The words come out before I can stop them. True, but too intimate for day one. Naomi's eyes flicker with something unreadable. She wraps the afghan tighter around her shoulders.
"Goodnight, Sully."
"Night."
She goes inside. The screen door closes behind her. The cabin light throws her shadow across the porch boards, then she's gone down the hallway to the spare room.
Leaning against the porch rail, I drink the coffee she made me. It's perfect. Smooth. Exactly what this machine has been capable of for years that I've been too stubborn to figure out.
"Gran," I say to the stars, "you're a menace."
Somewhere in the pasture, a cow agrees.
CHAPTER FOUR
NAOMI
Four days in, and we've built a routine.
Sully wakes before dawn. I know this because the floorboards creak when he passes my room, followed by the click of the back door, then silence until the coffee machine gurgles to life an hour later. He does the morning chores while it brews. Cattle. Fences. Whatever else needs doing on a property this size. By the time I'm up, there's a full pot waiting and his boots are drying on the mat by the door.
He never asks me to help with the ranch. But on the second morning I followed him to the south pasture anyway, carrying coffee in two mugs because the man will drink motor oil if left unsupervised. He stared at me for a long beat, then took the mug without comment. By the fourth morning, he holds the gate open for me without being asked, and the Herefords have stopped looking at me like I'm a trespasser.
Progress.
We cook dinner together. That part happened organically. His stew, my sides. Turns out the man can make exactly three things: beef stew, scrambled eggs, and toast. Everything else in that kitchen has been surviving on Gran's autopilot. So I startedfilling the gaps. Cornbread from my grandmother's recipe. Greens sautéed with garlic. A sweet potato pie that made him go silent for a full minute, fork halfway to his mouth, before he said, "You can stay as long as you want," then looked startled by his own words.
We don't talk about the arrangement. Don't talk about Sanctuary Match, or what happens next, or the fact that we're two strangers sleeping twenty feet apart in a dead woman's cabin on a mountain. We talk about the cattle. The weather. Whether the creek will rise again before June ends. Safe topics. Surface conversations.
Except for the moments that aren't safe at all.
This morning, reaching for a bowl on the top shelf, I turn to find him already there. Right behind me. His chest close enough that my shoulder blades would touch flannel if I leaned back an inch. His arm extends over mine, pulls the bowl down, sets it on the counter beside my hip. The motion puts his mouth level with my ear.
"Could've asked," he says, voice low.
"Didn't need to."
But my pulse is racing. And when he steps back, there's a flush on his neck that wasn't there before. He's out the door in under a minute, coffee forgotten on the counter.
We keep doing this. Orbiting each other in a space too small to avoid contact. His hand on my lower back when he passes behind me at the stove, automatic, almost unconscious. My fingers brushing his when I hand him a plate. The moment every evening on the porch when we both reach for the same spot on the railing, our hands almost touching before one of us pulls away.
Almost. Always almost.
Tonight, though, something shifts.
The storm comes in fast. Mountain weather has no patience for warning. One minute the sky is peach and violet over the peaks, the next it's black, wind slamming the shutters against the cabin walls while rain hammers the tin roof so loud conversation requires near-shouting.
Sully's in the barn checking on a heifer that's been off her feed. I'm in the kitchen finishing dishes when the power cuts. The cabin goes dark so fast I flinch, dropping a glass. It shatters on the floor.
"Shit."
Standing barefoot in a dark kitchen surrounded by broken glass. Excellent.
The back door bangs open. Sully comes in rain-soaked, flashlight in hand, water streaming off his shoulders. The beam swings across the kitchen until it finds me, frozen by the counter.
"Don't move." He's across the room in four strides, boots crunching glass. The flashlight goes on the counter, throwing shadows up the walls. "You cut?"
"No. But I can't exactly go anywhere."
