"If I say the colt's had enough, we stop," he says. "If Addie isn't ready, we don't push her. And if you decide halfway through that Denver is more important, you tell me. You don't just disappear."
"I won't."
"You did before."
The truth of that sits between us, undeniable.
"I know," I say. "And I'm sorry. But this time is different."
"Is it?"
"I'm trying to make it different."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then nods once, sharp and final, like the decision cost him something.
"We start tomorrow," he says. "Four a.m. Colt needs consistent work if we're going to make this timeline."
"I'll be there."
He turns toward the parking area, boots crunching over gravel.
At his truck, he pauses.
Looks back.
"It's not that I can't stand being around you, Hazel," he says, his voice low and stripped of its usual edge. "It's that it feels too easy when I am."
Then he climbs into his truck and drives off down the ranch road, heading toward Dawson Ranch, leaving me standing in the fading light with my heart pounding and his words settling slowly into my chest.
Four weeks.
Four weeks to prove I can do this. To save the ranch. To figure out what I actually want.
Four weeks to decide if I'm brave enough to choose.
Chapter twenty
Hazel
Ifind Mae in Dad's office.
She's at the desk with the ledger open, reading glasses perched on her nose, pen tapping against the page in that absent rhythm she does when the numbers aren't adding up the way she wants.
The afternoon light slants through the window, catching dust motes and turning them gold. The room still smells like him—old leather, paper, the faint ghost of aftershave that five years hasn't managed to erase.
I knock on the doorframe even though the door's open.
Mae looks up, eyes tired but warm. "Hey, honey."
"Got a minute?" I ask, laptop tucked under my arm.
"For you? Always." She sets the pen down and leans back in the chair. It creaks—the same sound it made when Dad sat there, the same protest of old wood and older springs.
I cross to the desk and pull up the Fall Classic registration page on my laptop. "I'm ready to register. Just need the ranch account info to pay the entry fee."
Mae's expression doesn't change immediately. But something shifts behind her eyes. A hesitation. A weight.
"Sit down, Haze."
