Chapter Twelve #3
He yanks me again and we run—if you can call it that when I’m dragging my weight and slowing him down on purpose.
He curses the whole way; high, frantic, unraveling.
The lightning rips the sky open making my heart beat so fast it hurts.
Preston digs his nails into my arm and pulls harder, storm swallowing his voice and the ranch and everything familiar, but I don’t stop fighting.
Because Trace is coming. He will come for me.
He will find me. And God help the man who put his hands on me when Trace finds him.
We are almost to the access road and I know it’s now or never if Preston gets me off the ranch I may not be found alive.
I rip my arm from him pull back and punch him dead in the mouth he stumbles back dropping the gun and then punching me back so hard I fall to the ground.
“Fuck, that hurt,” I think as I notice the gun right next to me.
I grab it aim and fire. I hear another shot and watch my bullet hit him in his chest and another takes half of his head off, his body drops instantly.
The tears threaten to clog my throat when I see Trace coming over the ridge on Ranger.
I stand just as he reaches me, hopping off Ranger and pulls me in his arms. “I thought I lost you,” he breaths in my hair.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” I tell him.
“Well this storm might get rid of all of us if we don’t get back to the house.”
“I don’t think Ranger can carry us both in this storm.”
“Then you take him, I’ll get home.”
Before I can argue, a frantic whinny cuts through the wind. Coop comes barreling down the ridge through rain and thunder like the devil himself is chasing him.
I hitch in a breath. “Problem solved.”
The second he reaches me, I swing onto his back. Trace gets on Ranger and we push both horses as fast as the storm will allow. The wind is a war drum at our backs, rain hitting so hard it feels like pellets. There is no time to talk, no time to think, just the drive to get home alive.
We hit the ranch grounds soaked, freezing, and running on adrenaline.
We shove Coop and Ranger into their stalls, bolt the latches, drop feed and water, pat their necks fast, and sprint back into the storm.
The sky cracks open behind us and Trace grabs my wrist and pulls me into the house, slams the door, locks it, then pulls me against him like he needs confirmation I’m really here and breathing.
I barely have time to exhale before he pulls out his phone and calls Cash.
“She’s safe,” Trace says immediately. “Yeah. Home and safe. We’re in for the night.”
I hear Cash yelling relief through the speaker.
He hangs up and calls Romeo.
“She’s home. I’ve got her.”
When he hangs up, his eyes come back to me like gravity.
He touches my cheek, gentle, hesitant like I might vanish. “What did he do? What happened?”
“I’m okay,” I say automatically.
He shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Not with me.”
The dam breaks and I tell him everything, the gun, the accusations, the screaming, how Preston dragged me out of my house, how I dropped my earrings because I knew he would look for something, how I slowed Preston down on purpose, how I never once doubted he would come for me.
Trace listens like every detail is a brick he is stacking inside himself, building something terrifying and calculated.
When I finish, he pulls me into him, burying his face in my shoulder. “He’s not touching you or anyone else again.”
“I know,” I whisper.
We take hot showers, first me, then him, I put on pajamas he puts on sweats.
We crawl into bed without talking as he wraps around me from behind, one arm under my pillow, one arm over my waist, holding me like an anchor.
His face presses into the back of my neck and his breathing slowly matches mine.
Minutes pass maybe hours, the time feels stretchy.
Then he shifts behind me and says, quietly, voice rough from everything tonight put him through:
“I almost lost you.”
My throat closes. “But you didn’t.”
“I know.” He swallows hard. “But I thought about it, and I thought about how I’d live if you didn’t make it home tonight, and I couldn’t find an answer that didn’t kill me.”
I turn around slowly. He’s propped up on his elbow, looking at me like I’m the only real thing in the world.
“I should do this better,” he says. “I should have a ring. I should take you somewhere nice. I should ask you with a plan and a speech and everything you deserve. But tonight…” His voice breaks just a little. “I can’t wait. Not after this. Not after thinking I’d never see you again.”
My breath is gone.
He cups my cheek with one hand and says, steady and certain:
“Delta Whitmore… marry me. Be my wife. Come with me into whatever life we get. I’ll spend every day earning you. I’ll love you the way you should’ve been loved the first time and every time after.”
There isn’t a single romantic flourish and I don’t need one, it’s perfect.
“Yes,” I whisper, and the word is a release, a vow, a promise. “Trace, yes.”
He exhales like oxygen just came back into his body, pulls me in, kisses me once slow and reverent like he’s sealing the answer into his soul. Then he holds me against his chest and we lie there in the dark, storm fading, adrenaline finally easing. I said yes.