Chapter 2
Two
JASON
A few years later…
Nobody should ever have to bury a parent—much less both of them within seven years.
The rain came down in a steady, merciless rhythm, soaking into the earth and dampening the scent of fresh-turned soil. It dripped from the brim of Jason Baird’s hat, slid down the back of his collar, and clung to his skin like a weight he couldn’t shake. He barely noticed it. All he could do was stare at the open grave, at the coffin that held the last remaining link to his childhood, his family, his very foundation.
A knot so tight it felt like it might choke him sat heavy in his chest, and his fingers curled into fists at his sides. He couldn't breathe past it. He couldn't think past it.
Mom’s death had been a shock. Breast cancer had stolen her away too soon, and he’d thought nothing could hurt more than that. But he’d been wrong. Because there was no preparation for the moment he found his father collapsed on the floor—gone before Jason could even shake him awake.
A ragged breath shuddered out of him as he clenched his jaw and fought the instinct to drop to his knees. He couldn’t break. Not here. Not now.
He forced himself to look up, past the coffin, past the rain-soaked mourners, and into the faces of his siblings. Luke, the youngest, barely seventeen, stood rigid, gripping his umbrella so tight his knuckles had gone white. He was trying to hold it together, trying to be strong, but his watery eyes betrayed him.
Beside him, Becca wept openly, her twenty-year-old heart breaking in a way no young woman should ever have to endure. Jason smirked bitterly, the thought crossing his mind that, at this moment, no one should be denied a drink to numb the pain—not even a girl barely past the legal age.
Toni, always the toughest of them, stood with her lips pressed so tightly together she might as well have been biting back a scream. Her arms were folded, her fingers digging into her sleeves as if she could hold herself together by force alone.
And then there was Matthew.
Wild, reckless, untamed Matthew, who—for the first time in Jason’s memory—was completely still. The cocky, carefree light in his eyes was gone, replaced by a pale, stricken look that made Jason’s gut twist.
They had no idea.
No idea what was coming. No idea what Jason had to do to keep their world from crumbling even more than it already had. And he’d keep it that way. Because grief wasn’t the only thing weighing him down.
The moment they lowered his father into the ground, Jason had stopped being just a man who loved riding horses and working the land. In an instant, he had become a boss, a guardian, the only thing standing between his family and complete ruin. The first time he sat behind his father’s desk—his desk now—he’d had his first panic attack, his lungs refusing to work as he poured over the farm’s finances. The second time, he’d thrown up in the wastebasket after speaking to the bank.
A second mortgage.
Months behind on payments.
If he didn’t fix it, they’d lose everything.
He couldn’t lose their home, not after losing their parents.
So, he did the only thing he could—he started selling. His truck. His father’s old Chevelle, the one he used to sneak into the barn to sit in as a kid, pretending he was old enough to drive. Anything that could buy him time, buy them time. He even chose to bury his father here, on the land beside Mom, not because it was sentimental, but because he couldn’t afford a plot in Yonder Cemetery.
The ache in his chest burned hotter at the thought, but he shoved it down. There was no room for weakness now.
The funeral had become a blur of faces, indistinct and fleeting, hands gripping his, voices murmuring condolences that barely registered past the weight pressing down on his chest. People spoke of grief as something sharp, something that cut deep, but Jason found it was more like drowning—slow, suffocating, impossible to escape.
But one presence stood out amid the sea of well-wishers and mourners—Ruby Yonder, the town’s matriarch, a woman as sharp as she was kind. When she approached, people instinctively stepped aside, giving her room. Her eyes, still keen despite the years that had carved lines into her face, met his with something unshakable, something steady.
Yonder, Texas.
A town so small it barely warranted a mention on a map, just a nameless stretch of road between here and somewhere bigger. It wasn’t a place people passed through; you had to be going to Yonder to end up there. And that was exactly how Jason liked it.
It was home .
The kind of home where old pecan trees stretched their branches wide, offering shade to front porches lined with rocking chairs. Where Main Street boasted a handful of stubbornly independent shops, their owners keeping the square alive even as most folks drove out to Tyler for a chain restaurant or made the trek to Ember Creek for groceries at the aging I.G.A. Yonder wasn’t big enough to have its own police force or fire department—those came from Ember Creek in emergencies—but what it lacked in resources, it made up for in heart.
