Chapter 6
Chapter six
Rhett
By late afternoon, the ranch has shed its work clothes and pulled on a costume.
String lights bloom along the fence lines, jack-o’-lanterns grin from every porch rail, and the old cottonwoods wear garlands of paper bats that Luke swears make the property “festively haunted”.
The air smells like cider and woodsmoke. Somewhere, a fiddler’s warming up, and the squeal of kids filters through the dusk as the first trickle of townsfolk wanders in for The Brush Creek Harvest Haunt.
We’ve run this thing for years, but it hasn’t felt like mine in a long time. Tonight, it feels like mine, and I think it has everything to do with her.
Frankie’s at the cider stand with Grandma, sleeves rolled and hair twisted up, laughing with a pack of little witches comparing fake warts.
She wears a black sweater and a witch hat.
The lantern beside her throws amber light across her freckles.
When she looks up and finds me watching, my chest goes tight at the happiness in her eyes.
“Don’t stare,” Luke says from my elbow, like he’s been waiting for a chance to be annoying. He’s in a ridiculous cowboy-vampire hybrid getup. He’s wearing a hat, cape, and plastic fangs that he keeps clicking. “You’ll spook her.”
“I’m not staring.”
“Sure.” He hands me a coil of rope. “Hayride wagon’s ready. You’re driving first shift.”
“I drove last year.”
“And Grandma said you’ll smile more this time.” He grins. “Her words.”
“I always smile,” I lie.
“Your version of smiling looks like a man trying not to confess to a crime.” He tips his chin toward the cider stand. “Take the witch with you. The cute one. She’ll make you look almost friendly.”
“Not happening.”
“Grandma!” he hollers over his shoulder before I can shut him up. “Rhett needs a co-pilot!”
Grandma looks right past him to me and then to Frankie. One eyebrow lifts as matchmaking calculations click behind her eyes. “Frankie, honey, would you mind riding with Rhett on the first hayride? He gets lonely out there in the dark.”
I glare. “I do not.”
“I’ll keep him company,” Frankie says, already moving around the table with a grin. “Wouldn’t want the big scary cowboy to be alone.”
“Wicked,” Luke stage-whispers.
I consider defecting to the haunted maze to avoid all of them. Then Frankie’s beside me, close enough that the cold on her skin steals heat from mine, and the night quiets down to just our breathing and a guitar tuning somewhere behind the barn.
“Ready, partner?” she asks.
I hand her the lantern. “Stay on the wagon when we hit the north bend. It can get bumpy.”
“Yes, boss.”
We head for the tractor. It looks decent in the dying light for once, with newly polished fenders, a banner tied to the back that reads brUSH CREEK HARVEST HAUNT in Luke’s perfect block letters.
The wagon behind it is piled high with clean bales, plaid blankets tossed across them like an invitation.
Families climb aboard, laughter and the rustle of candy bags sound through the air. I check the hitch, tighten the rope, and help a little vampire fix his slipping cape. When I straighten, Frankie’s watching my hands with that intent curiosity that makes my heart beat faster.
“Safety first?” she says.
“Always.”
“And second?”
“Don’t spook the horses.”
“We’re on a tracker. There are no horses.”
“Then don’t spook the children.”
She bites back a smile. “No promises.”
I climb up into the tractor seat as she hops onto the bench beside me. When the engine rumbles to life, the vibration runs up through metal and bone, the kind of familiar thrum that usually settles me.
“Welcome to the Harvest Haunt,” Frankie calls back, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Rule number one: no pushing. Rule number two: if you see a ghost, be polite.”
A chorus of delighted shrieks. I glance sidelong. “You’re really gonna have them looking for ghosts?”
“You’ve got scarecrows staged every quarter mile and a fog machine in the mill gulch,” she says, eyes sparkling. “I’m just enhancing the brand.”
We roll out under the first arch of lights, wagon creaking companionably behind us. The path skirts the pumpkin patch, my rebuilt stand looking passable in the dusk, and follows the creek toward the north pasture. Out here, the noise of the Haunt softens and the sky opens wide.
