Chapter 10
The Kane Ranch came into view beneath the fading light, the red-roofed barns turning dark against the orange sky.
Ryder’s truck was parked beside the house, and I saw Kash first, his head lifting and his ears perking up as I came to a stop in front of the porch steps.
I climbed from my car, and his tail started wagging hard enough to wiggle his entire body.
“Hey, handsome,” I murmured as I climbed the handful of steps to the porch and bent down to rub both hands over his head. Before I could straighten, the front door opened and Ryder stepped outside.
A black shirt stretched across his broad chest with the sleeves pushed to his forearms. His dark hair looked damp as if he had recently showered, and he was barefoot. A man’s feet shouldn’t have been as attractive as Ryder’s were, but somehow, even those did something to me.
He stared at me before his gaze moved over my face then lower before returning to my eyes. The air shifted in an instant, carrying the memory of our kiss and everything we had avoided saying afterward.
“You didn’t come over today,” I said, my cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment that I couldn’t filter my words or control myself around him.
His expression didn’t change as he crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “Figured you needed room.”
“Did I ask for room?”
“No.”
“Then why did you decide I needed it?”
His jaw flexed. “We kissed when you were hurting.”
The words struck so suddenly and hard that the air in my lungs rushed out. “You think I didn’t know what I was doing?” I could hear the incredulous tone in my voice.
“I think you found things yesterday that tore you apart.” His voice remained low and controlled but gentler than before. “I didn’t want to take advantage of that, and kissing you… made me feel like I was.”
“You didn’t take advantage of me. I kissed you.”
Ryder held my gaze. “Wasn’t sure you’d feel the same this morning.”
I stepped closer to the front door. “I wish you would have just asked me, but instead, you acted like nothing happened between us.”
We now only stood a few feet apart. “You left after we kissed. You decided I needed space without asking me. You disappeared. That’s what this is about.”
“I didn’t disappear. I was right next door.”
A long silence stretched between us. Kash settled near the porch rail, resting his head on his front paws as if he sensed neither of us would be moving for a while.
Ryder finally looked toward the pasture. “Figured you needed time to decide whether you still wanted anything to do with me.”
“I didn’t need time. I needed you to stay.” I felt my eyes widen as the truth came out before I could stop it.
His gaze came back to mine, dark and steady. “I’m here now.”
I studied him for a moment then let out a quiet breath. “You paid the taxes for years. You kept the ranch from falling apart.”
He didn’t look away. “County would’ve taken the land.”
“So you did it for the ranch?”
“No.” The answer came without hesitation.
“Then why?”
His gaze held mine. “You already know.”
“I think I do,” I said. “But I want to hear you say it.”
Ryder looked away again, but this time there was something different in the movement. It wasn’t avoidance exactly but more like a man trying to find words he had spent most of his life refusing to use.
I needed something to do because the silence felt overwhelming, so I walked over to the porch swing and sat.
For a moment, I thought he might stay where he was, but then the wood creaked beneath his weight as he lowered himself beside me.
He kept enough distance between us that our bodies didn’t touch, but I felt his presence as strongly as if he had wrapped an arm around me.
The last edge of sunlight disappeared behind the mountains, crickets started chirping in the grass, and somewhere in the distance a horse made an impatient sound.
“I thought you started fixing things after my father died,” I said. “Then I found the tax receipt and realized you’ve been doing it… forever.”
Ryder’s hands rested loosely between his knees. “Should’ve made sure you didn’t see that stuff.”
I turned toward him. “You paid so much money toward a ranch that wasn't yours. I don’t understand.” He remained silent, so I pressed, trying to make sense of any of this. “It wasn’t your debt, Ryder.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He dragged one hand over his jaw, the rough sound of his palm against his scruff filling the quiet. “Because it was yours.”
I stared at his profile, at the slight scar curving from his mouth and the hard line of his jaw. “You didn’t know if I was ever coming back,” I whispered. “Why take that chance?”
“Didn’t matter.”
“You might’ve spent all your money taking care of a place I never wanted to see again.”
