28. Dallas
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dallas
The ranch doesn’t care if your heart just got yanked out of your chest.
Cows still need feeding, pipes still freeze, and fences still fall down in the same damn spot they always fall down. I think they might be doing it on purpose.
The sun comes up. Boots go on. That’s the deal.
So that’s what I do.
I pull on jeans that still smell a little of her shampoo, tug on a flannel, and shove my arms into my coat. I make coffee strong enough to melt a spoon and pretend it’s just another morning.
Spoiler: it isn’t.
Because it wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t just Faith. It was the second I let myself picture her at this table again. Lila’s giggle, Faith’s cookie-dough hands, something like a life, and then she was gone before the sun was all the way up.
That kind of hope doesn’t fade. It detonates.
The house is quiet when I step into the kitchen. Too quiet. Lila’s already at school. Boone took her and Ellie in early so that I could sleep, which is funny, because sleep is the one thing I haven’t managed since Faith walked out my front door.
Rusty thumps his tail once from his bed and gives me a look that says he knows I’m lying to myself about everything. I ignore him and pour coffee into a travel mug.
My phone sits face down on the counter where I dropped it after staring at her name on the screen for too long and writing exactly zero texts that didn’t have the sound of a man begging.
I don’t touch it.
Instead, I grab my keys and step out into the sharp January cold.
The sky’s that pale winter blue that might shatter if you stare at it too hard. Frost sparkles on the fence rails. My breath fogs out in big white clouds as I cross the yard toward the barn.
Work. Just work.
By the time the clock over the tack room says nine, I’ve already loaded out hay, broken ice in two troughs, checked the hot wire along the north pasture, and had one argument with a gate latch that ended with me swearing under my breath.
“Easy there, Romeo,” Nash drawls from the doorway, leaning against the jamb with his hands in his pockets. “That gate’s just trying to live its life.”
I grunt and give the latch one last hard twist. It clicks into place with a smug little snap.
“Problem solved,” I say.
“Sure.” He tilts his head, sizing me up as if I’m one of the colts he’s trying to figure out if he can make a few bucks on. “You know, most people punch things after the midlife crisis.”
“Seriously?”
“Like I said.” He wanders into the tack room, toe nudging a coil of rope. “You’ve been stomping around since sunup. Scared off two ranch hands and a rooster.”
“Rooster had it coming.”
Nash snorts. “He crowed. That’s his job.”
“Then he’s overachieving at it.”
He leans his hip against the counter, arms folded. “You wanna tell me why you look like someone stole your dog?”
“Rusty’s fine.”
“Yeah, you, on the other hand…”
I busy myself with rearranging a stack of feed invoices that do not need rearranging. “Got a lot on my mind. That okay with you, or do I need a permission slip?”
“Whoa.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Feisty before noon. Definitely heart problems.”
“Drop it, Nash.”
The warning in my voice makes him pause. Really pause. His posture shifts just a hair, all the easy joking smoothing out.
“Is this about Faith?”
Her name hits me center mass.
I keep my eyes on the papers. “When is anything not about Faith these days, according to you?”
“Hey, you said it, not me.” He picks up a hoof pick and flips it between his fingers. “She okay? I saw her truck haul past the highway this morning like the devil was the one riding shotgun.”
My grip tightens on the edge of the workbench until my knuckles go white.
“I don’t know,” I say, and that’s the part that’s eating me alive. “She got some kind of text, freaked out, and left.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, for a guy who ‘doesn’t date’ and ‘doesn’t have time for drama,’ you sure are living inside a country song right now,” Nash murmurs.
I throw the nearest rag at his stupid, grinning face.
He catches it one-handed. “What? I’m just saying. Girl storms into your life in a wedding dress—”
“Don’t.”
He stops. The joke dies on his lips. For once, he listens.
“Okay,” he says, shrugging. “I’ll shut up. For now. But you know where I am when you feel like being sad and pathetic at me later.”
“Can’t wait,” I mutter, and Nash wanders off as if he didn’t just crack my ribs open with one casual question.
I stand there a second too long, staring at the rag in his hand, when really the problem is the silence in my head where Faith’s voice was last night.
One minute she was in my kitchen, laughing at Lila’s “WELCUM FAIFH” sign, sipping whiskey, and talking about table layouts. The next, her whole face went white, like someone turned the lights off inside her, and she was backing away from me with panic in her eyes.
As if I was the thing she couldn’t afford to want. I force my hands to move again. Grab the invoices, shove them back into the folder they came from. Busywork. The kind I can do when I can’t do anything else.
Outside, the ranch is awake and loud in the ways it always is. An engine turns over by the shop. A horse nickers in the far stall. Rusty barks at nothing, which is his hobby. The world spins on its same axis even when mine feels off kilter.
A shadow falls across the entrance.
I don’t have to look up to know who it is.
“Dallas,” Mom says.
Her voice is calm, but there’s steel under it. Maggie McCoy doesn’t ask twice.
I set the wrench down slowly and wipe my hands on a rag, turning toward her.
She stands in the doorway in her heavy coat, hair pulled back, eyes sharp and worried in the same breath. She looks smaller than she used to, sometimes, until she opens her mouth and you remember she raised four men and buried a husband and kept a ranch running anyway.
“Come inside,” she says. “We need to talk.”
I follow her across the yard toward the house, boots crunching on frozen ground. The wind bites at my cheeks. The sky is bright and merciless.