Frankie rests the lantern between her knees and tucks her hands into her sleeves. I could offer my jacket. I don’t, because if I put it around her, I won’t want it back.
“You do this every year?” she asks.
“Since before Luke could see over a steering wheel.”
“And you hate it?”
“I don’t hate it.” I think about the long afternoons stringing lights, the way the townsfolk show up to carve pumpkins like it’s a ritual. “It’s a lot. But it matters to the town and to my family.”
She nods, like that makes perfect sense. “People remember nights like this.”
A barn owl ghosts from one cottonwood to another.
Behind us, the wagon murmurs, kids counting fake gravestones, a couple tucked close under a blanket, someone telling their friend the haunted maze totally has real ghosts this year.
In the dark, our shoulders brush every time the tractor bumps.
Each pass lights a fuse under my skin, and I’m fighting not to notice.
By the time we loop toward the mill gulch, low fog creeps across the ground where Luke hid the smoke machine. The kids go wild. A preteen Dracula stands and proclaims something about “the mist of the otherworld” and falls backward into a haybale, cackling. Frankie cheers, delighted.
“You don’t spook easily,” I say.
“Grew up in a noisy building where the fire alarm tested itself every other week,” she says. “Ghosts are nothing.”
“Good to know.”
We rumble under the last arch and back into the glow of the yard. The wagon unloads, new riders clamber on. The second round is an older date-night crowd, with teens in face paint and a couple in their sixties in matching skeleton sweaters who have been holding hands since before I was born.
On the next run, Frankie quiets. The cold sneaks in off the creek, and the air goes thin and silver. When we hit the bend, I throttle down for the bumpy patch, and she braces her palm on the console, fingers spread, steady.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m storing all of this in my memory, the sound, the sky, and your face when you’re not pretending not to smile.”
“I’m not—” I stop, because I hear the lie as I say it.
She tips her head, satisfied. “Uh-huh.”
The north fence is a line of dark against darker hills. I should be thinking about the weak post near the old cottonwood. Instead, I’m thinking about her last night under the quilt, the way she looked at me like I was special to her.
We’ve only known each other for a few days. It’s crazy to think that she could feel anything about me but how much I annoy her.
We return the hayride to the noise and light of the harvest party again.
The skeleton-sweater couple thanks me like I ferried them across the Styx.
The teen ghouls scatter toward the maze.
A third crowd piles on. Luke appears long enough to toss me a bag of kettle corn and flash Frankie a thumbs-up so exaggerated it should come with a warning label.
“Subtle,” I say.
“He’s proud of his fog machine,” she says, laughing, even though we both know that’s not what he was thumbs-upping us for.
Two more runs and Grandma finally waves me off the tractor, shooing a volunteer into the seat. “Go eat,” she orders. “You look starving.”
“I could eat,” I say, as she’s already pushing a paper boat of chili dogs into my hands.
Frankie ends up with a cinnamon-sugar donut and a cup of hot cider. We stand by the fence, half in the crowd and half out, the noise a shimmer that doesn’t quite reach the field. The pumpkins glow like campfires scattered across the dark.
“Brush Creek magic,” she says reverently, stealing a bite of my chili dog like this is a thing we’ve always done.
“Don’t call it that,” I say, automatically.
“Why? Because you don’t want to admit something magical might be happening?”
“Because Luke’ll brand it and make T-shirts.”
She laughs, head tipping back, and I fall a little further into the mess I’ve been trying not to name.
The fiddler has found a rhythm now, joined by a guitar and a mandolin. The front of the barn has been swept clean for dancing, and a handful of couples spin in a loose circle, their boots shuffling, skirts brushing, kids weaving between them.
“You dance?” she asks.
“Only when Grandma strong-arms me.”
“I’m sure I can get her to tell you to dance with me,” Frankie says, eyes bright.
