Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Frankie
The house is too quiet after last night’s noise—the music, the laughter, the glow of the children’s faces.
Through the window, mist threads low across the pasture, softening the fences we mended yesterday until they look like lines drawn in fog.
The porch rail still wears a paper bat or two, limp from dew.
A jack-o’-lantern on the step has slumped into a lopsided grin, as if even the pumpkins partied too hard at the Harvest Haunt.
My hair still smells faintly like bonfire smoke. My lips remember the weight of Rhett’s against mine.
Don’t be dramatic, I tell myself, tugging on jeans and another flannel that was left on my bed. It was a kiss, one kissed under the afterglow of a perfect night, sure, but a kiss isn’t a promise.
Downstairs, the kitchen clock ticks in a lazy rhythm. Martha’s humming something sweet at the stove when I step in. The air is warm with cinnamon and oats. Coffee sits in a carafe on the table like a gift.
“Morning, sweetheart.” She pours before I ask, slides a mug into my hands, the exact second my fingers start to ache for it. “How are things between you and my grandson after last night?”
I huff a laugh. “We’re starting there?”
“We’re women.” Her smile crooks. “We don’t waste time.”
I blow across the coffee, watching steam ribbon toward the ceiling. “I’m confused, thanks for asking. I’m supposed to be at my retreat, but I don’t want to leave here.”
“Good,” she says. “Confused means there’s something worth paying attention to.”
I ease onto a stool. “Was it that obvious? Last night?”
“Only to anyone with eyes.” Her spoon swirls lazy circles in the oatmeal pot. “You were bright, child. That boy hasn’t lit up during the Haunt in years.”
My chest does something tender and unhelpful. “He is kind, and steady, and when he looks at me, I feel it everywhere.”
Martha’s brows lift, pleased and unsurprised.
“Rhett takes care of what matters. Land, family. The list’s short, but important.
” She lowers her voice, gentler. “Lost his parents too young. Lost a love he thought would last forever. Sometimes the ranch isn’t what drove folks off, but it’s what he thinks will drive ’em off the next time. ”
I swallow around a knot. “And you still want to toss me at him like confetti?”
“I’m not tossing anyone.” She tastes the spoonful, nods. “I’m noticing a thing growing where it’s wanted.” A beat. “And I’m telling you what you already know. The spark is there, it’s just what you want to do about it that isn’t for sure.”
I trace the rim of my mug. “What if it sparks the wrong fire?”
“You’ll know,” she says, setting a bowl in front of me. “Wrong fires eat you up. The right ones warm you.”
Footsteps cross the back porch. The door swings open.
Cold air rides in on bootsteps and the rustle of a coat.
Rhett fills the doorway and then the room.
His hat low, jaw rough with early stubble, eyes tired in the way a man looks when he’s finished cleaning up a party he didn’t throw and doesn’t want to end.
He smells like frost, woodsmoke, and the morning.
“Coffee,” he says to Martha, voice low.
She pours, but her eyes flick toward me like she’s measuring the weather. “Help yourself,” she says, and pats his wrist when he reaches for the mug. “And say good morning like you were taught.”
He glances over, only half committing. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I say, and hate the way it sounds like a word I need him to catch.
He takes the mug to the far end of the counter and drinks, looking out the window, one shoulder angled toward us, as if conversation might spook one of us. I feel the wall slide back into place and can’t tell whether it’s mine or his.
“How’s the yard?” Martha asks, unfazed.
“Fine. Trash is bagged. Maze signage’s down.” He clears his throat. “I’ll start on the north fence after I check the tractor chain.”
“I can help,” I say.
“You’ve done enough,” he says automatically—too quick, too clipped.
It shouldn’t feel like a slammed door, but it does. He must hear the thud of it because he finally looks at me, quick and careful, like he’s placing a fragile thing back where it belongs.
“Get some rest,” he says, quieter. “You don’t have to keep pitching in.”
Martha makes a noise that could be a snort or a prayer. “Lord save us from men who think rest is a love language.”
“I’ll be back for lunch,” he adds, already turning away. The door sighs shut behind him.
The silence he leaves behind physically hurts.
Martha sets her spoon down and levels me with a look so kind it almost breaks me. “He’s retreating,” she states, as if discussing the weather. “You have to decide whether you are going to let him get away with it.”
