You deserve more than someone who's been half-dead for three years.
I turned that over in the dark.
He wasn't wrong, maybe. I didn't have enough experience to know what I deserved—I'd spent my whole life being told exactly what I was worth and it wasn't much. But I knew what I'd felt inthat kitchen. I knew the difference between being handled and being wanted. I'd spent four years being handled.
That wasn't what that was.
He'd kissed me back.
Twice.
I pressed my lips together and felt them, still warm, and stared at the ceiling I couldn't see.
Outside, the creek moved in the dark. The goats were quiet. Somewhere across the property a dog barked once and stopped.
Half-dead for three years.
That was the thing he'd said that I kept coming back to. NotI don't want youorthis is wrongor any of the things I'd been bracing for. He'd saidhalf-dead.Like he knew it. Like he'd been watching it happen to himself and hadn't been able to stop it.
I understood that. More than he probably knew.
The difference was I'd had someone keeping me half-dead on purpose.
His had just happened to him.
EIGHT
Forrest
We didn’t talk about what had happened…but she also didn’t leave.
She stayed.
She stayed for two more weeks and we didn’t talk about that kiss, but we talked about damn near everything else.
Willa wascurious…and it woke up parts of me I hadn’t even realized were sleeping. I told her all about architecture first—then we got to know the goats. She was hesitant to go outside, but after that first week, she started accepting Haven’s invitations to help her with the cattle and with the horses.
A couple times, she babysat. For Haven and Wyatt, for Millie and Gage…and she wasso goodwith the kids.
And I started to see the shape of who she was, underneath the trauma, underneath her past, the conditioning.
She was kind. Exceptionally kind. Funny, but in this quiet, subtle way you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know her. Curious about everything in a way that made you feel like whatever you were explaining actually mattered. She’d ask questions nobody ever thought to ask me about my work. She listened like it was important.
She was smart. Genuinely, quietly smart in a way that shocked me given how she’d never been allowed to go to school.
Her past hadn’t buried her.
And it made me start to think…maybe I shouldn’t let my past bury me either.
My brother Sawyer showed up one evening about two weeks after the kiss, came in from a shoot in New Mexico with his truck full of gear and that particular ease he'd had since Daniela—settled in a way he hadn't been before her, like something that had been wound tight had finally let go. He had dinner at the main house with the whole family, met Willa across the table, and said absolutely nothing.
He didn't have to. I saw him clock it in about four minutes.
…which is how he ended up being the first person I told about the kiss—because he was my brother, and I told him everything.
And now we were sitting on the porch steps as the sun went down behind the cedar, beers sweating in our hands, the goats moving in the pasture below us, and I was waiting for it.
"So," Sawyer said.
