CHAPTER 4 #3
When the gap finally stood patched, it did not look pretty.
It looked honest. New cedar against old, wire scarred but tight, bottom weighted enough to discourage the calves without inviting the creek to tear it apart.
Colt walked the line once, testing each staple and each place water would push first.
Wren watched him from the bank, arms folded, boots leaving dark prints in the dust as creek water drained from them.
"It'll hold," she said.
"Until the next hard rain."
"Everything only holds until the next hard rain."
He glanced at her.
She looked toward the calves. They had drifted back uphill, bored now that danger had been replaced by rules.
The light had gone copper along the ridge, catching the wet edges of Wren's jeans and the loose strands of hair at her cheek.
She looked tired, stretched thin under the stubborn lift of her chin.
He wondered, against his will, what she had paid for those supplies and why his offer had scared her. Then he crushed the wondering before it grew roots. Wondering was how a man started building excuses for somebody who had already taught him what she would choose.
Tuck loaded the unused post onto the flatbed. "I'll check the east trough before dark."
"I'll do it after pickup," Colt said.
Tuck gave him a flat look. "You'll get Beau. I'll check the trough."
Colt almost argued. Then he saw Wren watching, and irritation had him wanting to argue for the wrong reason. "Fine. Text if it's low."
"Yep."
Tuck drove out in a roll of dust, leaving the patched gap, the creek, and too many unsaid things behind.
Colt gathered the tools. Wren bent to pick up the torn strip of old wire.
"Leave it," he said.
"A calf can step on it."
"I'll get it."
"I'm already holding it."
She was. Carefully, gloved fingers pinching between barbs, blood dried on her knuckle. He took the strip from her and tossed it into the truck bed.
"You need a towel," he said.
"I need to get back to Sudie's."
"You can't drive with your boots full of creek."
"I've done it before."
"That's not a recommendation."
She gave him a tired look. "Are you always this cheerful after a successful fence repair?"
"Only when I find people standing where wire can cut them open."
"I was standing where your calves needed me."
"You shouldn't have been here alone."
"I wasn't alone. There were calves. Terrible conversationalists, but present."
"Wren."
The humor faded, and what remained between them was the old creek bed, washed down to stone.
He reached into the truck and pulled an old towel from behind the seat. Beau had used it two days ago after spilling water across her boots; it still had a faint dusting of star stickers clinging to one corner. He shook them off before he handed it over.
Wren saw the stickers anyway. Her face softened, and every guarded piece of him noticed.
She only said, "Thank you," and sat on the tailgate to pull off one boot. Water poured out, cold and brown, splashing into the dust.
Colt turned to coil rope that did not need coiling. The sun had dropped low enough that he needed to leave. Beau would be watching the feed store door by now, pretending not to, because she liked to seem busy when she was waiting.
"I didn't forget ranch work," Wren said.
He stilled.
Her voice was quiet. The kind of quiet a person used when the truth cost more than they wanted to show. "I didn't forget Dusthallow either. Or you. Whatever you think, I didn't scrub you out and become someone else."
He faced her then.
She had put her boots back on, damp and dark, and stood with the towel folded over one arm. Mud streaked her cheek. The cut on her knuckle had opened again, small and bright.
The sight pulled at him. So did the words.
He had spent years making her leaving into one clean fact because clean facts could be stacked and survived.
She had gone. She had chosen a life with clean shoes and printed invitations.
She had left him with no answer and no goodbye, and he had built a life in the space where her answer should have been.
Harlow had deserved a husband who showed up whole. Beau deserved a father who did not let an old wound walk back into town and rearrange the furniture of his heart.
"I don't care that you left Dusthallow," he said.
Wren went very still.
The words came without planning. Maybe the creek had stripped too much noise out of the day. Maybe seeing her stand in cold water for his calves had cracked the first board over a thing he had buried badly.
"Yes, you do," she said.
"No. " His voice came rougher than he wanted. "I cared that you wanted more than fences and feed bills. I cared that you had talent and hunger and a chance to use both. I cared because I knew this town could love a person and still make them small if they let it."
Her eyes shone, but she did not look away.
Colt's hand flexed once at his side. Old rope burns, old letters never answered, old evenings waiting by a phone that stayed dead. "Ambition was never the sin," he said. "Leaving without a word was."