Chapter 8
Saramaria
The hammering in my own head is nothing compared to the hammering coming from outside. Or the low, rumbling voices that carry on the wind, a constant reminder of their presence. Knox, Boone, Rhett.
I can’t concentrate.
The scent of them clings to the air, a musky, intrusive cocktail of whiskey and tea, rosemary and mint, cinnamon and espresso. It seeps through the walls of this house, a place that’s supposed to be mine, and claims it. This house smells like strangers.
So I clean.
I rebuild.
My OCD, a thing I’ve learned to manage in the sterile, predictable environment of my Denver life, comes roaring back with a vengeance. It’s the only way I know how to fight back, to re-establish order in a world that’s spinning wildly out of my control.
I scrub floors until my knuckles are raw. I wash windows until they gleam, wiping away the grime and the ghosts. I tear down the old, musty curtains in the living room, letting in the unfiltered Wyoming light.
I’m hauling another bag of trash down the hallway, huffing with the effort, when I mutter to Doggy, who’s trotting faithfully at my heels.
“I thought cowboys were supposed to be gentlemen,” I say, my voice tight with frustration. “Aren’t they supposed to offer to help a lady with a heavy bag? Or is that just in the movies?”
Doggy just looks up at me, his head cocked, his brown eyes full of a canine wisdom that seems to say, “Lady, you have no idea what you’ve walked into.”
I groan, dropping the bag by the front door.
Boone offered to help earlier. I saw it in his eyes, the slight shift in his posture.
And I turned him down. Because I don’t need an Alpha, do I?
I am strong and capable. I’ve built a life from nothing.
I can figure this out on my own. I don’t need his help, his pity, or the complicated, painful history that hangs between us like a shroud.
I turn back to the task at hand, which is dismantling an old, wobbly bookshelf in the corner of what will be my bedroom. The wood is old, dry, and splintery. I try to pry a stubborn nail with the back of a hammer, but it won’t budge.
I drop the hammer and run my hand along the underside of the shelf to feel for a hidden bracket, but the wood is more brittle than I realized. A jagged splinter catches my skin, slicing deep into the meat of my palm.
“Fuck!” I yelp, dropping the hammer. A thick, ugly sliver of wood is buried deep in the fleshy part of my hand, just below my thumb. It throbs in time with my heartbeat.
I storm into the living room, rummaging through my bag.
I’m looking for my tweezers, the little silver pair I keep in my makeup bag for precisely these kinds of emergencies (a lawyer is always prepared).
But in my frantic search, I don’t notice that the front door, which I thought I’d latched, has swung slightly ajar.
I don’t notice until I hear a happy yip and the scrabble of claws on the porch.
“Doggy, no!” I shout, but it’s too late. He’s slipped through the gap and is bounding across the yard, a golden rocket aimed directly for the broken section of fence down by the creek.
Panic, cold and sharp, slices through me. “Doggy! Come back here! Slow down!”
I’m out the door and running, the splinter in my hand forgotten. I’m not wearing the right shoes for this. My boots, the practical ones I bought in town, are still by the door. I’m in socks, my feet sliding on the damp grass. The ground is uneven, pocked with gopher holes and hidden rocks.
I can see him, a flash of gold near the old drainage culvert, a place my grandfather always warned me to stay away from.
“Doggy, please!” I beg, my lungs burning. “Slow down!”
He’s sniffing around the edge of the culvert, a large, concrete pipe half-buried in the ground, its mouth dark and inviting to a curious puppy. I’m so focused on him, on calling his name, that I don’t see the loose piece of sod covering a shallow hole.
My foot catches. I go down, hard. The world tilts, a sickening lurch, and I throw my hands out to break my fall. My right wrist takes the brunt of it. A sickening crack echoes in my head, followed by a white-hot blast of pain that shoots up my arm.
I scream. It’s not a word, just a raw, agonized sound that tears from my throat. I cradle my wrist to my chest, my vision swimming with black spots. For a moment, I can’t breathe. The pain is everything.
Doggy, startled by my cry, stops his exploration and comes trotting back, whining softly. He licks my face, his rough tongue a small, comforting anchor in a sea of agony. I pull him onto my lap with my good arm, burying my face in his soft fur, and try to call for help.
“Boone!” I shout, my voice a ragged sob. “Rhett! Knox! Someone!”
