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)
My throat burns.
I didn’t come prepared for this.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I whisper.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he says gently. “I’m not dropping it in your lap like a proposal. I’m just answering your question.”
He looks away finally, eyes scanning the street like he’s giving me space even as his words sit between us like a living thing.
“I broke things back then,” he says. “I made choices for both of us. I’m not asking you to forget that. Just… it’s the reason I’m still single. That’s all.”
That’s all, he says, like he didn’t just put my entire teenage heart on the table and slide it back to me.
I sip my coffee to have something to do with my hands. It tastes like melted ice and confusion.
The truth is, I’ve been comparing, too.
Every date in the city, every almost-kiss in a bar with a nice safe stranger—I held them up in my head against a boy on a dock who carved initials into wood and promised always.
“Okay,” I say eventually.
“Okay?” he echoes.
“I hear you.”
He nods like that’s more than he expected and less than he hoped.
“We should head back,” I say. “Daddy’ll need the truck.”
He tosses our cups, opens my door, and helps me into the cab like I’m fragile crystal and not the girl who once broke her arm falling out of a hayloft and walked herself to the ER.
On the drive home, we talk about small things—a hawk on the fencepost, Josie’s latest obsession with glitter, the fact that the bakery started selling kolaches again. The big things sit quiet in the truck with us, taking up space I pretend not to notice.
When we pull into the yard, Daddy’s waiting by the barn, wiping his hands on an oil rag.
“Need a strong back,” he calls as we climb out. “One of the auger bits is stuck and Rafe’s got Penny down at the south creek with a colicky calf.”
Nash tips his hat. “I’m your back.”
He glances at me, something unreadable in his eyes—a silent you okay? that I answer with a small nod.
“I’ll be in the house,” I say. “Working on those old files.”
It’s not a lie.
It’s also not the full truth.
Because as I watch Nash follow Daddy toward the barn, shoulders broad, gait easy, my brain offers a new plan:
Barn.
Later.
No sponsors. No Brooke. No watchful town.
Just us.
Practice, I tell myself.
We need to practice being a couple in private if we’re going to sell it in public.
Totally logical.
Completely professional.
My heart doesn’t believe me for a second.
But I go inside, pretend to bury myself in paperwork, and listen to the faint echo of male voices and clanking metal from the barn.
And somewhere between the Stroud folder and the old water rights dispute, a thought settles in like a seed:
Maybe it’s time I stopped letting the past write every page of our future.
Maybe tonight, in that barn that watched us grow up, I’ll finally stop running from the answer we’ve both been avoiding.
Or at least… start asking the right questions.
TEN
DELANEY
I climb the ladder like I’m sneaking into trouble, palms dusty, heart tapping quick against my ribs. The barn smells like clean hay and summer heat, like leather and something warm I can’t name without saying his name too. Moonlight slides through the gaps in the old boards in pale stripes. Above me, I hear the soft thud of his boots and the creak of the loft boards as he shifts his weight, unhurried, like he’s got all night to take me apart.
“Careful,” he says, voice honey-low. “Those last two rungs like to surprise a girl.”
“I’m not a girl,” I shoot back, lifting my chin as I step onto the loft.
“No,” he says, and the way he says it—slow, certain—puts heat in my cheeks. “You’re not.”
He’s in shadow, hat tipped low, one hip against a hay bale, rope coiled easy in his hand like it belongs there. It does. So does he—broad shoulders sketching a silhouette I could find blindfolded, sleeves rolled, forearms tanned and strong. A strip of moonlight catches the buckle at his belt. My breath catches with it.
“What are you doing here so late?” he drawls.
I take a step closer. Hay whispers under my boots. “I wanted to see you.”
His mouth curves, the kind of smile that starts trouble and ends it, too. “Well, darlin’, you got me.”
He lifts the rope. It’s nothing fancy—just soft, worn cotton that’s seen more fence posts than games. Still, my pulse answers like it recognizes an old song. He reads that in my face. I know he does. He always does.
“Hands,” he says. “Let me see ’em.”
I offer them out, palms up. His thumbs skim each one, slow, grounding. The rough of his skin against mine makes me shiver. He notices that, too. He notices everything.
“You been thinkin’ about this all day?” he asks.