This land had shaped him. It was where he had been born, where he had run wild through fields of tall grass, his jeans stained with dirt, his boots scuffed from chasing dreams he hadn’t yet understood. The creek at the back of the property had been his refuge, its waters feeding into Ember Creek, the namesake of the neighboring town. He had spent endless summer afternoons there, skipping stones, cooling off, learning how to fish at his father’s side.
And now, it would flow near to where he buried him.
The thought settled in his chest like an anchor, pulling him further beneath the weight of everything he had lost.
Ruby’s hand came to rest on his arm, her touch cool against his skin. There was no hesitation in her grip, no fumbling for the right words. Just presence. Strength.
“You did a good thing,” she told him, her voice like a steady wind against the storm inside him. “You need anything, just say the word. Lots of people loved your mama and daddy. This is a tough time, but don’t you fret, Jason. You’re made of sterner stuff and will handle it all.”
Jason swallowed hard, his throat thick. He wanted to believe her. He let out a breath that felt like sandpaper in his throat. “I’m not so sure.”
Ruby gave him a knowing look, one that made him feel as if she could see every thought, every fear rattling inside him. “You’ll be okay. That’s why your daddy asked you to stay and learn the farm—because he knew you could manage it. He knew you wanted to leave, to see the world, but you were the only responsible one out of the five of you.”
Jason swallowed hard. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“But for now, it is.” Ruby tilted her head toward his siblings. “Do you think Toni or Becca could handle this? Do you think a boy like Luke could manage a farm? Do you think Matthew gives two figs about the Baird name or your legacy?” She shook her head. “No, Jason. It falls to you. That’s a burden, I won’t lie to you, but it’s also an honor. Your father knew you’d shoulder it.”
Jason let his gaze drop to the wet ground, his breath ragged, his heart hammering against his ribs. “How?” he whispered. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“One day at a time. One catastrophe at a time.” Ruby smiled faintly, though it was laced with pain. “Focus on what matters, whose britches are on fire first, and deal with it. Each day will pass, and there will be some new mess to fix. Trust me. Guess who gets to have the entire house rewired next week?”
A strangled laugh escaped his throat, jagged and broken. He shook his head, trying to push the joke aside, but the truth of it lodged itself in his chest, making it hard to breathe. How could he even think about something like wiring when everything else was falling apart? He didn’t have the mental space for that right now. He had to keep the ranch running, make sure there was food on the table, and somehow keep the family from falling apart.
But then, something shifted. Something subtle, something that tugged at his very soul.
It was a gaze.
His head snapped up, his heartbeat stuttering in his chest as he scanned the crowd. And there she was— Caitlin .
Matthew’s friend.
Standing like a figure carved out of stone, framed by the backdrop of the gravesite, her eyes locked on his with an intensity that made his breath catch. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach—the way she was looking at him.
Her expression was unreadable, but there was something about it that tugged at him. Was it concern? Or was it admiration? Was it something else entirely? He couldn’t tell, but it made something twist deep inside him.
She was in a military uniform, an unexpected contrast to the somber atmosphere of the gravesite. Her posture was straight and proud, and as much as he tried to deny it, her gaze made him feel like he was worthy. Like there was something about him worth seeing.
No , he thought, shaking his head, a bitter laugh escaping him. Not now. Not when he was holding on by a thread. Not when everything in his world was coming undone.
He tore his eyes away, focusing on Matthew, who stood beside her, blissfully unaware of the turmoil racing through Jason’s veins. Jason tried to bury the flicker of awareness, tried to shove it deep down where it wouldn’t come back to haunt him.
This wasn’t the time for this . For stolen glances. For whatever it was she thought she saw in him. He had more important things to worry about.
His family.
His legacy.
The weight of his father’s legacy that he was trying to keep from slipping through his fingers. He had to keep the farm together. The bills, the crops, the livestock—every darn thing. And every day that passed, it was becoming harder to hold it all together.
He was so close to breaking, so close to shattering into pieces, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep going before someone cracked under the pressure.
* * *
Two hours and twelve minutes.
Precisely.
The air was thick with tension as Jason stood before his family, the sound of Toni’s angry voice cutting through the silence like a knife.
