Chapter 12 Maggie
Maggie
Three weeks.
That's how long it took for the thing with Jack to become routine.
I didn't mean for it to happen. Didn't plan for the nights he showed up at my cabin to start feeling less like lapses in judgment and more like appointments. Expected. Anticipated. The part of my day I actually looked forward to, if I was being honest with myself.
Which I wasn't.
Being honest with myself would mean admitting that I'd completely lost control of this situation.
That what started as a pressure valve had become something with weight and shape and a heartbeat of its own.
That I spent my days counting hours until dark, until I could stop performing, until I could have him again.
So I didn't admit it. I rationalized instead.
It's just physical. It's just convenient. It's just two adults meeting a mutual need.
The lies got easier to tell with practice.
The ranch was busier than ever.
North pasture clearing was underway—equipment rumbling across the land from dawn to dusk, contractors everywhere. The irrigation infrastructure was coming together piece by piece, trenches dug, pipes laid, the skeleton of Ivy's cattle expansion taking shape in the dirt.
I managed it all. Coordinated the contractors, adjusted timelines, solved the hundred small problems that cropped up every day.
When a delivery truck got stuck in the mud near the creek, I organized the extraction.
When pipe specs came back wrong—again—I spent two hours on the phone with the supplier until it was sorted.
When Dale, the irrigation contractor, tried to cut a corner on the north junction valve, I walked him back to the trench and stood there until he did it right.
This was my job. The thing I was built for.
But for the first time in a decade, it wasn't the only thing occupying my head.
The worst part was how fast my body had learned him.
That was the thing nobody warned me about—not the falling, not the feelings, but the way your body rewired itself around another person until they became part of your operating system.
Every night followed the same pattern. I'd go to bed alone. Read for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, pretending I wasn't listening for footsteps on my porch. Turn off the lamp. Close my eyes.
Then I'd hear the door.
He never knocked. Just let himself in—quiet, unhurried, boots by the door.
Sully would settle on the porch without being told.
And the mattress would dip behind me, and the sheets would shift, and the whole cabin would fill with the scent of him—leather and pine and clean skin still warm from the shower he'd taken before coming to me.
Some nights it was fast and urgent, his hands between my thighs while I buried sounds in the pillow. Some nights, I surfaced from half-sleep already wanting him, my body choosing him before my brain was awake enough to argue.
And some nights—the ones that wrecked me worst—he'd slide in and just hold me. Not push. Not press. Just his body wrapped around mine, his heartbeat against my back, his thumb tracing slow circles on my bare stomach while my breathing synced with his.
Those nights I'd lie in the dark, surrounded by him, and feel something crack open that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with safety. With being held by someone who wanted me but didn't demand. Who showed up every night and let my body decide what I needed.
I was addicted. That was the truth I couldn't rationalize away.
Not to the sex—though the sex was ruinous, the sort that wrecked you for other people, where his hands knew your body so well it felt like they'd been built for the terrain of you.
I was addicted to him. To the weight of his arm across my waist. To the sound of his breathing shifting as he fell asleep behind me.
To the way he'd murmur my name against my hair when he first pressed close—Maggie—like the word itself was something worth holding in his mouth.
He remembered things, too. Last Tuesday, I'd mentioned the cold snap coming. Wednesday night, he'd shown up with a flannel shirt that smelled like him, draping it over my shoulders on the porch before bed. "Lost and found," he'd said. "Nobody'll miss it." I'd worn it to sleep after he left.
And then there were the horses.
With Jack's daily work and his expertise shaping the approach, they were thriving in ways they hadn't in years.
Dancer was now calm enough to accept a saddle—a horse who'd been a panicking wreck three weeks ago.
The mare with the leg problem was moving soundly.
Even the older geldings seemed more responsive, like the whole barn had caught whatever Jack was putting down.
"The proposal's strong," Jack said one afternoon, leaning against the paddock fence while I watched Dancer work the round pen. "Your numbers are solid. The Driscoll mare checks out—her vet panel came back clean. You've got the foundation of something real here."
"If my dad approves the stud fee." I kept my eyes on the horse. "That's a big if."