His gaze shifted to me. “I know. Didn’t matter.”
The simple certainty of his answer stole the breath from my lungs. “And no matter what, you would’ve kept doing it anyway?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” I felt like I was grasping at straws, but they kept slipping between my fingers.
His jaw tightened. “You keep asking questions you already know the answers to.”
“But I don’t. Everything has been so damn confusing since coming back here. Nothing makes sense.”
Ryder suddenly stood and walked to the porch railing. He braced both hands against the wood and stared out at the darkening fields. I watched the tension settle across his shoulders but didn’t dare say anything. I’d let him open up to me on his own.
“I couldn’t do shit when we were younger,” he finally said quietly.
“Couldn’t stop him from drinking. Couldn’t stop him from hurting you.
” I saw the way his knuckles turned white as he tightened his fingers around the railing.
“Every time I saw you scared, knowing you were hiding until he passed out….” He stopped speaking, but I saw the way his jaw clenched hard.
“I wanted to fucking kill him so many times, Lila.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The evening breeze drifted across the porch, carrying the scent of dry grass and earth. Ryder stood with his back to me, broad shoulders rigid beneath the fading light.
Then he spoke again. “Dad died when I was twenty-two. Heart attack while he was out checking fences. Mom followed him a few years later.” His gaze shifted toward me. “By then, I was already running most of the ranch anyway. There wasn't any place else I wanted to be.”
My breath caught. “Oh, Ryder.” Guilt hit me so hard I could barely swallow around it. “I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”
“Didn't expect you to.”
I looked down at my hands. “After I left, I cut myself off from all of it. This town. The ranch. Everybody.” I glanced back at him. “I didn't stay in touch with anyone. I thought if I put enough distance between myself and this place, I could pretend none of it had ever happened.”
His expression softened.
“I should've known,” I whispered.
“No, sweetheart, you shouldn't have.” He took a small step closer.
“My folks kept to themselves, and so did I after they were gone.” He glanced toward the pasture, his gaze following the fence line in the distance.
“There wasn't any place else I wanted to be,” he said quietly.
“I grew up here. Learned this land the same way I learned my own name. By the time Dad died, I was already running most of the ranch anyway, so I just kept going.”
His gaze was trained so hard on me it felt like a physical touch.
“Although this was always my home, it was missing the most important part.”
I held my breath.
“You.”
I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t let all my emotions control me, not now. In private… that was another story.
“You left, but I knew one day you'd come back. Maybe not in a year or five years, but eventually.” His jaw tightened. “I wasn't leavin' when I knew exactly where you belonged.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe. The boy I'd left behind had lost both of his parents while I was gone, and somehow he was standing here telling me he'd stayed because of me.
I finally exhaled sharply. “I did, too,” I admitted quietly. “About my father. I thought about that and more, Ryder. But we were kids. You gave me somewhere safe to be.” Just being with him, even if we sat behind the barn and watched the sun set, had meant more to me than he'd ever know.
“Wasn't enough.”
“It was to me.” I still didn't move, afraid if I did it would break whatever was passing between us right then.
He shook his head. “You still had to go back home. Still had to deal with that motherfucker.”
I decided to hell with worrying about breaking anything. I rose from the swing and moved closer, stopping behind him. “Ryder.”
“He ran you off,” he continued, his voice lower now.
“Put you on that bus and made damn sure you believed there was nothing here worth coming back for.” I could hear creaking, gripping and releasing the wood under his hands.
“I couldn’t change that. Couldn’t make you stay.
And you never reached out. Not once in fourteen years.
That broke my fucking heart, Lila. But I understood, and I knew why you had to stay gone. ”
I swallowed against the ache climbing into my throat.
“I had to leave, and I couldn’t reach out…
because every time I thought about you, it hurt too much.
You were the only good thing I had here.
If I let myself hold on to you, even from a distance, I was afraid I’d never be able to stay away, and I needed to, Ryder.
So with every year that passed, I built another wall around everything associated with Rootstown Creek.
