31. Rhett
Rhett
Iwalk out of the kitchen, scratching the back of my neck. I’m wearing jeans, but I haven’t bothered with a shirt. The air in the house is carrying the scent of sex, sweat, and the sweet, musky smell of Saramaria’s heat.
It’s a scent I have become addicted to over the last seventy-two hours. It lingers on my skin, in my clothes, in the very walls.
The living room looks like a disaster zone. Pillows are scattered. Lamps are knocked over. It looks like a bomb went off in a linen factory.
Boone is sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands. Knox is leaning against the fireplace, staring into the cold, empty grate. We’re all wearing sweatpants. We’re all wrecked.
“Your phone,” I say to Boone.
His phone is vibrating on the coffee table, buzzing against the wood.
He groans. He picks it up, squinting at the screen. “It’s Dot.” He swipes to answer. “Hello?”
I watch his face as he listens. His expression shifts from exhaustion to surprise.
“Okay. Okay. Yeah. We’re all here. We’re... we’re alive.” He listens for a few more minutes, nodding. “Okay. We’ll come out.”
He hangs up. He looks at us.
“The Matriarchs,” he says. “They’re on the porch. They dropped off food. They said Saramaria was asleep and they didn’t want to wake her.”
“Food?” Knox asks, his stomach audibly growling. “I’m starving.”
“Coolers,” Boone says. “Hattie brought chili. Pearl brought leftovers from the hoedown. They left them on the porch.”
We stand up. We move like zombies, stiff and sore, toward the front door. We haven’t been outside in four days. We haven’t seen the sun.
Boone opens the door.
The air outside is crisp, cool. The rain has finally stopped. The sky is a brilliant, painful blue.
There are three large coolers sitting on the porch.
Saramaria is curled up on the swinging bench. She’s wearing one of Boone’s flannel shirts, the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. She’s staring at the coolers.
She looks up when we step out. Her eyes are red-rimmed. Her face is pale, vulnerable in a way that makes my chest tighten.
“Hey,” she says softly.
We move toward her. We surround her. It’s instinct now. We form a protective circle.
“They brought food,” Knox says, reaching for the nearest cooler. He pops the lid. Inside, containers of chili, cornbread, fried chicken, and Hattie’s cinnamon rolls.
“And cookies,” I say, pointing to a smaller box. “Pearl’s famous oatmeal raisin.”
Saramaria looks at the food. Then she looks at the porch. At the mud on the floorboards. At the leaves stuck to the screens.
And she bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps, burying her face in her hands. “I’m just... I’m so sorry.”
Knox freezes, a container of chicken in his hand. “For what?”
“For everything,” she says. “For this mess. For... for the last four days. For taking over your house. For... for needing you like that. I feel so disordered. My brain feels... broken. I feel like I’ve lost control of everything.”
She looks down at herself, at the oversized shirt, at her bare feet. “I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling... dysphoric. Like I’m disconnected from reality. Like nothing makes sense.”
I sit down on the step beside her. Boone leans against the post. Knox sets the food down and crouches in front of her.
“What do you mean?” I ask gently.
“I have OCD,” she says, wiping her eyes.
“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I’ve managed it for years.
With rules. With lists. With control.” She takes a shaky breath.
“I took medication for a long time, and it helped quiet the noise in my head. I used it for a while, but when I started studying for the bar exam, I stopped taking it. I didn’t want the drowsiness.
I needed to be sharp. And I was fine. I was balanced.
The law gave me structure. It gave me order. ”
She looks around the porch. “But this... the ranch. The sabotage. The heat. It’s broken all my systems. I can’t organize it.
I can’t control it. And it’s making me feel like I’m losing my mind.
I feel like I’m failing. I feel like I’m failing everything.
” She looks at Knox. “I’m a lawyer. I’m supposed to be good at managing. But here? I’m drowning.”
I look at Knox. He meets my gaze. We discussed this while she was sleeping last night. We agreed that if she was spiraling, we needed to intervene.
“You’re not failing,” I say. “You’re surviving. There’s a difference. You went through a major biological event, Saramaria. Your body is recovering. Your brain is trying to catch up. It’s normal to feel out of sorts.”
“But I hate feeling out of sorts,” she snaps. “I hate feeling weak. I hate needing... help.”
“It’s not weak to need help,” Knox says. He takes her hand. “You’ve been carrying everything on your back for weeks. It’s okay to let us carry you for a while.”
“We can manage the ranch,” I say. “We can handle the fences. You don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to be the lawyer, the boss, the cleanup crew. You can just... be.”
“I don’t know how to just be,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to stop doing.”
“Then maybe you should talk to someone,” Boone says. “A professional. Someone who can help you make sense of it.”
She looks up at him. Her eyes are wide. “You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you’re exhausted and overwhelmed,” Boone corrects. “And I think you’ve been through a lot of trauma. The stuff with your grandfather. The ex. The sabotage. It’s a lot for one person to process alone.”
“I don’t want to go to a shrink,” she says. “I don’t want them to tell me I’m in denial about my childhood.”
“Then tell them that,” Knox says. “Tell them you don’t want to be analyzed. Tell them you want tools. Coping mechanisms. Strategies. Just like you use for legal cases.”
