“Feed prices run high through March.If diversification doesn’t carry, you both feel it.”
His gaze moved from Kyla to Titus and back again, measuring, waiting for hesitation.Under her fingers, Titus’s pulse jumped.Not enough for anyone else to see.Enough for her.
The contract shifted a fraction beneath his hand.The future they had written into those pages pressed close, no room left for distance.Their names sat side by side in print, waiting to be made real.
Alex leaned forward, chair legs moving across the floor.“Together, you come in second east of Billings.Brooks and Lee.That’s what goes on the trucks, the bins, the contracts.If I need to lean on an old rancher to make space, I do it.You tell me if that’s a problem.”
Kyla heard her name carried in his voice, unfamiliar in this setting, shaped by someone else’s expectations.Beside her, Titus straightened, tension running the length of his spine.His jaw set hard.His free hand hovered above the pen, thumb dragging once across his palm.Pride sat visible in the lift of his chin.
The question stayed between them without needing words.Who bends.Who stands.
Her grip tightened.His forearm flexed under her hand as Alex moved through projections, numbers laid out without regard for history or habit.Titus’s body carried the pull to step back, to draw a line and keep it.She felt it in the set of his muscles, in the uneven rhythm under her fingers.
For a moment, she measured the possibility.He could pull away.He could stand and leave the rest behind.
He did not.
Kyla pressed her thumb into his wrist, firm enough to register.Stay with me.Not as a demand.As a choice.
From the outside, it would read as nothing more than closeness, her hand partly hidden by the spread of papers.No one needed to understand the message inside it.
Alex flipped to the next page, fingers marked by work that never left him.“Two signatures.Brand affidavit.You both sure you want your names tied together on every load that leaves this place?This doesn’t come apart easy.”
Titus’s breath caught low in his chest.Kyla kept her hand steady.Around the table, someone shifted in their chair.Another cleared their throat.No one interrupted.
A breeze moved through the open window, lifting the corner of one page.Sunlight cut across the contract, sharpening the lines where Lee met Brooks.Kyla held where she was.She felt the conflict in him, the pull between standing alone and stepping forward with her beside him.She did not try to ease it.
She stayed.
Alex set his pen down against the clipboard.“You both in, or you walking?”
Kyla did not look away from the page.Then she turned her head toward Titus.They would sign together, or not at all.
Alex nudged the stack forward, a faint smile edging into place.“Welcome to the co-op, Mrs.Brooks.”
The title settled into the room, carried in plain tone, without ceremony.Titus drew in a sharp breath under her hand.His grip tightened around the pen, then paused before the paper.Color rose along his neck.
Kyla did not react outwardly.For a moment, the names she had carried slipped through her thoughts.Lee.Ky.Chef.Each one earned in a different room, under different expectations.
She did not correct him.
She shifted her hand, sliding her fingers beneath Titus’s, threading through his grip.Her palm pressed against his, steady and clear.He squeezed back.The tension in his arm eased.
The name Alex had given her remained where it was, unchallenged, unclaimed out loud, but not denied.Kyla let it settle.Not because it erased who she had been, but because it marked where she stood now.
Across the table, Alex watched for resistance.Kyla tightened her hold once more.Titus’s thumb moved across her knuckle, a small motion that steadied him as much as it did her.
No one spoke.The room carried only the sound of paper shifting and breath evening out.She took in what it meant, one moment at a time.He did not need to say anything for it to matter.They were already in it.
Titus moved first.His grip stayed firm.Ink pressed into the page, his name set down in a stroke that carried the same force he used on reins and fence wire.Brooksstood there in black, unchanged in form, changed in what it meant.
Kyla felt the shift through his wrist before she saw it in the ink.She released him only long enough to draw the pen toward herself.Her hand stayed steady.She wrote her name in one motion, the letters clear and unapologetic, Lee placed beside his without shrinking to fit.
Two names.Same line.She set the pen down.
Air moved easier through her chest.Not relief in a rush.Something quieter.Something that settled in place and stayed.
Alex gathered the pages, scanning once more before stacking them with a practiced hand.He gave Titus a short clap on the shoulder as he rose.