Around this place, my piece of shit father, and you.
I almost convinced myself none of it could still touch me.
” The words were rough, but I was glad they were finally out in the open.
Ryder fully turned then, and the look in his eyes made my chest hurt. “I couldn’t keep you from disappearing, but I could make sure this place—what was rightfully yours—still stood. So that’s what I did.”
I stared up at him. “For fourteen years?”
“Yeah. Your father was worthless. When he was gone, I wanted you to still have a place that was yours—to do whatever you wanted with it.” He stepped toward me, not enough to touch but close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. “It was all I had left of you.”
The air left my lungs, and neither of us moved.
Fourteen years of distance stood between us, filled with every day I had forced myself not to remember this place. Every year I had convinced myself no one in Rootstown Creek had noticed I was gone, that no one cared whether I survived or where I ended up.
But Ryder had stayed. He had kept the ranch standing, not because my father deserved it or because the land belonged to him but because it had belonged to me.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I whispered.
“Don’t have to do anything.” His voice rumbled out, and I had to reach out and grip the banister for support. “I didn’t do it to get something from you.”
“I know.” My voice broke slightly. “That almost makes it worse.” The corner of his mouth kicked up a fraction. “I don’t know how to accept something that doesn’t come with a price.”
Something in Ryder’s face changed. The hard lines remained, but his eyes softened as he lifted one hand slowly, giving me time to move away. When I didn’t, his fingers brushed a strand of hair from my cheek.
“Nothing I give you comes with a price.”
I looked at the man standing in front of me and saw the boy who had once been my safe haven.
He was the teenager who left water and blankets in the barn because he knew I might need them when I had to hide.
Ryder was the man who paid debts that weren’t his and repaired a house filled with memories he knew had nearly destroyed me.
All this time, I had thought the ranch belonged to my father, and maybe that was why I hated it. It held hard, painful memories. But it had also held some of the best ones… with the man standing in front of me.
My father had never loved this land. He had used it, neglected it, and nearly destroyed it. Just like he did with me. Ryder was the one who had cared for it and waited.
“I kept waiting for you today,” I admitted. His thumb swept softly over my cheek. “I told myself I didn’t care whether you came by, but I knew it was a lie.”
“Lila.”
“You didn’t come because you thought I might regret kissing you.”
His gaze darkened. “Did you?”
I shook my head and whispered, “No.” I stepped closer until barely an inch remained between us. “I didn’t kiss you because I was confused. I kissed you because I wanted to.”
His hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck, warm and firm, but he didn’t pull me closer. “You sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life.”
“Need you to be more than sure.”
I held his gaze and chuckled softly. “I thought about that kiss all night. I thought about it when I woke up, while I worked, and every time I kept glancing up hoping to see you.” I placed my hand against his chest, feeling the hard beat of his heart beneath my palm. “I came here because I wanted you.”
It was then that the last of his control disappeared.
Ryder’s hand tightened at the back of my neck as he lowered his mouth to mine with a harsh groan.
The kiss was deeper than the one we had shared last night, but it still carried that same careful restraint.
He kissed me like he’d spent fourteen years imagining it and still didn’t trust that this was really happening.
I rose onto my toes and pressed closer, wrapping my arms around his neck and letting him feel the answer I couldn’t put into words.
A primal sound rumbled in his chest, and his free arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me against the hard length of his body and lifting me slightly so my toes barely touched the porch as he held me.
Everything seemed to disappear until there was only Ryder’s mouth and tongue and the steady strength of him holding me.
When he finally pulled back, both of us were breathing harder. His forehead rested against mine, and his voice came low and rough. “Tell me to stop.”
I shook my head. “Never. Take me inside.”
Ryder stared at me for one long, heated second before gripping my ass with his big, strong, and calloused palms, lifting me fully off the porch until I wrapped my legs around his waist, then carrying me toward the front door.
I'd spent fourteen years believing I'd escaped Rootstown Creek.
It turned out Ryder had spent those same fourteen years making sure I had something to come home to.