Page 77 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Click.

I shift, focusing on the way the moss climbs over the wood.

Click.

My thumb taps lightly against the camera body while I think, the familiar rhythm grounding in a way nothing else has been all week.

Work has been a mess.

I mean, not so much the numbers. The numbers I understand. Patterns, inconsistencies, things that don’t line up the way they should.

It’s everything else that’s complicated.

Duke acting like we’re just… fine, like what happened between us can sit neatly in the past if we both ignore it hard enough.

Cody…

I stop that thought before it goes any further, because no, absolutely not.

We aren’t unpacking Cody Harlan in the middle of the woods like that’s a reasonable thing to do.

I straighten, lifting my camera again and scanning for something else to focus on. That’s when I hear it.

A crack behind me.

I pause, the camera still halfway raised.

It’s probably nothing. A branch, an animal. Something small and normal that belongs here in a way I don’t.

I don’t turn right away.

There’s no reason to.

If I turn, it means I think there’s something to see, and there isn’t.

There’s just…

Crack.

Was that closer?

My stomach tightens before I can stop it. Slowly, I turn… but I find nothing.

Just trees.

Tall, straight, spaced unevenly enough that the shadows between them feel deeper than they should. The kind of shadows that don’t quite let your eyes settle.

“You’re fine,” I say, because I apparently need the reminder. “It’s a forest. Things live here.”

Very logical.

Very convincing.

I lift the camera again, more out of instinct than anything else, and bring the viewfinder up to my eye. The lens narrows everything down, cuts out the edges of my vision, and gives me more to focus on.

Tree, shadow light… movement?

It’s subtle. Just a shift between two trunks, far enough back that it shouldn’t catch my attention and somehow does anyway.