Chapter Sixteen
~ Jojo ~
Three weeks is long enough for chicks to go from peeping yellow fluffballs to awkward, greasy-feathered velociraptors. It’s also, apparently, long enough for a pair of goats to turn a ranch from a fortified bunker into a petting zoo with delusions of grandeur.
I woke to the gentle, insistent baaa of the morning shift, the window cracked so the sound of the barn drifted into the bedroom before my alarm even buzzed.
Sunlight already painted a line across Rawley’s chest, picking out the ridge of every muscle as he slept face-down beside me, one arm thrown across my waist and the other crooked under the pillow like a gunfighter who’d dozed off on sentry.
I watched him breathe—counted, maybe, three dozen in-and-outs—before I slid his hand off and extricated myself.
He barely stirred, but the moment my bare feet hit the floor, I heard it: the double thump of goat hooves on the porch, followed by a wet snuffling as they checked the screen door for structural weaknesses.
The next hour played out like an instructional video for the recently-paroled. I shuffled to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and took a moment to just... exist.
The house didn’t smell like bleach and blood anymore, which was a small miracle considering the last three weeks of frantic home repair and even more frantic attempts at “normal.”
This morning, the air tasted like sourdough and fresh basil and the musk of the two dumbass goats Rawley had let me name. Their names, as of week two, were Panic and Disorder.
In my defense, I thought I’d be the only one calling them.
I shrugged on Rawley’s old Carhartt jacket—easily six sizes too big, sleeves covering my hands—and stepped outside. The goats were waiting on the porch, heads cocked in perfect synchronization.
Panic, the bigger one, looked at me with an intensity that bordered on romantic obsession. Disorder rammed his nose into my thigh, rooting for snacks I hadn’t even pocketed yet.
“Wait your turn,” I said, because talking to them worked about as well as talking to the actual adults in this house.
I skirted the porch and made for the chicken coop, which was a new addition and a minor architectural marvel. Macon and Rawley had poured the foundation in a single morning, then spent three nights arguing over ventilation and predator mesh.
Jojo’s Coop—Burke had insisted on the branding—stood fortress-like at the edge of the garden, complete with a little wooden cutout of a rooster over the door.
Inside, the Barred Rock chicks chirped like a malfunctioning car alarm, huddled in their safe, sun-warmed domain. I topped off the feed and water, checked the heat lamp, and—just for a second—let myself watch them, wild and fast and feathering into real birds with every day.
I envied their simple life: eat, run, peep, repeat. No existential threat, no plot to take over the world, just the daily joy of not being eaten.
The goats circled the coop, Panic pushing open the door with his head before I could block him. I caught him by the horns and redirected, but not before he managed to knock over the watering can and start lapping at the spill.
I knelt to mop it up with my sleeve, cursing under my breath, when a voice cut in from behind: “You need a hand, sunshine?”
Burke, in all his denim glory, stood at the garden gate, holding a mug the size of his head. He looked the way a cartoonist would draw a rancher if the assignment was “make it gay, but don’t let the censors notice.”
I sometimes wondered if he slept in those shirts or if he kept a hidden cache somewhere and changed them just to fuck with me.
I waved him off. “I’m fine. The animals just have a sixth sense for humiliating me.”
He sipped the coffee, then leaned on the gate, smirking. “You’re doing better than last week. They haven’t eaten any wiring since Tuesday.”
“Small victories,” I muttered. I reset the watering can, then did a quick headcount of the chicks—still ten, though Biscuit looked like he was plotting something.
I closed the coop, latched it, and backed away, only to trip over Disorder, who’d materialized behind me like a poorly trained ghost.
Burke barked a laugh and opened the gate, motioning me into the garden. “Come see this,” he said, and I followed, curious.
The garden—my garden, if I could be selfish—was a riot of early summer. Rows of lettuce and radishes and some experimental spinach, all thriving thanks to the compost I’d brewed up in secret.
Sunflowers, already knee-high, bordered the plot like a living fence. It was still rough, the edges wild, but you could see the bones of something lasting.
Burke pointed at a cluster of red, right at the base of a tomato cage. “Saw your first one.”
I bent down, careful not to step on any new shoots. There it was—a perfect, round tomato, skin so thin the sun made it glow. I plucked it, feeling its weight, and for a second the stupidest pride filled my whole chest.
