Chapter 10BOONE #5
Maybe if she looked at me for one more second, I’d let it all out. Every word I’ve kept locked behind my teeth and my heart since the day I left.
So I just stand there.
Frozen.
Heart pounding .
Jaw clenched so tight it aches.
And I think—God, I think—of all the things I should’ve said.
I never stopped choosing you. Not once. Not even when I walked away. Especially not then.
I never stopped loving you. Not in the quiet. Not in the lies I fed myself just to survive. Not in the nights I spent trying to forget you.
You’ve ruined everyone else for me. No one laughs like you. No one listens like you.
I think about you. Still. In stupid ways. In constant ones. When I hear a song I know you’d hate. When I order coffee and pause—because yours came first for so long, my body still moves that way.
You live in the unfinished parts of me.
In the memory of your hands. Your voice. Your steadiness. No one has ever felt like you. Not before. Not after.
And if you asked—if you so much as looked at me now and said stay—I would.
I would drop everything and build a world around you, one heartbeat at a time.
Because I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
But she’s already gone.
**********
The sunrise spills over the horizon, a slow burn of orange and pink bleeding into the pale blue of morning. The air is still crisp, the kind that wakes a man up better than coffee, but I’ve got a thermos of that too, steaming beside me on the arm of my chair.
Old Faithful is behind me, weathered and beaten by years of Montana seasons, a stubborn old bastard. There’s something about it that reminds me of myself—splintered in places, patched together, still standing despite everything .
I tug my leather journal from my coat pocket, flipping to a fresh page, the worn spine creaking in protest. The ink bleeds onto the paper as I start to write.
Jack,
It’s been a while since I wrote, but you know how that goes. I keep thinking about what you’d say if you were here, what kind of shit you’d give me for the mess I’ve made.
She was always it for me. You knew that too, I think. Being back home has only made me realize that more and more.
I keep thinking about this one night when we were seventeen.
Late July, the heat thick in the air. We were lying on the flatbed of my truck, parked out past the south pasture, the sky stretching wide and endless above us.
Lark had her arms crossed behind her head, her long blonde hair fanned out over the blanket we stole from my mom’s porch.
She smelled like wildflowers and summer.
We weren’t supposed to be out that late. She had a curfew, and I had work at sunrise, but neither of us cared. The stars were too bright, the world too quiet, and neither of us were ready to go home.
“If you could be anywhere in the world right now,” she said, voice soft, “where would you be?”
I remember turning my head toward her, watching the way her eyes reflected the moonlight. “Right here.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled, nudging my arm with hers. “Be serious.”
“I am.” I shrugged, shifting onto my side, propping my head up on my hand. “What about you?”
She exhaled, like she had a thousand answers but didn’t know which one to pick. “I don’t know. Somewhere different.” She turned her head, looking at me like she was seeing something she hadn’t before. “But I think it wouldn’t matter as much if you were there too.”
I should’ve told her then that I felt the same way. That wherever I ended up, I wanted her there with me. But I didn’t. Instead, I kissed her and reached for her hand, laced my fingers through hers, and let myself believe—for one night—that maybe we’d never have to leave at all .
I exhale hard, raking a hand through my hair.
The sound of a truck crunching over gravel pulls my attention, and I close the journal.
Wren’s behind the wheel of her beat-up Chevy, pulling in ahead of the other ranch hands I called this morning.
She waves as she hops out, already dressed for the day in jeans and an old, ratty Johnny Cash T-shirt.
Her hair is braided back, her boots kicking up dust as she makes her way over.
“Sage and Ridge still tied up?” I ask as she reaches me, dragging a second chair over and plopping down.
She nods, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Sage is working the cattle fence on the south end. Some of the calves slipped through last night, and she’s got her hands full wrangling them back.”
I shake my head. “Figures.”
“Ridge is helping with the new hay shipment,” she adds, grabbing my thermos and taking a sip. She scrunches her nose and hands it back. “Said he’d be knee-deep in it for most of the morning.”
I glance back at Old Faithful, rolling my shoulders, feeling the weight of the work ahead. “Guess it’s just us for a while then.”
“You worried I can’t keep up, big brother?”
A chuckle rumbles in my chest. “Just don’t want you crying when I actually put you to work.”
She snorts. “You wish.”
Wren eyes me for a second, tipping her chair back onto two legs, arms crossed over her chest. “You look like a sack of shit. What happened?”
A laugh punches out of me before I can stop it, low and rough in my throat. “Jesus, Wren. You ever think about sugarcoating things sometimes? Maybe having some human decency?”
She shrugs. “Tried it once. Didn’t love it.”
I shake my head, still grinning, but she doesn’t let it drop. Her expression shifts just slightly, something quieter settling in her gaze.
“Something’s bothering you,” she says, nodding toward my journal. “And when’d you start writing? Is that a diary?”
Damn her and her creepy intuition.
I flip the cover closed with one hand, slipping it back into my coat pocket, heat crawling up my neck. “It’s a journal . And it’s none of your damn business.”
Her lips twitch, like she’s debating whether to push or let it go. For now, she leans back in her chair again, letting the silence stretch between us.
Nobody in my family knows about Jack.
They don’t know how funny he was, how he could make a room full of exhausted men laugh like hell even when we were running on fumes. Not about how he always had my back, always knew the right thing to say when the weight of it all got too fucking heavy.
They don’t know how he used to steal extra MREs for me when I forgot to eat, how he’d sit next to me in the quiet moments, passing a flask between us under the desert sky, talking about nothing and everything.
