Chapter 5 #2
“I’m not apologizing.” His voice was quiet. “I just wanted to say thank you. For today. For letting me help with the horses. For not throwing me off the property when you probably should have.”
I didn’t know what to do with that.
Gratitude was harder to deflect than apology. Apology I could reject. Gratitude just sat there, warm and honest, waiting for me to accept it.
“You’re a guest,” I said finally. “It’s my job to make sure you don’t die in a storm.”
“Aye.” The corner of his mouth moved. “But you didn’t have to let me near the barn. Or the horses. Or—”
He stopped.
Or you.
Neither of us said it. We didn’t need to.
My hand was still on the breaker panel, and I could hear the low hum of electricity through the metal. I focused on that instead.
“We should get back,” I said.
Graham nodded and stepped aside to let me pass.
He smelled like woodsmoke and clean rain, exactly the kind of detail my brain didn’t need to be cataloging.
I cataloged it anyway.
The evening wound down slowly.
Kaya herded everyone toward their cabins with promises of warm beds and an early morning.
I stayed in the kitchen, wiping down counters that were already clean. Washing a dish. Drying it. Washing another one. Doing anything that kept my hands busy and my brain from replaying the breaker room.
Finally, the main house was empty, and I was alone.
I locked up the way I always did. Front door. Windows. Back door. Front door again because my brain didn’t trust the first check. Then I turned off the kitchen light, went out the side door, and walked to my cabin through rain that had softened to a steady patter, almost soothing now.
My cabin felt smaller tonight.
I stripped off the last of the day, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed. My body was exhausted but my brain wouldn’t shut up.
You told him about your parents.
I had.
He told you about his father.
He had.
You let him catch you.
I’d let him catch me.
The memory of his hands at my waist pulsed through me like a fever.
The warmth of his body. The steady pressure of his grip.
The way he’d held me like I was something fragile and strong at the same time, and the way he’d let go the instant I pushed, no resistance, no ego, just his hands falling away like they’d never been there.
I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow.
Stop.
I was not doing this. I was not lying in bed thinking about a guest like some lovesick teenager. I was a grown woman with a business to run and a life that did not have room for complications.
Graham was a complication.
Whatever this was, this pull, this awareness, this warmth that bloomed in my stomach every time he looked at me, it didn’t matter. He’d be gone in two weeks. Back to Scotland, back to his life, back to being someone I’d never see again.
And I’d still be here. With my horses and my land and my controlled, quiet existence.
The thought should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
I was still awake at eleven when my phone rang.
Fury’s name lit up the screen, and my whole body went cold.
My older brother didn’t call this late unless something was wrong.
“Hello?”
“Rose.” His voice was tight. The way it got when he was trying not to explode. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, sitting up. “Why? What happened?”
“What happened,” Fury repeated, and I could hear him pacing, the familiar rhythm of his footsteps on hardwood. “What happened is that I’m looking at a video of you hugging Fraser Kincaid, and the internet is losing its goddamn mind.”
My brain went blank.
“What?”
“A video, Rose. Of you. In the arms of Fraser Kincaid. Posted four hours ago.”
Fraser Kincaid.
I’d heard that name before.
Fraser Kincaid was one of those YouTube influencers.
“I don’t—” My voice came out wrong. “I don’t understand. Why would I be with him?”
“Tall guy,” Fury cut in. “Scottish. Dark hair.”
My hand tightened on the phone until my knuckles ached.
Graham.
Was Graham just a name he’d made up? A mask he’d worn while walking around my property, eating my food, helping with my horses?
While I told him about my dead parents?
“Rose?” Fury’s voice sharpened. “You still there?”
I couldn’t answer.
The pieces were clicking into place now. Dex, the “creative director” who seemed more like a handler. The way the whole team deferred to Graham while pretending they didn’t. Jamie constantly filming on her phone. Everything suddenly made a lot more sense.
And he’d stood in that barn, dripping wet, watching me fall apart. Listening to me talk about my parents. About the parts of myself I never showed anyone.
He’d let me do that. While hiding behind a fake name.
“Rose.” Fury’s voice was gentler now, which was somehow worse.
My brother didn’t do gentle unless things were truly bad.
Fury had been the protector since the crash, since he was nine years old screaming for help in a car full of shattered glass while our mother died and our father was already gone.
He’d carried that night in his bones the same way I carried it in mine, except where I’d turned inward and built walls, Fury had turned outward.
He fought. He fixed. He threw money and muscle at every problem until it broke or he did.
He drove me absolutely insane, and I loved him more than almost anyone on earth.
“I didn’t know,” I heard myself say. “He told me his name was Graham. I didn’t—” My throat closed. “I didn’t know.”
Silence on the other end.
Then Fury said, very quietly, “I’m going to kill him.”
I should have argued. Should have told him it wasn’t that serious, that I was fine, that I could handle it.
But I wasn’t fine.
I’d let someone in. Actually let someone past the walls I’d spent years building.
And the whole time, he’d been someone else entirely.
“How many views?” I asked.
“Rose, don’t—”
“How many?”
Fury paused. “Last I checked, about two million. But it’s climbing.”
Two million people. Watching me in my barn. In my space.
“The caption says you two were ‘making out,’” Fury added quietly. “That’s not what I saw in the video, but that’s what’s spreading.”
Making out. We hadn’t been making out. He’d caught me when I slipped. Held me for maybe three seconds before I pushed him away.
But someone had written that caption. Someone had taken a moment that meant nothing and turned it into clickbait.
“Who posted it?” I asked.
“Account called @fraserkincaidofficial. Sounds like your friend posted it himself.”
“I have to go,” I said.
“Rose—”
I hung up before he could finish.
I went to YouTube and searched for Fraser Kincaid, and as I sat in the shadows, staring at my phone, the video started playing. I watched it again. And again.
There I was. In Graham’s arms.
No. Fraser Kincaid’s arms.
A stranger’s arms.
By the tenth replay, my face was wet, and I didn’t remember starting to cry.