5
TEX
The road blurred under my tires, but my mind wouldn’t settle. Every mile I put between myself and Rowan’s ranch felt wrong, like I was walking away from a lit fuse I’d left burning behind me.
I told myself I was giving her space.
I told myself JD needed the full update, and to see the evidence burning a hole in my pocket. I told myself a lot of things, but none of them sat right.
I kept seeing her standing there in the cold morning light, her chin high, shoulders tight, pretending she wasn’t scared. Rowan Hale didn’t rattle easy. Hell, she didn’t let anyone in close enough to see if she rattled at all. But I’d seen the crack in her armor, and I’d left anyway.
I cursed under my breath and tightened my grip on my handlebars.
The Kings had rules. You didn’t drag civilians into our mess. You didn’t make promises you couldn’t keep. But my personal rule? You didn’t get attached.
I was breaking all three.
The clubhouse sat at the edge of town, tucked behind a line of pines that blocked the view from the road. I pulled up, killed the engine, and climbed off my bike. JD was already on the porch, arms crossed, expression carved from stone.
“You look like hell,” he said.
“Feel worse.”
He didn’t smile. “Tell me.”
I gave him everything: the cut fences, the pin, the way Rowan had tried to act like she wasn’t shaken. JD listened without interrupting, jaw ticking once when I pulled out the pin. He took it from me, turning it over in his hand, but there was no way of telling whose it was.
When I finished, he let out a slow breath. “Someone’s testing boundaries.”
“Yeah,” I said, “hers.”
“And ours.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. We were both thinking the same thing. It was why he’d asked me to come home back and look into it for him.
“I think you should be staying out there,” he said.
“Yeah, I think so too. I don’t think she’ll be too happy about it though.”
JD snorted. “Since when do you listen to what people say instead of what they mean?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that either.
He stepped closer, voice dropping. “Tex, whoever’s poking around on her land isn’t doing it for fun. They’re sending a warning, and it’s only going to escalate if she doesn’t get whatever message they’re sending loud and clear.”
“Yeah, so now we need to send one right back.”
“Agreed.” He lit a cigarette and offered me one, which I took, and together we fell into silence for several long moments as weboth worried over the same thought. A cold weight had settled in my gut.
Finally, JD stubbed his cigarette out and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked, noting the blocked number on the screen. My guts twisted like they knew something before I did.
I answered. “Yeah?”
There was nothing at first. Just the sound of breathing, but then a voice I didn’t recognize spoke. “You should’ve stayed with the girl.”
My muscles locked tight and I pulled the phone away from my ear and put the call on speaker so JD could listen in. “Who is this?”
“You left her all alone,” the voice said, almost amused. “Bad choice, my friend.”
