Dallas
I'd spent the morning giving Sadie space like it was the decent thing to do. Judging by the way she stared out the passenger window, I was starting to think I'd only given her a different kind of hurt.
The drive back to the rodeo grounds felt like it took longer than it should have. Supplies rattled in the truck bed. The road stretched out hot and bright. And Sadie sat six inches away from me, silent in a way that made my chest tight.
Six inches. I could've reached over and taken her hand without straightening my arm. I'd spent the whole drive not doing it.
Last night meant everything to me. That was the problem. I didn't know if it meant the same to her, and I couldn't ask. Asking meant risking the one thing I'd always had with Sadie—steady ground. A place where I knew how to stand.
If I touched her again, I wouldn't be able to pretend I was only helping. If I said too much, I could lose the friendship. She had enough pressure without me adding my feelings to the pile. So I stayed quiet, gripped the wheel, and told myself I was doing the right thing.
The way she kept her face turned toward the window suggested I was wrong about that too.
The rodeo grounds hit us with noise and motion the second we pulled through the gate.
The midway was still coming together, all half-hung banners, shouted directions, and kids slipping through gaps they weren’t supposed to find.
Above it all, flags snapped red, white, and blue against a sky too clear to offer any mercy from the heat.
Cody stood near the holding pens, barking instructions at two stock hands who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. Orville hovered near the announcer's booth, his phone pressed to his ear, trying to sound calm while his face gave away full panic.
Ruby’s gossip had done what Ruby’s gossip always did. By the time we crossed the grounds, people were sneaking looks at Sadie like they knew better than to stare but couldn’t quite help themselves.
Sadie pretended not to notice. That made me want to step between her and every pair of eyes in town, which would only make everything worse.
I parked near the stock barn and killed the engine. My phone buzzed. I smiled as I skimmed the text.
“They just confirmed,” I said. “Four head from Billings should be here by morning. Two more by noon.”
“Good.” She didn't look at me.
“Sadie—”
She looked at me then, and every word I'd been holding since dawn crowded my throat.
I wanted to tell her last night wasn't nothing. That I'd spent the whole morning replaying every sound she'd made against my mouth. That I'd stopped myself from touching her a dozen times since sunrise because I didn't trust myself to stop at once. That I was terrified I'd already ruined this.
Instead, I said, “I'll check the south pens before they arrive.”
“Right,” she said. “Good idea.”
She climbed out of the truck before I could find better words.
Coward. That was the word for a man who could rope a running steer in front of a full grandstand but couldn't tell one woman what she meant to him.
Addison must have beat us back to the grounds. She stood near the junior queen contestants, looking perfect in boots and a royal blue vest with enough rhinestones to blind someone at fifty yards. She waved at Sadie, all practiced grace and ease.
Sadie waved back.
I caught movement near the main arena. Waverly walked her barrel horse along the rail while Tanner stood nearby, watching the horse’s movement with a trainer’s eye.
Slade Kincaid leaned against the bleachers, watching his cousin with the kind of quiet pride that came from being part of a family with strong ties. Morgan was next to him like always, her clipboard in hand, looking like she was mentally redesigning the entire rodeo layout.
Jace Walker hauled a toolbox toward the announcer's booth, pausing to nod at Orville before heading up the ladder. Bella crouched near the chutes, her camera raised, capturing a shot of volunteers setting up the bucking stock gates.
The whole town was here building something together. And Sadie stood in the middle of it, carrying her family's name while everyone whispered about the stock she'd pulled.
I watched her square her shoulders and walk into it anyway and wanting her hit me all over again.
It wasn’t the hot, desperate need I’d felt in the alley kind of wanting.
It was the kind where a man watches a woman be braver than everyone around her and realizes she’s the one.
Sadie was the one… the only woman I wanted for the rest of my life.
Instead of grabbing her hand and telling her exactly how I felt, I unloaded supplies from the truck bed and followed her toward the barn.
Cody intercepted us near the holding pens, sweat soaking through his shirt, dirt streaked across his forearms.
“Are the replacements confirmed?” he asked.
“Four by morning,” I said. “Two more by noon.”
“Good. We're cutting this close.”
