Again.
Truth is, I could never get enough of looking at her. Which is exactly why I must go.
But something else pulls deeper. A vein I wasn’t counting on. The one that has me asking what will happen to her if I’m not here? If I don’t protect her?
She clears her throat, cheeks glowing. “This could be every meal, you know.”
I shake my head, looking away. Kindness doesn’t sit right with me.
Too easy. Too one-sided. Like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, I need you, Kael. At least for a little while.”
Those words hit me like a punch between the shoulder blades.
“You need help. Not me.”
She blinks slowly twice, her mouth working, though she says nothing. “You said Mags sent you. Think she’d be okay with you staying a little while longer?”
“You don’t take no for an answer.”
“Right now,” she sighs. “I can’t.”
Another throb hits me. Lower now. Down to the core of me where murky thoughts and dark deeds begin.
“I’ll sleep in the pasture,” I grumble. “Now show me how to earn my keep.”
Three days pass,and we fall into a begrudging rhythm. She’s up before dawn. That part of the day I can count on to catch my breath, keeping the only kind of distance that feels safe.
The first day, when she returns, I have the cattle out in the farthest pasture. The toughest ride from the main house, hoping she won’t find me.
She does anyway. Tough as nails. More stubborn.
Wherever I take the herd, she finds me. As if she’s got some kind of homing beacon on me. Like she feels the same pull.
Maybe she does.
Lord knows a shiver passes down my spine each time she gets close. Even when she so much as thinks my way. And the hum beneath my skin takes on a life of its own, like a horse’s back quivering and spasming when flies land on it.
The sun drives toward us in slanted rays, softer now but still insistent. Heat radiates from stone and soil, the roar of cicadas persistent, unending.
Tempest dances beneath me as we push cows secure behind the fence we’ve spent the afternoon mending.
“You’re not bad on a horse,” Eliza says, side-eyeing me.
Slept in the saddle. Ate in it. Lived and died by it. Only home I’ve ever known.
I don’t say that, though. Bragging’s never been my thing.
Instead, I grunt, nodding toward another place we need to patch. We dismount, and I secure the gate. Then, I strain against the barbed wire tightener as she drives fresh staples into the post with pliers.
I finish with the wire twister, ramping up the tension until the line sings when I snag it. “That’ll hold.”
She frowns. I know what’s coming before she says it. “Not against whatever got the bull.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Seen plenty of chickens drained of blood, too.”
“Yeah, from weasels or minks… maybe the occasional raccoon. But a whole bull? Would have to see it with my own eyes to believe it.”
