I grab them from the toolbox and walk them over. Our fingers brush during the exchange, and heat shoots up my arm. His jaw tightens, but he doesn't acknowledge it. Just turns back to the fence and twists the wire like he’s done it a thousand times, his forearms flexing with each rotation.
We work without small talk. He teaches me how to set posts and check tension. His hands move with certainty, and I find myself watching the flex of muscle under his sun-darkened skin, the way his fingers curl around the wire cutters. He catches me staring twice. He doesn't call me on it, only holds my gaze until I look away first, heat prickling under my clothes.
By lunch, my hands are blistered and my shoulders ache, but the tension in my chest has loosened. The physical work feels good, quieting the constant calculation in my head about what I should be doing instead. It’s satisfying to see what I’ve accomplished, rather than lying on a yoga mat wondering if I’m centered enough.
I humor Lucinda in the afternoon and attend a journaling workshop. The instructor gives a few prompts and says to write, just write. If we don’t know what to write, she says the wordsI don’t know what to write,written over and over again, will turn into something. She’s right, but I stop when I’ve doodled three different versions of Cash’s name like a twelve-year-old with a crush. My cheeks burn pink with embarrassment until I remember that nobody’s going to check my work.
Dinner is communal in the main lodge, with ranch hands and guests at long tables passing family-style platters of brisket and cornbread. I sit next to a woman from Dallas who's here for the same reason I am. Burnout. She talks about her marketing firm while I push green beans around my plate, fork scraping porcelain, barely tasting the food. I nod and make appropriate sounds, but I'm tracking Cash across the room where he sits with the ranch hands. He's laughing at something one of them said,relaxed in a way I never am. When his eyes meet mine across thirty feet of crowded space, heat crawls down my spine and blooms in my pussy. The condensation on my water glass wets my palm, and I have to set it down before I drop it.
After dinner, I retreat to Cabin 5. I open my laptop, but the Wi-Fi barely reaches, and my brain won't focus anyway. Every time I close my eyes, I feel his mouth on mine. I taste coffee and want and seventeen years of waiting.
The knock comes just as the sky is going purple.
I know who it is before I open the door.
Cash stands on my porch holding a plate covered with a kitchen towel. He's showered since dinner, hair still damp, wearing clean jeans and a Henley that makes his eyes look almost black in the fading light.
"You didn't eat enough," he says.
"I ate."
"Not enough." He lifts the towel. Brisket. Cornbread. Peach cobbler that's still warm. "Can I come in?"
I should say no. Should maintain boundaries. Should remember that I'm here for two weeks and then I go home to real life and a career that's waiting for me to prove I'm not broken.
Instead, I step aside.
He walks past me, and the cabin shrinks around his size. He sets the plate on the small table and pulls out a chair for me, waiting. I sit because my legs won't hold me anymore. He takes the other chair, turns it around, and straddles it with his forearms resting on the back.
"Eat," he says.
I pick up the fork with shaking hands and take a bite of brisket. It's good. Better than good. This is the kind of food that tastes like someone cared about making it. I take my time with the meal, aware of his gaze. Each bite is a stalling tactic, a way tonavigate the heavy, unvoiced tension that fills the gap between us.
When the plate is half-empty, I set down the fork. "Why didn't you ever reach out?"
The question has been building all day. All seventeen years, if I'm honest.
He's quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing random arcs on the back of the chair. Then he leans forward with clasped hands. "You left for a reason. I didn’t want to be the thing that held you back."
"You wouldn't have—"
"Yes, I would have." His eyes hold mine. "You had this whole life planned. College graduation. Job in Seattle. You talked about it that last morning like it was the only path that made sense. I was a ranch hand making minimum wage. What was I going to offer you? A trailer and uncertainty?"
Words stick behind my breastbone. "I shouldn’t have cared about that."
"You damn well should have." He reaches across the table, taking my hand. His palm is comforting and warm, and I don't pull away. "You were twenty-one. You had your whole life ahead of you. I wasn't going to be the reason you gave that up."
"So you just let me go."
"Hardest thing I've ever done." His thumb strokes across my knuckles, and the touch sends sparks up my arm. "But I thought it was the right thing. Thought you'd move on. Build your life. Find someone who could give you what you deserved."
"I did move on." The lie tastes bitter. "I built my career. Got promoted. Made VP before I was thirty-five."
"And?"
"And I thought about you." The confession breaks a lock in my chest. "More than I should have. You were the one who got away. Every time I went on a date. Every time someone tried toget close. I compared them all to you, and none of them ever measured up."
His grip tightens on my hand. "Sloane." The muscle in his jaw jumps. "How much is 'more than you should have'?" he asks, voice rough. I look away, but he catches my chin with his free hand and turns my face back to his. The calluses on his fingers rasp against my skin. "Tell me."