They don’t know about the way Jack used to lean back against the barracks wall, arms crossed over his broad chest, shaking his head as I went on about the ranch—about the way the sky stretched wide and endless over the pastures, about the scent of fresh-cut hay after a storm.
And it’s not that I didn’t want to tell them. I just didn’t know how. Not without feeling the loss of him down to my core.
Not without mentioning how I was the one who got him killed.
Not without admitting that I spend every single day carrying the guilt of it, wondering if I’ll ever be able to set it down.
A boot nudges against my shin, jolting me from my thoughts.
Wren doesn’t say anything at first, just watches me with sharp blue eyes. Then she tips her head, like she’s trying to get a better read on me. “You still haven’t told me why you look like a sack of shit.”
I rub a hand down my face before dragging it through my hair.
Wren smirks. “Let me guess—Lark. Trouble in paradise, huh?”
I snort, shaking my head. “Something like that.”
She leans back in her chair, kicking one leg over the other. “What happened?”
For a second, I debate brushing it off, making some excuse, keeping it all locked up where it’s safer. But this is Wren. She’s been up in my business since she was a kid, following me around the ranch, asking too many damn questions, never letting me off easy.
I stare at Old Faithful for a long moment, the wood dark and rotted in places, the whole structure leaning just slightly.
“She just…she doesn’t trust me,” I say finally.
Wren doesn’t react right away. Just tilts her head, waiting.
I shrug, kicking at a rock with the toe of my boot. “Maybe she shouldn’t.”
Her brows pull together. “Why not?”
“Because I left her, Wren.” The words come out flat, heavy, like they’ve been sitting in my chest for too damn long.
“I could’ve stayed. Could’ve built a life here, with her, like I always told her I would.
But I didn’t.” I shake my head. “I wanted to go. I wanted to see what else was out there, away from all of this. And I left her behind to do it.”
Wren considers that, chewing the inside of her cheek.
I let out a bitter laugh, shaking my head. “She said she can’t be with someone who might leave her again. And she’s right. What proof does she have that I won’t?”
She leans forward, resting her arms on her thighs.
“Boone, you left when you were eighteen. Everybody’s an idiot at eighteen, for starters.
And you didn’t leave because you didn’t love her.
You needed to know what else there was. You needed to get away from this place for a bit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. ”
I stare at my hands, flexing them against my knees. “That doesn’t change the fact that I still walked away from her.”
“No, but it also doesn’t mean you’ll do it again.”
Wren watches me for a second, like she’s waiting for me to argue. I don’t.
She sighs. “Look, I get why she’s scared. But you’re not eighteen anymore, Boone. You may still be an idiot, just not an eighteen-year-old one.”
I try not to laugh, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter. I still left.”
“Yeah. And if you had stayed, would you have been happy?”
I press my palms together, staring at the ground.
She nods like she already knows the answer. “Exactly. You would’ve been restless. Resentful. And you probably would’ve ended up leaving her later, but for worse reasons.”
My jaw tightens. “Doesn’t make it any easier for her to forget.”
“She’s not wanting you to undo what you’ve already done.” She lifts a brow. “She needs to see if she can count on you right now.”
I drag a hand through my hair again, my head too full, too damn heavy.
She nudges my boot again. “You still want her, right?”
“More than anything.”
“Then prove it.”
I glance at her. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not.” She shrugs. “But it is possible.”
I rub at my jaw, my voice quieter when I finally speak. “And what if it’s still not enough?”
“Then that’s on her. But if you don’t even try, that’s on you.” She leans back, crossing her arms. “You can’t control whether or not she forgives you. You can’t force her to trust you. But you sure as hell can prove that you’re not the same guy who left her.”
I nod, nudging her elbow with mine. “When did you get so damn smart?”
She exhales, slow and steady, like she’s got all the time in the world. “Someone had to have the brains in this family. Guess it all fell to me.”
I shake my head, smirking as she turns toward Old Faithful.
“You got the blueprints?” she asks.
I reach for the pages lying next to my chair and hand them over. “Yeah. Been messing with them for weeks. Kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking about them. Adding shit, changing things.”
Wren unrolls the blueprints with practiced ease, her fingers smoothing the edges as her eyes flick between the paper and the house. She tilts her head, scanning every inch with that sharp, detail-oriented gaze she’s always had—the one that catches things most people overlook.
She doesn’t know how many hours I’ve poured into these plans. How many nights I’ve spent tracing and retracing these lines, measuring, adjusting, making sure every element aligns perfectly.
The kitchen—Lark’s kitchen—is set for a complete overhaul. New cabinets, a larger island. A bay window in the dining room, offering the view she deserves. The master bath? A clawfoot tub, heated floors—the works. Not out of necessity, but because I want her to have the best.
Then there’s the porch. I’m rebuilding it from the ground up. A wide wraparound, perfect for morning coffees and sunset watching. A place to unwind.
A place to stay.
Wren lets out a low whistle. “Fuck, Boone. This is gonna be a project. Are you sure about this?”
She’s not asking if I can do it. She’s asking if I know exactly what I’m taking on.
I push up from my chair, stretching out my shoulders. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
She looks at me for a second, brows raised, waiting for more.
I nod toward the blueprints. “I need to show Lark I’m staying, right? This is one way I can do that.”
Wren studies me for a beat before folding the papers and tucking them under her arm. Then she glances back at the house, lets out a slow breath, and shakes her head.
“Well,” she says, stretching her arms before clapping her hands together, “Guess we oughta make hay while the sun shines.”