Page 145 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

“Yes,” I say. “I know.”

That is the first time I’ve said it out loud.

It doesn’t make me feel better. It does, however, make the room feel more honest.

Annie shifts in her chair, then stands and crosses to the wall, tracing one finger just beneath a set of dates tied to the property bids. “Then stop acting like this is yours alone.”

I look at her.

She turns back toward me, one hand still braced against the papers. “I’m not saying you don’t carry it. You do. Obviously. You wear responsibility like it was stitched into your skin. But this?” She gestures to the evidence, the wall, the whole ugly architecture of what we’ve built. “This isn’t just yours anymore.”

I stand and cross the room before I’ve fully decided to.

She doesn’t move.

“Annie,” I say, and her name comes out rougher than I intended.

Her chin lifts.

I stop close enough to see the faint tension still living around her eyes, close enough to feel my own restraint pulling tight again under the strain of everything I haven’t said.

The returned SD card. The photograph. The fact that somebody has decided proximity to her is a weapon. The fact that I cannot seem to think about that without anger rising so cleanly it’s almost clarity.

“If someone’s threatening you,” I say as a strong determination floods me, “I’m finished being polite about it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Annie

Rodeo mornings don’t ease in.

They hit.

By 7:30 the grounds already feel alive in that specific small-town way where people treat a rodeo like a national holiday and a social blood sport at the same time.

Dust hangs low in the early light, trucks roll in and out, horses shift and snort in the holding pens. Somewhere behind the announcer’s booth a speaker crackles to life, dies dramatically, then comes back with a burst of old country music and static, like the town itself is clearing its throat.

And me?

I’m in heaven.

Camera in hand, second lens in my bag, hair twisted up high because there’s no universe in which I’m letting wind and sweat turn rodeo day into a fight between me and my own bangs. Boots laced, coffee in my system, purpose in my chest.

My body knows exactly what it’s doing before my mind can get in the way.

Move.

Watch.

Frame.

Catch what everyone else misses because they’re too busy deciding what’s worth looking at.

The gate workers are already laughing too loud. Sammy Brooks is marching around with his clipboard like a war general disguised as a man one bad radio malfunction away from homicide.

Kids are running in packs. Women in denim skirts and impractical optimism are balancing coffee cups and opinions.

Ranch hands are loading, unloading, swearing, checking buckles, checking ropes, checking anything with a pulse or a bolt.