I let the words wash over me, nodding and smiling at all the right moments while my mind drifts back tohim.
twelve
. . .
Violet
Afew days after I saw Rowan, he called and asked if I wanted to stop by his place after work. Said he was going to be working outside for a bit and could use the company. No pressure.
So here I am, idling at the edge of his gravel driveway, the air carrying a bite that winter hasn’t quite let go of while spring tries to force its way in. When he said he bought a place outside of town, I wasn’t expectingthis.
The farmhouse is straight out of some daydream I didn’t know I had, with white clapboard siding and wooden shutters. A wide porch runs along the front, and beyond the house sits a red barn against a view of soft hills and a low-sinking sun. Golden light stretches across the fields, catching between the fence rails, throwing long shadows across the grass.
It’s so peaceful out here. Wide open.
Movement flickers at the corner of my eye, pulling me back to the present.
Rowan rounds the side of the house, that dog he brought to the clinic the other day trotting at his heels.
He’s a sight to behold in a faded T-shirt that clings to his broad shoulders, worn jeans slung low on his hips, one knee tornwide open, and heavy work boots caked in mud. His hair’s a mess, all rumpled and wild, just like it looked at the diner the other night.
The dog spots my car first, ears pricking high before she launches herself into a full sprint. Rowan’s head lifts, and even from a distance, I catch the slow, easy smile that hits him.
I blow out a shaky breath and kill the engine. My heart stutters somewhere between my ribs and my throat as I step out. The sweet black dog is already there, circling my legs, tail wagging.
“Careful, Bramble,” Rowan calls, his voice wrapped in laughter.
I glance down at the dog, grinning, before shooting him a look across the drive. “You kept her?”
He shrugs, but there’s no hiding the way his eyes soften as he watches her sniff at my jeans. “Didn’t really have a choice,” he says, mouth twitching like he’s trying not to smile wider. “She made herself at home.”
I crouch, fingers sinking into Bramble’s scruffy fur, and something warm blooms slow and sure in my chest.
This. This is everything I ever wanted for him. Not just a house, but something solid and safe and entirely his.
Pushing to my feet, I turn a slow circle, letting my eyes sweep across the rolling fields and the fences that stretch out before us. The sky overhead is a bruised shade of blue, the last scraps of daylight bleeding along the horizon.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, meeting his gaze. “I mean it. It suits you.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “Not bad for a kid from the trailer park.”
Something in me bristles. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk about where you came from like it’s some stain you can’t scrub out. You worked for this, Rowan.”
For a second, he just watches me, the last threads of sunlightcatching in his blue eyes, making them look almost too clear. “I appreciate that.”
“It’s just the truth,” I say. I mean it.
He breathes out slowly, then glances away, squinting out toward the barn like maybe there’s something written out there in the fields he can read better than what’s sitting right here between us.
“Been a long road,” he says eventually. “Still doesn’t always feel real. I keep waiting for someone to show up, wave some papers in my face, and tell me I screwed up the paperwork… That none of this is actually mine.”
“You didn’t screw up, you goof,” I tell him, my voice gentling like it would for a spooked horse or a boy who never really learned how to believe good things could stay. “You earned it, Rowan. Every bit of it.”
He turns back to me then, and there’s something raw in the way he looks at me—like I’m offering him a kind of mercy he doesn’t know what to do with. “You always say things like that.”
