Chapter 17 Delaney
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Delaney
The thing about living where the air smells of pine and sky is that eventually, you run out of excuses not to go outside and breathe it.
I’ve been hiding in the kitchen for the better part of three days, chopping, stirring, baking, washing, repeating. It’s usually my safest loop. If I keep my hands moving, my brain doesn’t have time to remind me that I am currently:
1. Sleeping under the same roof as my boss—who I semi-hooked up with in this kitchen.
2. Whose best friend I had a one-night stand with—and who also lives here.
3. All while also having a complicated, buzzing, can’t-look-directly-at-it connection with his grumpy stepbrother.
The list pairs very poorly with trying to remember how many teaspoons of baking powder went into the cornbread.
So in a rare moment of self-preservation, I take off my apron, grab my jacket and my water bottle, and escape before I can talk myself out of it.
“I’m heading out for a walk!” I call toward the living room.
Sadie’s on the floor building some kind of Lego ranch that appears to have a dragon stable “just in case.” Boone’s stretched on the couch with one arm over his eyes, boots still on, clearly in that fifteen-minute window between ‘I’m fine’ and ‘if I move I’ll die.
’ Silas is at the table with his laptop, cursing under his breath at spreadsheets.
Caleb’s nowhere visible, which means he’s either in the barn or avoiding eye contact with me. Both likely.
Boone’s arm shifts enough that one blue eye squints at me. “You taking your phone?”
“Yes, Dad,” I say automatically, and then flush, because, wow, brain, maybe don’t say that to the man you’ve had your tongue in.
He doesn’t react outwardly, but his mouth does that quick tightening that means he’s thinking too much.
“Text if you’re gonna be late,” he says instead.
Silas glances up, grin crooked. “Don’t fall off the mountain, honeybee. I’ve put too much effort into your coffee order.”
“I’ll do my best,” I mutter, and slip out the door before anyone can see how hot my face is.
The air outside hits me like a reset button. Cool and clean, edged with the sweetness of sun-warmed grass and that faint metallic tang you only get when there’s still damp earth somewhere in the shade. The sky is a clear, endless blue that would make a postcard jealous.
Sunridge Ranch stretches out in front of me in soft gold and green. Pastures roll toward the tree line. Horses graze with that lazy, arrogant grace that says they know they’re beautiful.
I suck in a breath so deep it hurts a little.
Okay. Walk first. Panic later.
The Lookout Trail starts past the far fence, where the property gives way to the thicker forest that climbs the mountain.
It’s one of those winding, well-worn paths that everyone in Coyote Glen seems to know by muscle memory.
Boone mentioned once that his dad used to take him and Caleb up there “to remind them they weren’t the only things in the world that mattered.
” Silas called it “prime make-out real estate.”
Both seem true.
I cross the back pasture, wave to one of the ranch hands on a quad, and slip through the small gate that leads into the trees. The path narrows immediately, pine needles muffling my footsteps. Shafts of light spear through the branches, turning floating dust motes into lazy galaxies.
I tuck my hands into my jacket pockets and walk.
At first, my brain does what it always does when given a sliver of downtime: replays every embarrassing thing I’ve done in the last decade.
Boone’s mouth on mine, the way he’d cupped my face like I was precious and breakable and worth risking his carefully ordered world for.
Silas’s shameless laughter in the doorway, how he’d just taken in the entire scene as if he’d walked into his favorite show mid-episode.
Caleb’s expression in the kitchen days before, hurt and wary when I’d told him not to look at me like he cared, like I’d somehow punished him for the crime of noticing.
I walk faster.
Birds chatter overhead. A squirrel scrambles up a tree to my left, chattering what I choose to interpret as encouragement and not judgment.
What am I even doing?
I came here to start over, not to collect men like they’re new kitchen gadgets. Not to build a life that looks suspiciously like the messy, boundaryless one that detonated my old world.
I’m supposed to be rebuilding. Healing. Learning that I can exist as a whole person without centering my life around a man.
Men. Plural. Great.
The trail begins to climb, the incline forcing my attention down into my legs and lungs. Good. Let my body burn off some of the static my brain keeps generating.
By the time the first switchback hits, my breathing is heavier, my cheeks warm, my ponytail damp at the nape of my neck. My thighs remind me that standing all day at a stove is not the same as hiking up a mountain, no matter what my past self insisted.
I’m rounding a bend, head down, counting steps, when something flashes in the corner of my eye.
Movement. Fast.
For half a second, pure city-bred panic spikes. Stranger, attack, headlines. But then the shape resolves into a man in a dark running shirt and shorts, long stride eating up the trail.