Before I can protest, Grandma materializes at my elbow like she was summoned. “You heard the girl,” she says, taking my empty boat. “Go on.”
“Grandma—”
“Move those long legs, Rhett Carson.”
I should argue, but I don’t.
Frankie holds out her hand, mock-solemn. “For research,” she says. “I need to understand local customs.”
“Right,” I say, and slide my palm against hers.
Her fingers are warm. The contact lights a fire in me. I set my other hand at her waist, light, cautious, like the first step onto a creek rock you’re not sure will hold. She steps in without hesitation, fitting like she’s always known where to land.
We move. It’s nothing fancy or even good.
We move together to the slow waltz, the guitar’s teasing out of the night.
The lights throw soft halos across her hair.
She watches my mouth like she’s thinking about the kiss we shared and hoping it will happen again.
My pulse goes uneven. I focus on not stepping on her boots and fail twice.
She laughs into my shoulder, and the sound sinks right under my ribs.
“You’re not terrible,” she says.
“High praise.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
I don’t. I breathe, and for a minute the rest of the world blurs—the crowd, the noise, the years I spent teaching myself to keep things quiet. It all fades until it’s just her, close and real and dangerous in precisely the way I’ve been pretending I don’t want.
The song ends, and applause breaks out for the musicians. We stop moving, but don’t let go. Her eyes stare into me, and I suddenly know I’m going to make this woman mine.
“Rhett,” she says softly.
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for letting me in a little.”
It’s a small sentence. It lands like truth. “Don’t make a habit of it,” I say, but the words come out warm.
“Too late.”
Before I can lean in to kiss her perfect mouth, a posse of small goblins barrels between us, chasing a kid in a handmade ghost sheet. We jump apart, laughing. The spell thins but doesn’t break.
“Hayride needs you,” Luke calls from the tractor, cape flapping, fangs gleaming. “There’s a line.”
“On it,” I say.
Frankie squeezes my hand once, quick and sure. “Go be the wicked cowboy,” she teases.
The night stretches long and bright. We run rides, restock cider, and send kids into the haunted maze with flashlights and bravado.
Every time the wagon turns back toward the barn, I scan the edge of the crowd and find her.
She’s helping a kid fix a bent witch hat, talking to Millie Mae with her hands flying, listening to Grandma with that respectful smile that makes Martha soften like dough.
She fits in my world—probably better than I do.
When the last run of the hayride returns and the lights dim and the music winds down, I’m not ready for it to end.
Luke drops onto the wagon bench beside me, flicking off the tractor. “Admit it,” he says, smug. “Best Haunt in years.”
“Not bad,” I allow.
He jerks his chin toward Frankie, who’s saying goodnight to Grandma at the porch. “It’s her,” he says. “You’re different when she’s around.”
“Go haunt your fog machine.”
He sobers, just enough to surprise me. “Don’t mess this up, Rhett.”
I stare at the dark beyond the lights, where the creek runs and the land breathes and the sky keeps its own counsel. “I don’t even know what this is.”
“She’s perfect for you and you know it,” he says, sliding off the bench.
The crowd thins. The pumpkins burn low. I find Frankie at the fence line where we stood earlier, looking out at the field like she’s memorizing it.
“Hey,” I say.
She turns, smile soft and tired and real. “Hey.”
“Thanks for helping tonight,” I add, awkward and honest.
She shivers slightly, and this time I do what I didn’t let myself do earlier. I shrug out of my jacket and set it over her shoulders.
She sinks into it, eyes on mine. “Dangerous move, Carson. I might keep this.”
“Wouldn’t blame you, it’s a warm jacket.”
“It is warm, but it’s something else,” she says, voice low.
“What?” I ask, moving closer to her.
“You,” she answers as she wraps her arms around my neck.
I pull her closer by her hips, lower my head, and kiss her lips the way I’ve been wanting to all night. She whimpers and kisses me back. The best end to the night I could ever imagine. Having her in my arms is everything.