The way she'd looked at Jack with obvious appreciation, sizing him up the way women did when they spotted something worth looking at. The question hanging in the air, waiting for an answer.
Who is this?
And I'd said?—
My stomach dropped.
He's our new ranch hand.
The words echoed in my head, so casual, so easy, so fucking cowardly. I'd laughed like it didn't matter. Like Jack was nobody. Like he wasn't the man who'd put himself between me and death. Like he wasn't the man I'd spent weeks falling for, the man I'd cried in front of, the man I'd let see parts of myself I'd hidden from everyone else for ten years.
Ranch hand.
I remembered the flash of something in Jack's expression before it went smooth and neutral. I'd thought he was fine. He'd smiled. Made conversation. Drove me home and walked me to my door like nothing was wrong.
Then he'd touched me like I was precious.
Like I was worth memorizing.
Like losing me would break him.
The note crumpled in my fist, and my chest cracked open with a grief so sharp it stole my breath. This wasn't like the crying I'd done in front of my family, controlled and cathartic. This was something else. Something uglier. The kind of sobbing that came from the deepest part of you, that didn't care about dignity or composure or the image you'd spent your whole life building.
I curled forward, pressing the note against my heart, and let it take me.
I cried for Jack. For the way he'd looked at me in the moonlight. For the way he'd whispered, “I'm here,” when I asked him to stay, knowing the whole time he wouldn't be here in the morning. For all the patience he'd given me, all the chances, all the times he'd waited for me to catch up, and I'd failed him.
I cried for the man who'd lost everything and had finally started to build something new. With me. With my family.
I'd given him hope. And then I'd crushed it with two careless words.
Ranch hand.
I cried for myself. For the terrified woman who'd spent ten years believing she was too much, and who'd become so small in her fear that she couldn't even claim the man she loved in front of a tipsy acquaintance at a bar.
Jack had chosen me. Fully. Publicly. Without hesitation.
He'd told my father about us. He'd looked at me in front of my whole family like I was precious. He'd never once acted like I was something to be ashamed of or hidden away.
And I'd repaid him by calling him the help.
I cried because Daniel had been right after all.
Jack hadn't hurt me. I'd hurt him. And I'd done it with a smile on my face and a casual laugh, like he was nothing.
He was everything.
And I'd let him walk away.
I didn't know how long I stayed like that. The sun climbed higher outside my window, painting gold stripes across the floor, across the bed we'd shared, across the empty space where Jack should have been. The ranch woke up without me—I could hear distant sounds of morning chores, trucks starting, voices calling across the yard.
Somewhere out there, my family was starting their day. Wondering where I was. Maybe wondering where Jack was.
Somewhere further out there—on some highway—Jack was driving away from everything we could have been. Sully in the passenger seat. His duffel in the truck bed. That note burning in my hand the only proof he'd ever been here at all.