“You ever notice,” Burke said, “how everything you touch turns out okay?”
I shook my head, but the compliment stuck anyway.
We harvested together—lettuce, a handful of radishes, a sprig of basil—then I washed my hands at the hose and left Burke to argue with the scarecrow.
He’d started naming them, too; this one was apparently Sergeant Feathers.
Back at the house, I found Macon on the roof, a tool belt slung low, his body bracketed against the peak as he fussed with the new weather station. Rawley’s idea: keep ahead of storms, track wind and rainfall, maybe even automate the irrigation someday.
I watched Macon work, hands sure and economical, every movement so precise it made you forget the man was basically a tank with opinions.
He saw me watching and gave a two-finger wave. “Mail came,” he called. “It’s on the porch.”
I nodded, then checked the front steps. Among the junk mail and feed catalogs was my notebook, which had somehow migrated outside. The goats again. There were bite marks on the cover and a smear of what I hoped was peanut butter across the first page, but the contents were safe.
I took it inside, set it on the kitchen table, and opened to the latest entry.
Rotational grazing plans for spring. A page of notes on the horse’s dietary needs during the wet season.
Three different sketches of a future orchard, each more ambitious than the last. It was silly, but writing it down made it seem possible, like the plans would reach into the soil and coax the future into being.
The barn, freshly painted and blazing red even through the kitchen window, anchored everything. I’d watched them do it—Macon and Burke and Rawley, stripped to their waists and arguing over brush technique, then laughing at how much paint they managed to get on each other instead of the siding.
It looked new, proud, like a warning flag to anyone driving the main road: This place is alive. And, probably, guarded by psychos.
I made breakfast—three eggs over easy, the last of the sourdough, a tomato sliced and salted till it bled juice on the plate. I sat at the table, eating slowly, the notebook propped open and a pen ready for the day’s additions.
The window above the sink looked out on the barn, the garden, the world I was starting to believe I belonged to. And, across it all, the subtle shimmer of security cameras, the motion sensors, the new perimeter lights that made the ranch glow at night like a firefly caught in glass.
I should have felt trapped, or at least wary. But the truth was, I felt safer here—strange men with guns and all—than I’d ever felt anywhere. It didn’t make sense.
Maybe it didn’t have to.
I heard Rawley before I saw him, the floorboards announcing his weight as he lumbered toward the kitchen. He was shirtless, his chest and arms dappled with faint, angry scars, and he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world worth waking up for.
“Morning,” he rumbled, voice still half in the dream.
I smiled, feeling stupidly shy. “You missed breakfast. I left you some.”
He made a noise of pleasure, then came around the table, wrapped an arm around my waist, and kissed the crown of my head. His other hand landed, gentle and careful, over the small but persistent curve of my belly.
I’d started to show, just a little. Not enough for strangers to notice, but enough that every time he touched me there, it felt like the world paused to acknowledge it.
He poured himself coffee, drank half in a single swallow, then eyed my notebook. “Plans for today?”
“Same as always,” I said. “Keep everyone alive.”
He grinned, then set down the mug and picked up a pencil, spinning it between his fingers. “You wanna walk the property with me later? I want to see how the new fence is holding up.”
I nodded, liking the idea more than I wanted to admit.
He squeezed my hip, then turned to the stove, started frying up whatever breakfast scraps I’d left for him. I watched him, big and unbreakable, and let myself believe—just for a second—that things could be easy, that I’d earned this.
Out the window, the goats squared off for a head-butting match near the garden fence. The chicks flared into a full chorus. And, on the porch, Burke leaned against the rail, hat tipped low, grinning like he’d seen it all before and couldn’t wait for the next round.
I closed the notebook and set it aside. The day was just beginning, and for once, it was enough.
* * * *
The nursery was smaller than I’d imagined, not much more than a glorified closet, but it was the first room in the house I truly wanted to live in.
Rawley had spent the better part of a week turning the space into something soft enough for a baby—a feat I’d once thought impossible for a man whose only approach to “soft” was the inside of a shotgun shell.
He’d cut a doorway between the bedroom and the nursery himself, declining every offer of help from Macon. I’d overheard their argument one night—Macon quietly offering to handle the framing, Rawley insisting, “If I can’t build a door for my own kid, what good am I?”