Sadie adjusted her hold on the bag she was carrying. “Has there been any movement on the pulled stock?”
“Holt's people hauled the brindle out this morning. The rest are getting picked up tonight.” Cody wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “One of the intake sheets says they overnighted out at the Miller lease pasture before they came in. Is that right?”
I froze.
The bag slipped from Sadie's arms. She caught it, but her eyes cut to me.
“The Miller pasture?” I asked.
“Yeah. Lease land, right? Out past the eastern fence line?” Cody pulled a crumpled paper from his back pocket and squinted at it. “Says here temporary holding, one night, before delivery. Figured you'd know.”
I didn't know.
The Miller lease pasture was land my family managed for overflow stock and equipment storage. It wasn't locked down tight. It had never needed to be. People knew it. Trusted it. That trust was exactly what made it useful for someone trying to move animals in secret.
They’d used my name… my land. And I hadn't known a fucking thing about it.
“Dallas?” Sadie's voice pulled at me, quiet and careful.
“Yeah,” I said. “Lease land.”
Cody stuffed the paper back in his pocket. “Thought so. Just checking. Need to update the intake logs before the inspectors come through.”
He walked off, already yelling at someone about water troughs.
Sadie stood there, her forehead creased. “Did you know stock came through your pasture?”
“No.”
“But someone used it.”
“Looks that way.”
She waited for me to say more.
I didn't.
Not because I didn't want to tell her, but because I didn't know what to tell her yet, and every instinct I had screamed at me to check before I dropped one more problem on her shoulders.
She had enough to deal with. She was already carrying the Hollister name, the pulled stock, her uncle's pressure, and the town's whispers. If Miller land was involved, that was mine to handle. Not hers.
“I should go look,” I said.
“We should go look,” Sadie corrected.
“I know that land better than anyone. It will be faster if I check it myself.”
Her jaw tightened. “This isn’t just about your land, Dallas.”
“It has my name on it.”
“And my license on the report.” Her voice stayed quiet, but something in it sharpened.
“Those animals were pulled because of my call. If there’s evidence out there, I need to see it myself.
Not after you’ve decided what matters. Not after you’ve bagged it up and brought it back to me like I wasn’t part of this. ”
I knew she was right. That was the worst part. But the thought of Sadie standing in the middle of Miller land, looking at proof that my family’s pasture had been used to move bad stock, made something ugly twist behind my ribs.
“I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,” I said.
The words landed wrong. I heard it as soon as they left my mouth.
Sadie’s expression closed in a way that made my chest go tight.
“You’re doing it too,” she said.
I went still. “Doing what?”
“Deciding what I get to know and when I get to know it.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?” Her eyes held mine. “Then don’t go without me.”
I should have stopped right there. I should have listened. Instead, I told myself I was protecting her. I told myself I’d bring her proof, not another worry. I told myself a dozen things that sounded better than the truth.
I was afraid of what she’d see if my name was tangled up in this mess.
So I walked away. The look she gave me as I left made something in me go quiet and cold, because I knew before I ever reached the truck that I’d just shut a door she’d been holding open.
The Miller lease pasture sat fifteen minutes east of the rodeo grounds, past the main ranch road and down a two-track that hadn't seen gravel in three years.
I drove faster than I should have. The sun beat down, turning the cab into an oven. Dust billowed behind the truck. Grasshoppers launched themselves off the hood in bursts of brown and gold.
I should have brought Sadie. The thought sat in my chest, heavy and unwelcome. But I was already here, and turning back now would only waste time.
The gate came into view—chain hanging loose, not locked. That wasn't right. I always locked the gate.
I climbed out, my boots hitting dirt, and walked the fence line.
There was fresh manure near the water trough and grass trampled flat around the loading area. Tire tracks pressed deep into the dirt, too new to have come from any Miller vehicle.
Someone had been here. Not long ago.
I moved closer to the loading chute and found a strip of blue vet wrap caught on the barbed wire, fluttering in the breeze like a flag.
Someone had used Miller land to hold stock before moving them to the rodeo grounds. Stock that came in with forged certifications and mismatched brands. Stock that Sadie pulled. And they’d used my family’s name to do it.
My gut turned over.