"Walk me through how this works."
"I present the numbers. Market analysis, bloodline data, five-year projections, the whole spreadsheet cathedral.
" Something loosened behind my sternum just saying it out loud—owning it.
"The numbers are airtight—I don't put a proposal in front of my family unless I can defend every cell in that document.
Then, my parents go to Wyatt and Ivy's for Thursday dinner, and they talk it through.
Everyone gets a say. Daddy makes the final call on the spend, but he won't go against the family. "
"And you think they'll say no?"
"I think they'll have questions. The cattle expansion is already stretching the budget. Asking for a stud fee on top of that—" I shrugged. "It's a hard sell."
"Not if the person selling it built a spreadsheet cathedral.
" He paused. "The Raven Spur stallion's progeny report speaks for itself—twelve foals, eight working stock, top ten percent temperament scores.
You pair that with your projections, and it's not a gamble.
It's an investment with a three-year return. "
"You memorized the progeny report?"
"I pulled the report. You think I wouldn't know the numbers?"
I looked at him—actually looked, instead of performing professionalism. He was doing it again. Quietly building scaffolding around my dream without being asked, without wanting credit.
Nobody did that. Nobody except him.
"The auction's in three weeks," he said. "Have you put in for time off?"
"I can't just leave. The north pasture clearing, the irrigation—"
"Are things other people can manage for two days."
"Not the way I manage them."
"No. But well enough." He held my gaze. "Not everything has to be flawless, Maggie. Sometimes, well enough is well enough."
My throat tightened. "When did this become about more than the auction?"
"It was always about more than the auction." He pushed off the fence, not touching me—we didn't touch during the day—but close enough that I felt the heat coming off him. "Think about it. What you actually want."
He walked away before I could respond.
I stood at the fence watching Dancer work the round pen—calm, confident, trusting the process—and thought about a woman who'd spent ten years putting herself last on every priority list she made.
That night, he came to my cabin.
I was waiting. Had been waiting since the paddock conversation, turning his words over like stones I couldn't stop touching.
I opened the door before he could settle on the porch step.
"You're thinking too loud," he said, stepping inside. "I could hear it from the bunkhouse."
"I'm not thinking."
"Liar." He cupped my face, tilting it up. "Talk to me."
I shook my head and ran my hands along his arms to cradle his wrists. "I don't want to talk."
"Maggie—"
"I don't want to talk." I pulled him down and kissed him.
He let me lead for a few minutes. Let me push him toward the bedroom, let me tug his shirt over his head, let me try to turn this into the simple, physical thing I kept telling myself it was.
But we'd been doing this long enough now that the simple version wasn't available anymore. Every touch carried history. Every kiss tasted like knowing. And when I tried to rush—to get to the part where I stopped thinking and just felt—Jack slowed us down.
He caught my hands at his zipper, and held them against his bare chest. Let me feel his heartbeat—fast, because he wanted this too, but controlled. Present.
"Not like this," he said. "Not tonight."
"Why not?"
"Because you're using me to avoid something, and I'm not going to let you."
The accuracy of that landed like a slap. I tried to pull back, but he held my hands where they were.
"I'm not saying no," he clarified. "I'm saying slow down. Be here with me."
I caressed his chest, soaked in the warmth of his skin. “I am here."
“You're half here, and half somewhere else. You've been somewhere else all day." His thumb traced a circle on my wrist, right over my pulse. "What's going on in that head of yours?"
Instead of deflecting, I told him the truth. "I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"Of this." I pressed my palms harder against his chest. "Of how much I want this. Of how real it's gotten. Of the fact that I can't remember what my life felt like before you were in it, and it's only been three weeks."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he pulled me close—not sexually, not urgently. Just held me. My face nestled in the crook of his neck, his arms wrapped around me, his cheek resting against my head.
"I had someone once," I heard myself say.
Jack went still. “Yeah?" He probably didn’t want to know about my romantic past—I certainly didn’t want to know about his. But maybe if I told him what had happened, he’d understand why I was so hesitant to go all in with him. Why these walls were here in the first place.