Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
I push harder.
Adrenaline burns through me, hot and clean. My world narrows to those two red points and the knowledge that someone was just on this land, doing God knows what, and I was ten seconds too late.
I crest the small rise as the truck fishtails onto the main road and disappears behind a stand of pecans.
Gone.
I stop. My heartbeat is a drum in the quiet. My lungs drag in air that tastes like dust and exhaust and fury. “Coward,” I mutter to the empty night. I turn back, scanning the ground with the flashlight now.
Tracks.
Fresh.
Deep.
They drove in slow, left in a hurry.
I follow the impressions along the fence, looking for anything broken, anything planted. I find a churned patch of dirt near a gate post, like they stopped there for a second.
Crouching, I run my fingers over the ground. Nothing obvious. No new cut wire, no packages, no obvious marks. Maybe they were scouting. Maybe they were measuring response time. Maybe they were just testing how close they could get to my nerve without getting caught. Either way, they’re getting bold.
Bold gets people hurt.
I straighten, muscles singing from the sprint, and look back toward the house. A light burns in an upstairs window—Delaney’s room. The sight hits me square in the chest.
She’s up.
Maybe pacing.
Maybe pretending she’s not listening for trouble.
Maybe wondering if I’m going to knock.
I walk back toward the house in long strides, every sense stretched thin. When I step onto the porch, the boards creak an old, familiar greeting.
Inside, the hallway is dim, lit by the small lamp Mrs. Coleman always leaves on like a lighthouse.
Delaney’s door is closed.
I stop there. I can hear the faint sound of movement—fabric, maybe, or feet crossing the floor. My hand lifts.
If I knock, she’ll open.
If she opens, she’ll see everything I’m trying not to bleed all over this operation—anger, fear, that possessive protective instinct that’s been coiled since the day I left her.
I hover there, knuckles an inch from the wood.
I could tell her about the truck.
I could tell her about the files I want Gray to dig up.
I could tell her I’m not going anywhere until this place is safe enough for her to breathe without looking over her shoulder.
Instead, I swallow it all back down.
She deserves sleep more than she deserves my half-formed fears.
I lower my hand.
“Not yet,” I whisper, same as I told her on the porch.
Not yet.
I retreat to my room, shut the door softly, and sit on the edge of the bed I dragged closer to the hall.
The anger is still there. So is the resolve.
Whoever is doing this thinks they can come onto this land under cover of dark, take little bites out of a legacy, and scare a family into signing a piece of paper.
They’re not just messing with a ranch. They’re messing with the girl I carved my initials next to on a dock post a lifetime ago.
I stretch out, one arm behind my head, eyes on the ceiling, ears tuned to the faint sounds of the house.
They want a fight?
They just got one.
And I’m done playing nice.
NINE
DELANEY
By the time the coffee finishes dripping, everyone in Valor Springs apparently already knows I have a boyfriend.
“Seven texts,” Mama says, waving her phone like it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread. “Seven, since sunrise. Brooke. Theresa. Nancy from the church. People I haven’t spoken to since they borrowed a casserole dish in 2009.”
She gives me a look over the rim of her mug. “Apparently, my daughter is big news.”
“She always was,” Daddy says around a mouthful of toast.
I groan into my coffee. “Everybody needs a hobby that isn’t me.”
Nash sits at the end of the table in a clean t-shirt and that damn Stetson, forearms tan and already dusted from checking the front gate. He’s scrolling his phone with a half-smile that makes me nervous.
“Somebody die?” I ask.
“Nah.” He turns the screen so I can see the Hawthorne brothers’ group chat.
Crewe: Mom just asked if she should start sewing a dress.
Mack: You finally made an honest woman of my favorite Coleman, proud of you, jackass.
Sin: Try not to get shot this time.
Banks: She’s lost her mind.
Jace: Do I get to be best man or is Crewe going to pull rank?
Colt: I’m not wearing a tie.
I choke on my coffee. “You told them?”
“Of course not,” Nash says, amused. “News travels. Colt’s camping buddy texted him. Said ‘saw your brother at the Beaver last night losing his mind over some girl.’”
“Some girl,” I repeat. “Rude.”
He looks up. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”
My insides go warm and unsettled.
Mama sets a plate of eggs and biscuits in front of me and gives Nash a fresh one because she’s secretly adopted him and isn’t subtle about it.
“So,” she says, all casual in the way rattlesnakes are casual. “What’re y’all doing today? More… dates?”