She looks at us. She looks at the food. At the house. At the three of us.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” She picks up a cinnamon roll and takes a bite. “This is good.”
“Hattie’s secret recipe,” I say.
We sit on the porch for a while, eating. The sun feels good on my face. It feels like we have returned to the land of the living.
“I’ve been thinking about your job,” Knox says suddenly. He’s leaning back on his hands, looking up at the sky. “The law. You’re a partner at Hartman & Ellis. That’s a big deal.”
“It is,” she says.
“So, what happens to that if you stay here?” he asks. “You can’t commute to Denver every day. And you can’t run a ranch from a high-rise.”
She chews slowly. “I know,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about that too. I can take a leave of absence. Indefinitely. If I want to stay here... I’ll figure it out. I can do contract work remotely. I can do consulting.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask. “To stay here? Really?”
She looks at the house. Then she looks at the meadow beyond the fence line. She looks at the horses in the pasture.
“I think,” she says slowly. “I think I wanted to leave because I thought I had no choice. But I do have a choice. I can sell. Or I can stay. And the longer I stay, the less selling makes sense. This is my home. It’s a mess, but it’s mine.”
“Then stay,” Boone says. “We’ll help you fix the mess. We’ll make it work.”
She looks down at her hands. She picks at a piece of cinnamon roll crust.
“But what about you guys?” she asks. “What about Knox’s circuit? What about... us?”
“The circuit is back,” Knox says. “But I’m not going back to the APbrA. Not yet. I’m staying here. At least until the end of the season. I have time to figure it out.”
“And we’re staying,” I say. “We’re not going anywhere.”
She nods. “Okay.”
The relief is palpable. It settles over the porch like a blanket.
Then the front door opens, a harsh creak that breaks the mood.
We all turn.
It’s West Montgomery. He’s standing on the porch, looking grim. He holds a clipboard in one hand. Behind him, a black sedan is parked in the driveway.
My stomach drops. The feeling of peace evaporates.
“West,” I say, standing up. “What are you doing here?”
“Just doing my job, Rhett,” West says. He steps onto the porch, his boots loud on the wood. He looks at Saramaria, then at us. “And I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
My chest tightens. “What is it?”
“The county inspector,” West says. “He called me this morning. He’s not happy. He was supposed to be here two days ago to check the repairs on the barn and the electrical grid.”
Shit!
“I forgot,” Saramaria breathes. “Oh god. I forgot the inspection. First it was the hoedown, and then we were getting the repairs done before the heat… Fuck! How could I forget about the inspection?”
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I talked to West and told him to stall the inspector.”
“That’s what I was coming by to tell you,” West says. “I tried to stall him. I told him we were dealing with a family emergency. But this inspection was way overdue. I’m sorry, but I did all that I could.”
“When? When is he coming?” Boone asks.
“Tomorrow,” West says.
I look around.
The yard is a mud pit. The fences are still broken in places—the ones we didn’t get to before the heat hit. The roof of the barn is half-covered in tarps. The siding is piled up near the house, waiting to be replaced.
The gazebo is tilted. The garden is trampled.
And the house... the house is a mess. The windows are dirty. The paint is peeling. And even though we cleaned up the obvious signs of our... marathon, the house still feels chaotic.
“He’s going to see a disaster,” I say. “He’s going to see a property that’s falling apart.”
“And if he sees that,” West says, “he will condemn it. He’ll slap a red tag on the barn and a notice on the house. You’ll have thirty days to bring it up to code or he brings in the bulldozers.”
Saramaria’s face goes white. “Thirty days? I can’t fix all this in thirty days.”
“Then he sells it,” West says gently.
Saramaria stands up. She looks at the food. At the house. At us.
“No,” she says. Her voice shakes, but it gains strength with every word. “No. He is not going to condemn my house. He’s not going to sell my home.”
“How are we going to stop him?” Knox asks. “We haven’t fixed the roof. We haven’t fixed the fence. We’ve been... busy.”
“We work,” Boone says. He looks at Saramaria. “We’ve been taking care of you for four days. Now, we take care of the ranch.”
“We prioritize,” she says. “We don’t try to fix everything. We fix the things he will see first. The barn. The electrical box. The exterior. We clean up. We make it look like we’re in control.”
“It’s a mask,” Knox says.
“It’s a strategy,” she counters. “I’ve built a career on masks, Knox. We can do this. We just have to be smart.”
I look at the men. I look at the woman who was in tears just minutes ago. She looks terrified, but she also looks fierce.
She’s right. We don’t have a choice. We fight.
“Okay,” I say. “What’s the plan?”
“We split up,” Saramaria says. “Rhett, you take the electrical box. Make sure it looks new. Knox, you take the barn. Tarps off. Tools away. Make it look structurally sound. Boone, you take the yard. Move the lumber. Hide the trash. Make it look like a functioning work site, not a junkyard.”
“If we work on this all night, I think we can get it done,” I say.
I thank West for the heads up and then sprint to the back of the house. I have an electrical box to fix.
We have a home to save.
Our home.
And this time, we’re working together as a team. A pack.