But my voice is thin, lost in the vastness of the ranch.
The only response is the mournful sound of the wind.
I’m stuck. Lying in a patch of weeds near a dangerous culvert, with a puppy on my lap and a wrist that feels like it’s been shattered into a thousand pieces.
Tears of pain and frustration stream down my face.
This is not happening. This cannot be happening.
And then, through the haze of tears, I see him. Boone. He’s running toward me, his long legs eating up the distance, his face a mask of concern. He skids to a halt beside me, dropping to his knees.
“Saramaria, are you okay?” His eyes scan me, a frantic, searching gaze that takes in my tear-streaked face, my cradled arm, the puppy whimpering in my lap.
I lift my injured hand, trying to be casual, trying to downplay the blinding, searing pain. “I have a splinter.”
“Oh, baby,” he says, and the words are not condescending. They’re filled with a deep, weary exasperation, a knowing ache that seems to span the eight years between us. He sees right through me. He always has.
He gently moves the puppy aside and then his hands are on me, careful, sure. He checks my head, my neck, my arms, his touch clinical but warm. “Where does it hurt the most?”
“My wrist,” I finally admit, a fresh wave of tears blurring my vision.
He doesn’t hesitate. He slides one arm under my back and another under my knees, lifting me as if I weigh nothing.
I gasp, my good hand flying to his shoulder to steady myself.
The scent of him—rosemary and citrus and cool mint—envelops me, a dizzying, overwhelming wave of memory and present.
He tucks Doggy under his other arm like a football.
He carries me back to the house, his steps sure and steady on the uneven ground. I don’t say anything. I just close my eyes and breathe him in, hating myself for it but unable to stop.
He sets me down gently on the sofa in the living room, the same sofa I’ve been sleeping on. Doggy immediately curls up at my feet. Boone kneels in front of me, his eyes serious as he looks me over again, checking for scrapes and bruises.
“It’s definitely swelling,” he says, his gaze fixed on my wrist, which is already starting to look puffy and discolored. “I have an ice pack. And tweezers. For the splinter,” he adds, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “I’ll be right back.”
He turns and walks out, leaving me alone in the quiet house, my wrist throbbing, my heart pounding a frantic, painful rhythm against my ribs. And for the first time since I came back to Muddy Creek, I don’t feel alone. I feel... cared for. And that’s almost more terrifying than the fall.
The sound of his boots on the porch is a steady, measured rhythm that does nothing to calm the frantic thumping of my heart.
The door creaks open, and he’s back. In his hands, he holds a clean white towel, a plastic bag filled with ice cubes, and a pair of silver tweezers that look like they could perform surgery.
He moves with an economy of motion that’s both reassuring and intimidating.
He kneels in front of me again, his scent filling my personal space. He gently takes my injured hand, his touch surprisingly soft. “Let’s get this out,” he says.
The tweezers are cold against my skin. He probes the area around the splinter, his brow furrowed in concentration. The first touch of the metal against the embedded wood sends a searing pain up my arm. I flinch, a gasp escaping my lips.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, not looking up. “It’s in deep. Just... try to hold still.”
He tries again, and the pain is worse this time, a bright, blinding starburst of agony. I can’t help it, I try to pull my hand away.
“Hey.” His other hand comes up to cup my cheek, his thumb stroking my jawline. The touch is so unexpected, so intimate, that it momentarily distracts me from the pain in my hand. “Look at me,” he commands.
I do. I lift my eyes from the bloody mess of my palm and meet his. And for the first time, I really look at him. Not as the boy I knew, not as the obstacle in my way, but as the man he is now.
He’s almost thirty now, but he looks older in some ways, younger in others. There are faint lines etched at the corners of his eyes, laugh lines that weren’t there eight years ago. His skin is tanned a deep bronze, weathered by the sun, and it makes his brown eyes seem darker, more intense.
A small scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a thin white line I don’t remember.
His hair is still thick and dark, but there are a few strands of silver at the temples, glinting in the light from the window.
He’s leaner now, the softness of his youth replaced by the hard, sculpted muscle of a man who works with his body.
He’s not just handsome. He’s... formidable.
“All done,” he says, his voice pulling me from my examination.
I look down. The splinter is gone. Lying on the towel is a thick, ugly sliver of wood, at least an inch long. I stare at it, then back at him, a wave of relief so profound it makes me dizzy.