“He told me to rest.”
“And you know that’s just him trying to keep his heart safe.” Her smile tilts, conspirator and saint. “Take him coffee when he pretends he doesn’t need it.”
I press my fingers to my mug, feel heat soak bone. “Is this where I admit I have no idea what I’m doing?”
She winks. “No one does. That’s exactly why you should keep going.”
I find him near the open doors, bent over the tractor hitch. His hands work with sure economy: pin, chain, check, tug. He doesn’t look up when I cross the concrete, but his shoulders hitch the tiniest bit like he can feel my shadow.
“I brought coffee,” I say, setting the thermos within reach.
“I’m cutting back.” He keeps his eyes on the work. “Caffeine makes me agreeable. Bad for my reputation.”
I lean against the stall door, ground my back against solid wood. “Do you always get this quiet the day after a good thing?”
That pulls his gaze. Green eyes hit me like they always do—steady, assessing, a little wild around the edges. “I’m the same every day.”
“Right,” I say softly. “Because fences never break and storms never happen and no one ever kisses you on a dance floor.”
He flinches so small I might have imagined it. He straightens, wipes his hands on a rag, and takes two steps away, enough distance to tell me this isn’t the conversation he wanted.
“Frankie.”
I wait.
“You don’t have to fix this,” he says finally, gesturing at everything and nothing, the tractor, the quiet, the space between us. “You came to town for a retreat, not whatever this is.”
“What do you think it is?” I hear my voice and wince at the hope threaded through.
He looks past me to the open door. “You don’t know me,” he says, like he’s giving me a gift instead of pushing me away. “Not really.”
“Then tell me,” I say, stepping once into the half-foot he abandoned.
His jaw tightens. “I don’t do this.”
I give him a soft smile. “But apparently here we are.”
He exhales, long and slow, like the truth he’s about to say tastes like rain and old fear.
“I had a girl once,” he says, eyes still on the field.
“Good one. Smart. She lasted longer than most. But when it got hard, and this place asked too much, she left. I didn’t blame her.
I still don’t. But I learned what happens when I forget that loving this land means losing other things. ”
The words drop between us like live wire, bright, dangerous to handle, and somehow beautiful.
I don’t reach for him. I want to, fiercely, but that would be a promise I’m not ready to make. Instead, I set my palm on the nearest safe thing, the edge of the hitch, and use the metal to ground myself.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That sucks.”
He huffs a quiet laugh despite himself. “You make it sound simple.”
“No,” I say. “Just human.” I tip my head. “And now you’re trying not to want anything that reminds you of that, so you don’t have to go through it again.”
Silence. He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t confirm it either. The rag stills in his hands.
“You think you’re warning me off,” I say, voice low, careful. “But all I hear is that you were hurt. Those aren’t the same thing.”
He finally looks at me. “And what do you hear when I say I can’t do this?”
“That you’re scared,” I say. “Which is fair. Me too.”
The honesty hollows me out and steadies me in the same breath.
“I didn’t come here to fall for a man who fixes fences and names his tractors and kisses like he will never want to do anything else for the rest of his life.
” His mouth twitches at that, a small victory.
“But I also didn’t come here to lie to myself. ”
“I can’t prove anything with words,” I finish, softer now. “I know that, but I’m not afraid of hard. I’m good at it. I like it, actually. Hard things make sense to me.”
He swallows. It’s the only sign I get that the words land anywhere but the floor.
“You should go rest,” he says, back to soft and careful. “You’ve done enough.”
I nod because I don’t know how to do anything else without breaking my own rules. “Okay.”
I step back so he doesn’t have to.
“Thanks for telling me,” I add, at the door.
He doesn’t answer. But his shoulders ease the tiniest bit, and when I glance back, he’s watching me walk away.
It’s absurd that I feel lonely with all this beauty pressing at me from every side. But loneliness isn’t always about being alone. Sometimes it’s about standing at a door you want to open and realizing the knob turns from the other side.
I stop at the barn threshold and lean my shoulder against the jamb. Rhett’s silhouette moves across the light, steady, competent, a man in his element.
“Maybe you’re right,” I whisper to the morning, to the barn, to the man inside who won’t hear me yet. “Maybe I don’t know what I’m getting into, but I don’t I can stop.”