Creed.
He slows as soon as he spots me, breath puffing in white clouds in the cool air. His hair is pulled back, the edges damp with sweat at his temples. There’s that same focused sharpness in his eyes that he gets behind a drum kit, but softened a little by the woods and the sunlight.
“Rivers,” he says, a small nod doubling as a greeting.
“Hunter,” I reply, trying not to sound as breathless as I feel. “Are you… running away from something or toward it?”
His mouth pulls into the faintest smile. “Maintenance.”
“On your legs or your sanity?”
“Both.”
Fair.
He slows to a walk, matching my pace without comment, like it was always the plan. I shift slightly to the side of the path to give him room, but he stays close without crowding, his presence a solid, quiet line at my shoulder.
“How is life without touring?” I say after a few steps.
“Brilliant.” He laughs. “I love the forest calibration.”
My lips twitch. “Wow. What happened to the bad boy of rock and roll?”
He rolls his eyes. “You know that’s not me anymore.”
“How is Sloane?”
“Loud,” he says immediately. “Happy. Tired. She and Ezra are at Meadow Creek wrangling a bridge between a chorus and Roman’s ego.”
“That’s a lot of structural work,” I say solemnly.
“Whole team of engineers.”
We fall into an easy rhythm, boots and running shoes crunching over gravel and needles. It takes me back in time to when I used to work with Wild Reverie. Back when they were far more… wild.
“So what about you?” he asks eventually, glancing sideways. “How’s ranch life treating you?”
I consider lying.
Fine. Great. Completely normal. No existential crises here, no sir.
Instead, I hear myself say, “It’s… a lot.”
His eyebrow kicks up the barest fraction. “Good a lot or bad a lot?”
“Yes.”
He huffs out a sound that might be a laugh.
The trail steepens again, forcing us to put more effort into our steps. I focus on the rhythm, left, right, left, right, trying to line my thoughts up with it.
“I like it,” I say finally. “The work. The quiet. The way the day actually starts and ends, instead of blending into one endless service. Sadie… she’s…” My throat tightens at her name in a way that surprises me. “She’s kind of my favorite person.”
“She’s a good kid,” Creed agrees. “Boone’s raising her right.”
The mention of Boone sends an electric little jolt through my stomach. I stare harder at the trail.
“And the ranch?” Creed presses.
“It’s gorgeous,” I admit. “And ridiculous. And messy in all the ways that feel… real. There’s always something breaking or mooing or needing to be fed. It’s not…” I search for the word. “Curated.”
He nods like that makes sense.
“And the people?”
I should’ve seen that coming.
“There are people,” I say cautiously.
Creed’s gaze cuts to me again, sharper now, but not unkind. “Uh huh.”
We walk another ten steps.
I blow out a breath. “You know that thing where you’re trying really hard to make better choices than you made in your past, but life keeps handing you situations that look like they were designed in a lab to test that exact resolve?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yeah, well.” I drag a hand down my face. “Apparently, my new life came with a built-in ethics exam.”
We reach a flatter stretch, the trees thinning just enough that we can see glimpses of the town below in the distance. The roofs of Coyote Glen peek through the pines. The Hollow’s faded sign, the little grid of Main Street, a smudge that’s probably Coyote Cup’s parking lot.
“It’s complicated,” I say finally.
“That usually means feelings.”
“You say that like it’s a disease.”
He gives me a look that says, You’re the one who sounds like you caught something unwanted.
I sigh so hard it might rattle my ribs. “Fine. Yes. Feelings.”
“For?”
“Plural,” I mutter.
The corner of his mouth twitches again. “Ah.”
“Don’t you ‘ah’ me,” I grumble.
He shrugs. “Hey, we’re all with Sloane. ‘Plural’ doesn’t scare me.”
I actually snort. “Somehow it’s less weird when you say it like that.”
“It’s less weird when it works,” he corrects.
I chew on that.
“Is it… working?” I ask, softer. “With you guys and Sloane?”
Creed doesn’t answer right away.
Then he says, “Yeah. It is. More than anything else that’s ever come before.”
“How?” I blurt.
Because I need to know. Because the idea of loving more than one person at once makes my chest feel both too tight and too wide.
Because I can’t stop thinking about Boone’s steady hands, Silas’s easy flirtation, Caleb’s quiet heart, and the way all of it knots together in my center in a way that feels both terrifying and right.
Creed hums low in his chest, like he’s sifting through an answer.
“Slowly,” he says finally. “Messily. With a lot of talking for someone like me who doesn’t like talking.”