“Thank you,” I whisper, the words barely audible.
“You’re welcome,” he says. He notices a single drop of blood welling up from the small wound. “Does it still hurt?”
I flex my fingers, and a shooting pain radiates from my wrist up my forearm. I wince. “I think I twisted something when I fell,” I admit.
He glances over at Doggy, who has fallen asleep on my feet. “Your dog is as crazy as you are,” he says, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.
I shake my head, a real smile touching my lips for the first time all day. “He is quite well.”
“Is that why he was rescued from a well?” he asks, his tone deadpan.
The image that flashes through my mind—Doggy, a tiny, whimpering ball of fluff at the bottom of a dark, scary hole, and Willa’s determined, smudged face as she helped me haul him out—is suddenly, ridiculously funny.
The tension of the last week, the pain in my wrist, the sheer absurdity of my situation—it all bubbles up and spills out.
I start to laugh. It’s not a polite little giggle; it’s a deep, belly-shaking laugh that brings tears to my eyes.
He laughs with me, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrates through the floorboards and up my spine.
The laugh lines around his eyes crinkle, and his whole face transforms. The hard, guarded man is gone, replaced by the boy I remember, the one with the easy smile and the mischievous glint in his eye. God, he is so handsome now.
“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” he asks when my laughter finally subsides into hiccups.
“Probably,” I laugh, wiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks.
He smiles, but it fades quickly, replaced by a look of genuine concern. “We should go to the hospital. You could be checked out. Make sure nothing’s broken.”
I shake my head, the familiar walls of defense shooting back up. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” he presses, his eyes searching mine.
I look at him, at his brown eyes that are so full of concern it hurts to look at. And I do what I always do when I’m scared. I push. “Please don’t act like you care.”
I watch him swallow, the muscles in his throat working. The warmth in his eyes extinguishes, replaced by the familiar, guarded look I’ve come to expect. He doesn’t say anything, just presses the ice pack to my wrist.
And I want to take it back. The words hang in the air between us, a toxic cloud. He has hated me for whatever reason for so long... but he didn’t hate me for a couple of minutes there. He was kind. He was gentle. And I stupidly, stupidly reminded him why he should hate me. Shit.
The ice is a shock against my swollen skin, a biting cold that makes me gasp. He shifts the pack, pressing it to a different spot. I wince.
“Pain?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Cold.”
“Okay,” he says. He uses his thumb to rub small, slow circles just above the ice pack, on the sensitive skin of my inner wrist. And it feels good. It feels really, really good.
It shouldn’t feel good. It’s just a thumb. It’s just Boone. But it does. The warmth of his hand contrasts with the cold of the ice, and the sensation sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with the temperature.
Suddenly, I’m that teenager again, head over heels in love with the brooding ranch hand. Suddenly, I’m eighteen years old, standing in the rain, wishing he would kiss me. His eyes study mine, his gaze so intense it feels like a physical touch. I need to look away. I should look away.
We’re interrupted by the sound of a truck pulling up outside, a loud, clunky engine that doesn’t sound like Knox’s or Rhett’s.
“That’s Jasper,” Boone says, pulling his hand back as if he’s been burned.
“Who?” I ask, my mind still reeling.
“Happy Feet,” he explains. “The farrier. He’s here to check the horses.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
He stands up. “Can you move your hand for me? I need to make sure you didn’t break something.”
I slowly flex my fingers, wincing at the dull throb of pain.
He reaches out, his thumb gently swiping at the small droplet of blood still welling up from the splinter wound. “I’ll check on your arm after he’s gone,” he says. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
And then he does something that makes my entire world stop. He brings the thumb, the one with the tiny smear of my blood on it, to his lips. He presses a soft, lingering kiss to the pad of his own thumb.
We both freeze.
The air crackles with a tension so thick I can barely breathe. His eyes, wide and shocked, are locked on mine. I can see the panic dawning in them, the same panic I feel flooding my own system.
Before I can even process what’s happened, he pulls away and practically runs from the room, the screen door slamming shut behind him.
Doggy jumps up onto my lap, his warm body a comforting weight. I wrap my good arm around him, burying my face in his soft fur, my heart racing frantically and painfully against my ribs.
“I think we should call you Wellsy,” I say. My fingers are trembling as I stroke his soft fur.
It’s a distraction from the man who just saved me.