Inside, the kitchen is warm, smells faintly of onions and coffee and whatever Mom’s been making all morning. The house is empty. Quiet.
That alone tells me Mom planned this.
She pours two coffees without asking, sets one in front of me, then leans back against the counter and studies me. I’m a problem she intends to solve.
“You look like hell,” she says.
“Morning,” I mutter.
“Don’t get smart with me,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. Just worry. “Boone told me Faith ran home this morning.”
“Yeah.”
Mom’s face tightens. “Did you do something?”
The question slices straight through my ribs.
“No,” I say sharply, then soften because it’s Mom and she doesn’t deserve my edge. “No. I didn’t. She just… left. Freaked out, I guess.”
“She likes you,” Mom says, unwavering. “And that scares her even more, because liking you makes her want to stay, and staying makes her vulnerable.”
I stare at my coffee, searching for answers.
Mom’s voice lowers. “You did do something, though.”
I blink. “What?”
“You let her get close,” she says. Not accusing. Just stating. “Close enough that Lila cares. Close enough that you care. Close enough that leaving hurts again.”
My jaw tightens. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You don’t get to choose what you mean to feel,” Mom cuts in. “You only get to choose what you do with it.”
Silence stretches between us. The heater kicks on, humming. Somewhere outside, a door bangs in the wind.
Mom watches me for a moment, then says quietly, “You haven’t looked at me once since you sat down.”
I lift my eyes.
Her face makes my throat tighten. There’s no judgment, just a mother seeing her son bleed and wanting to fix it, even though she knows she can’t.
“Dallas,” she says, softer now. “Talk to me.”
The words crack me open.
I swallow hard, jaw working.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit. “I thought… I thought I could handle it. Faith came back, and it felt easy for a minute. Like breathing. Like I remembered who I was before everything went to hell.”
My hands tighten around the mug. “And then she left this morning, and it felt like the same damn wound all over again. I’m standing on Old Mill Road watching her taillights disappear.”
Mom’s eyes shine, but she doesn’t look away.
“And Lila,” I add, breaking on my kid’s name. “Lila already cares. She already misses her. She already thinks she did something wrong when Faith doesn’t show up.” I shake my head. “I can’t do that to her. I can’t—”
“You can’t let Lila get hurt,” Mom finishes gently.
I nod, hard. “I can’t let someone into our life who’s going to vanish.”
Mom holds my gaze. “Is that what you think Faith is? Someone who vanishes because she doesn’t care?”
I flinch.
“Or do you think she vanishes because she’s terrified and doesn’t know how to stay yet?”
The question hangs in the air.
Because if I’m honest, I know the answer.
Faith never looked indifferent. Not once. Not when she hugged Lila. Not when she laughed at my stupid joke. Not when she kissed me as if she’d been waiting for it and hated herself for wanting it.
She looked scared.
And I know how scared looks, because I’ve lived inside it.
“I don’t know how to help her,” I say quietly.
Mom reaches for my hand again, this time holding it. Her grip is warm, firm.
“You don’t fix her,” she says. “You don’t rescue her like she’s a stray dog.” Her mouth twists. “Though Lord knows you McCoys love dragging strays home.”
I manage a weak huff of laughter, mostly air.
Mom squeezes my hand. “You be steady. You be honest. You set boundaries that protect Lila and still leave room for Faith to choose you back.”
“What if she can’t?”
Mom’s eyes soften. “Then you grieve it. You survive it. And you don’t let fear keep you from living in the meantime.”
I stare at her, emotion thick in my chest.
“Your daddy loved hard,” she says. “He loved me hard, and he loved you boys hard, and it scared the hell out of him sometimes because love is the one thing you can’t control.”
Her eyes glisten, and she clears her throat.
“He still did it,” she says. “Even when it hurt. Even when the ranch was hanging by a thread, and we didn’t know if we’d make it. He still chose love because it was the only thing worth the risk.”
I swallow hard.
Mom’s grip tightens. “Belinda’s death didn’t happen because you loved her,” she says, fierce now. “Don’t you put that on yourself. Loving her didn’t kill her, Dallas. And shutting your heart down won’t bring her back.”
The words slam into me.
I blink fast, jaw clenched, because my eyes burn and I refuse to cry at my own kitchen table.
Mom reaches up, cups my cheek briefly, the way she did when I was little.
“You’ve been carrying that guilt like it’s a saddle you can’t take off,” she murmurs. “It’s time to set it down.”
My voice comes out low and shaky. “I miss her.”
“I know,” Mom whispers. “And you always will. That doesn’t mean you don’t get to be happy again.”
I stare at the table, breathing through the ache.
Then, quieter, I ask the question that’s been chewing me alive since Faith showed up in my ditch.
“What if loving Faith hurts Lila?”
Mom doesn’t flinch. She’s been waiting for me to say it.
“Then you love Faith the right way,” she says. “Slow. Clear. With your daughter’s heart in mind. You don’t promise Lila the moon before you know Faith can stay. You don’t make Faith responsible for Lila’s happiness. And you don’t make Lila responsible for keeping Faith.”
Her gaze pins me. “But you also don’t shut the door just because you’re scared something might go wrong.”
I swallow, throat tight. “She’s already attached.”
Mom nods. “Kids attach. That’s what they do. And it’s beautiful.” Her voice softens. “What matters is that the adults show up and handle it with care.”
Care.
I can do that.
Right?