“How could you?” she seethed, her hand slamming against his shoulder. “How could you bury him here, under the tree, beside Mama? They should have been buried in town with a big marker with our name. The Baird family is known in these parts, and instead, you had them dig a hole and chucked?—”
“Hang on,” Jason interrupted, his voice tight with frustration, his hand raised to silence her. “Nobody just ‘chucked’ our father and mother into some unmarked grave.”
“They’ve got markers, Jason. Flat marble markers,” Toni snapped, her voice sharp with disbelief.
“We’ll put a granite cross later,” he said through gritted teeth, his mind a whirlwind of rage and guilt. But the words were hollow, like a weak attempt to justify what he knew wasn’t right.
“I cannot believe you cheaped out on them…” Matthew whispered, his face pale as he glanced at the family with wide, shocked eyes. The silence that followed felt suffocating. Every gaze turned on him, every eye accusing. He was under a magnifying glass, and every movement felt like it was being scrutinized to the smallest detail.
“I did not cheap out,” Jason shot back, his voice cracking with the strain of it all. “And can we not do this at the graveside? Please?! I did the right thing—burying our father beside our mother on the land they loved. Our grandparents are buried here, and someday, I will be too. This was the right thing to do. You want a larger marker, fine. We’ll put one - later .”
The words hung in the air, a bitter echo of his own exhaustion. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and yet they were looking at him like he had betrayed them. He could feel the guilt crawling under his skin, but there was nothing he could do to erase the choices he had made.
Not now.
“You’re out of control,” Toni yelled, her voice shaking with raw emotion. “You’re outta control, Jason!”
“You think I don’t know that?!” Jason spat, his anger bubbling over. His hands clenched at his sides, his body shaking with the force of his rage. “I don’t have time for this! I’ve got bills to pay, hay to order, groceries to buy. I don’t have time to sit here and pretend everything’s fine!”
“I don’t think I can eat,” Becca whispered tearfully, her voice breaking.
“Me neither,” Jason hissed, his teeth gritted together in frustration. “I haven’t eaten. I haven’t slept. I haven’t done a darn thing except try to hold everything together. I’ve never buried someone before— Dad handled Mom’s funeral. So, if you’re all done blaming me for attempting to do the right thing, let me know. Until then, I’ve got work to do!”
None of them had dealt with this. None of them knew what to say, what to do. And the weight of their judgment, the weight of their eyes on him, was crushing him.
“It wasn’t right,” Toni muttered, almost too quiet to hear.
“Then why let it happen?” Becca said softly, but there was a venom in her voice that made his blood run cold. This was his youngest sister, the girl that looked up to him – and even she was questioning things?
“Because everything feels a little out of control and overwhelming right now!” Jason shouted, his frustration peaking, his voice ragged with emotion.
“You’re overwhelming!” Toni shot back, tears staining her cheeks. “You think you’re the boss of everything, and you are not. You are just another Baird like the rest of us, Jason.”
“She’s right,” Matthew spoke quietly, his voice filled with a calmness that made Jason’s chest tighten. “Dad taught you everything. So if you’re this out of control, or this is your version of how to do things, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.”
Jason’s breath hitched in his throat. The words cut deep, deeper than any of them realized, but before he could say another word, the woman from the funeral— the one in the uniform —Caitlin stood up. She walked past Matthew, placing herself between them like a shield.
“Sit down,” Caitlin whispered, her voice soft but firm. “He’s grieving, too. You should be helping each other, not attacking him for trying to do what he can.”
Jason recoiled, stunned by her words. Her gaze flicked to him, her eyes filled with something that made his gut twist. Compassion? Understanding?
“I don’t need your help,” Jason snarled, the words pouring out of him before he could stop them. “Matthew, get your girlfriend outta here.”
She didn’t back down, her eyes unwavering. “Maybe you need to talk,” she said gently, her voice calm, almost soothing.
Jason felt a flare of anger rise in him, but he swallowed it down. “Not to you. Never to you,” he snapped, his voice sharp. His chest was tight with the force of the emotions he couldn’t seem to control. “I’ll be in the barn. And I’m serious. Get her out of here. Family only .”