I stepped closer to the chute and saw where someone had marked the lower rail in grease pencil. Most of it had been rubbed away, smeared by dust and a careless sleeve, but two letters were still visible beside a partial certification number.
C.D.
That wasn’t enough to prove anything by itself, but it didn’t take a fucking genius to figure they probably referred to Cedar Draw. A name nobody wanted to explain, and everyone seemed to recognize too late.
I snapped a few pictures, then stood there, staring at the trampled grass and the empty pasture beyond. I’d wanted to protect Sadie from this. Instead, I’d walked straight into the middle of it alone.
Then I saw the stock tag. It was tangled in the fence wire near the loading chute, half-hidden by dust and grass. Hollister stock. The numbers matched one of the pulled certifications.
A few feet away, the gate chain hung in the wrong kind of loop—the same careless half-loop I’d seen Roy Pritchard use around the Hollister pens when he was in a hurry.
Roy had been here. And that meant Sadie had been right to pull every animal tied to him.
I pulled out my phone, dirt still on my hands, and almost called Sadie.
Almost. But standing there with evidence in my hand, I understood what I’d done.
I hadn’t protected her from a problem. I’d taken her out of the middle of something she had every right to stand in.
Her report. Her call. Her fight. And I’d made myself the man who decided when she got to know the truth.
Just like Holt. Just like Roy. Just like every man in her life who thought caring about her gave him the right to manage her. Wasn't that exactly what I'd promised myself I'd never be?
One night. I'd had her in my arms for one night, and I'd already found a way to treat her like something to manage instead of someone to stand beside.
I drove back to the rodeo grounds with the evidence in a plastic bag on the passenger seat and my stomach in knots the whole way.
The sun sat lower now, casting long shadows across the grounds. Volunteers were packing up for the evening. The holding pens stood quiet.
I parked near the stock barn and climbed out, bag in hand. Sadie stood twenty feet away, her arms folded, her expression too controlled. She already knew.
“You went to the Miller pasture,” she said.
“I needed to see if—”
“If what?” Her voice stayed level. Dangerously level. “If I could handle knowing?”
“That's not what this was.”
“Then what was it, Dallas?” The control cracked, just once, before she flattened it again. “Were you protecting me? Or managing me?”
The question hit me square in the chest, and I didn’t have a quick answer for it.
“I didn’t want to give you one more problem until I knew there was one,” I said.
“You didn’t just go look,” she said. “You made me wait while you decided what I was allowed to know.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“But that’s what it was.” Her voice shook once before she steadied it. “I told you why I needed to be there. I told you it mattered. And you still chose for both of us.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“No,” she said, and the word cut clean. “You were trying to protect yourself from the way I might look at you if Miller land was involved.”
That landed hard because it was true.
I hadn’t wanted to see suspicion in her eyes. Hadn’t wanted my name, my land, my family to become one more thing she had to fight her way through.
So I’d taken the choice from her and called it protection.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” She stepped closer, and I saw the hurt beneath the anger. “Because I’ve spent this whole week fighting my family over that exact thing. Holt deciding what I should know. Roy deciding what I should handle. And you—”
She stopped, and I waited.
“You were supposed to be different,” she finished.
That cut deeper than anything else she could have said. I looked at the bag in my hand, then back at her.
“I know how to be useful to you, Sadie,” I said, my voice low and soft. “I don't know how to be anything else.”
Something in her expression went still, careful, like she was deciding whether to let that land. For a second, I thought she might step closer. Might hear what I was really saying. But she was too hurt to fully absorb it.
“I didn't need useful today,” she said. “I needed honest.”
She looked at the bag, then at me.
“You should have told me.”
Four words. Clean as a cut. And I had no defense for any of them.
She held out her hand. I gave her the bag. Then she turned and walked toward the stock office without another word.
I stood there, my throat tight, watching her go. Even now. Even with her furious and hurt and done with me for the night, I wanted to follow her. Wanted to stand outside that stock office door like the fool I was, just to be near where she was.
I didn't.
For years, I'd known exactly where to stand with Sadie Hollister. My job was to stand next to her. As she walked away, I understood what I'd done.
I'd stepped in front of her after all.