Sunshine. The word had slipped out when she'd laughed at Darcy's eager nursing, her whole face lighting up like she'd found something precious. The way the afternoon light caught in her chestnut hair, turning it to burnished copper. How she'd looked at me when I said it, surprised but not displeased, color blooming in her cheeks.
Now it's archived in her phone like evidence of my desperation.
The rational part of my brain knows exactly why she didn't respond. She's young, beautiful, probably has her pick of men who don't carry shadows or dirt under their nails.
Why would she want attention from a thirty-six-year-old rancher who's better with cattle than conversation?
But the irrational part, the part that hasn't felt alive in two years, remembers how she felt pressed against my back on the ATV. The warm weight of her, how her breath caught when I gunned the engine across the pasture. Her hands tentative at first on my waist, then holding tighter as we flew over the rough ground. The trust in that grip.
How she'd melted against me for just a heartbeat when I lifted her down, soft and pliant before she remembered herself and stepped away.
But for that moment... for that moment, she'd fit against me like she belonged there.
Can still feel the phantom pressure of her arms around my waist, the way her laugh had vibrated through my back when we'd hit a bump.
Darcy coughs, wet and rattling, dragging me back to reality. The sound cuts through the barn like a death knell. She's deteriorating fast despite the penicillin I gave her hours ago. The antibiotic isn't touching whatever's burning through her lungs.
"Don't you dare," I tell her, running my hand along her fever-hot neck. Her skin burns under my palm, and she's stopped sweating. Never a good sign.
"Don't you dare quit on me now, little girl."
She's too weak to even acknowledge my voice. Just lies there, brown eyes glazed with fever, trusting me to fixwhat I can't fix. Not with my limited knowledge, not with the supplies I have on hand. Darcy needs professional help. The kind I'm too proud to ask for, even if it means watching her die.
He saved Dusty.Lucy's voice echoes in my memory, soft with admiration. Of course he did. Colt's the best damn vet this side of the Rockies. I'm the one who made him a stranger.
I've seen how she talks about him. The way her expression softens when his name comes up, how her chin lifted when I made that crack about his competence.
"He's an excellent vet," she'd said, fire in her dark eyes. The unspoken message was clear:despite what you think.
Why shouldn't she defend him? Why shouldn't she fall for him? Colt doesn't carry the guilt I do, hasn't spent two years building walls so high even I can't see over them. He wears his damage raw and honest, not buried under duty and silence like mine.
The sun climbs higher, painting golden bars across the barn floor. Dust motes dance in the light like fool's gold, and somewhere a rooster announces the coming day.
Soon the hands will arrive, and I'll have to pretend everything's fine. That I didn't spend half the night staring at my phone like some desperate fool.
My back aches from the stall floor, but I can't leave her. Can't walk away when she needs me, even if all I can offer is presence and inadequate medicine.
Pride. That's what's killing Darcy right now. Same thing that killed my friendship with Colt. The stubborn Blackwell pride that would rather lose everything than admit weakness.
It's the family curse. Built this ranch on it, some might say.
The kind of pride that says you handle your own problems, fix your own fences, bury your own dead. My father had it, his father before him. The kind that would rather watch everything burn than ask for help.
Darcy's breathing stutters, catches. For a terrifying moment, I think this is it. Then she drags in another breath, weaker than the last. Her small body's burning through its reserves, fighting a war she can't win.
What would Lucy think if she knew I was sitting here, too proud to make one phone call that might save this calf's life?
My phone feels like lead in my hand. Colt's number is still there, saved under 'Brother' because even after everything, that's what he is.
Two years, and I've never used it.
Until now.
Darcy coughs again, blood speckling her nostrils. Time's running out.
I close my eyes and let myself remember what I've tried so hard to forget.
Colt laughing at something Sophia said, his whole face transformed. The three of us on his old couch, watching movies, pretending what we had was sustainable. His hand on her knee, her head on my shoulder, all of us drunk on the impossibility of it working.