The words hung in the air like a challenge, his heart pounding as he turned away, trying to distance himself from the heat of the moment. But no matter how hard he tried to shake her off, the woman’s presence lingered in his mind like a soft echo of something he wasn’t ready to face.
There were a lot of things he wasn’t ready to face right now.
“One step at a time,” he muttered under his breath and running from his family toward the barn where the horses and cattle were.
* * *
Six months later, Becca moved to Dallas.
And never returned.
Jason sat in the quiet of the kitchen, staring at the empty space where Becca’s presence had once been so familiar. The air felt colder now, the house echoing with the silence that lingered after her departure. He could almost feel the weight of her absence, like a shadow clinging to the corners of the room. He had expected the ache to subside, thought maybe, with time, the sharpness of her leaving would dull. But it hadn’t.
It was raw.
It was constant.
Each day felt like walking through a fog, his footsteps heavy with regret, his heart still wrapped around the memory of her smile, the way she had laughed, the way she had believed in him when no one else had.
Becca was gone, and he hadn’t been able to hold on. He hadn’t been able to do enough.
His fingers tightened around the mug in front of him. The cool ceramic was a faint comfort against his palms. She’d told him once that she needed space, needed to get away and figure things out. But he had never thought it would come to this.
Dallas .
A world away from this place, from home.
A city full of new faces, new opportunities, a life that had nothing to do with the farm, with the ghosts of the past, with him. She was slipping further, leaving him behind, and it felt like he was suffocating in the space between them.
A year later, the farm was still struggling.
The weight of that truth pressed down on him like the heavy, oppressive air of a summer storm. The fields of grass, once brimming with the promise of hard work and even harder dreams, had turned into a battleground of nothingness. The grasses were barely surviving, the land dry and cracked beneath his boots, stubbornly refusing to yield. He would have to buy more hay and more alfalfa for the cattle – which meant more money.
He had done everything he could. Worked every day from dawn until dusk, pushing himself beyond exhaustion, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. The farm was slipping through his fingers, just like everything else in his life… but he couldn’t let go. If Becca ever returned, she would always have a home. It was that way for any of them.
They had to have a home.
Jason had spent countless nights on the porch, staring out at the stars, hoping for some kind of miracle, but none came. His fingers clenched around the railing, the wood splintering beneath his touch as he let out a breath that felt like it would never leave his chest. It wasn’t just the farm that was breaking.
It was him.
His father’s passing had left a hole in the family, and though Jason had never expected to fill it, he had at least hoped to keep things together, to maintain some semblance of order. But it had all unraveled—one thing after another.
Two years passed - and Matthew was completely out of control.
Jason could hear the whisper of voices in the town now. The way people would look at him with pity, with barely veiled judgment. His brother’s antics had turned into a public spectacle. Matthew had always been the wild one who tested the boundaries, but now it was like a dark cloud followed him everywhere he went.
He couldn’t even make it through a simple errand without someone gossiping, without the weight of those stares crushing him from all sides. Jason had tried. Heaven knows, he had tried to pull him back from the edge, but nothing he said or did seemed to matter. Matthew was lost in his own self-destruction, and Jason could only watch in helpless frustration.
Everywhere he went, people whispered. They would smile at him, polite but distant, as if they were waiting for the next shoe to drop. Waiting for the family to fall apart completely, waiting for the last vestiges of hope to slip through their fingers.
Jason could see it in their eyes. It wasn’t just pity; it was something darker, something like disappointment. They were looking at him like he had failed them.
Like he had failed his family.
But the truth was that he hadn’t failed. The family hadn’t fallen apart—not completely. It had just changed, twisted into something unrecognizable. And even Jason could see it. He felt the fractures beneath his skin every time he looked around at the empty rooms, at the broken pieces of his life scattered across the place they had all once called home.
The land was still there, but the spirit of it—the heart of it—was slowly bleeding out, day by day. And he didn’t know how to stop it.
He had always thought that if he could just hold things together long enough, it would get better. But he wasn’t sure anymore. He wasn’t sure of anything.
Jason let out a bitter snort, the sound hollow and harsh in the stillness of the house. It was almost laughable how he thought he could fix everything. He had once thought he could be enough - and was wrong.
How could he expect his family to have faith in him?
When he didn’t have faith in himself.