Chapter 21
twenty-one
“Your office?” River laughed, but it lacked its usual confidence. “Do I need to bring a hall pass? Or is this more of a detention situation?” He glanced around at the others, searching for his usual audience, the appreciative smirks his jokes typically earned.
No one smiled. Jonah stood beside his horse, his face turned away, focused entirely on the injured mare. Boone stood with his arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes hard as river stones. Lila and Luke kept working, pretending not to hear anything.
Walker’s gaze didn’t waver, his patience thinning with each second. “Now, Beckett.”
River’s smile turned reckless. “You know, I’m actually busy right now. Got to feed the goats.” He backed up a step, hands raised in mock surrender. “Rain check on the office talk? Tomorrow maybe? Next week?”
Something snapped inside him, a dam breaking after months of building pressure. Five months of River’s constant disruptions, five months of watching the man use humor like a shield, deflecting every attempt to reach him. Five months of patience stretched beyond its limits.
“You think this is all a joke?” The words came out low, controlled, but even he heard the dangerous edge in his voice. He took a step toward River, who instinctively backed up. “This ranch? These people trying to help you?”
“Whoa, easy there, boss. I just opened a gate. It was a harmless prank.”
“Harmless? You killed someone with a prank, River.”
River’s mask slipped, revealing the raw and wounded man underneath. “I-I didn’t mean…”
Walker knew Johanna would be cursing him if she were here, but he couldn’t stop now that the fuse was lit. “You could’ve done it again today. What if Sharpe’s truck went off the road or hit one of the horses?” His voice rose with each word. “And yet here you are, still playing fucking games!”
Dead silence followed. Lila and Luke had stopped tending to Sunny and were staring, eyes wide. Jonah and Boone moved to stand behind Walker, a silent wall of agreement.
The barn door flew open, and Johanna, probably drawn by the shouting, hurried in. “What’s going on in here?”
River’s face drained of all color. His lips parted as if to deliver another quip, but no sound came out. The man beneath the jester’s mask was fully visible now—haunted, hurting, terrified. His hands trembled at his sides.
And Walker suddenly hated himself for putting that look on his face.
Then the mask snapped back into place. The smile returned, but it was different now. Brittle, like glass about to shatter.
“Well,” he said, his voice unnervingly calm, “guess the cat’s out of the bag.” He glanced around the barn, taking in the shocked expressions of everyone present. “Or should I say the skeleton’s out of the closet? Either way, quite the dramatic reveal, Nash. Solid eight out of ten for execution.”
“Shit.” His anger faltered in the face of River’s eerie composure, and he dragged a hand over his jaw. “Riv—”
“If you’ll excuse me,” River continued, backing toward the door, “I think I need some air.” He gave a small, mocking bow, then turned and walked out of the barn, his shoulders squared.
Johanna tried to reach for River as he passed, but he sidestepped her and kept going.
She looked back at Walker with wide, accusing eyes, and he braced for the blast, but she didn’t yell.
Didn’t do anything, actually. Just stood there in the hay-dust light, her hands curled into fists and her eyes dark with disappointment.
That was worse than any shouting. He would’ve preferred a slap to the face.
The barn felt like a vacuum now. No sound except the click of Lila’s suture kit and the wet, anxious snorts coming from Sunny’s stall. Boone looked pissed enough to shatter concrete with his bare hands.
Jonah watched River go, his jaw clenched tight. “I can’t feel sorry for him. He hurt my girl.”
Walker wanted to go after River, but his boots wouldn’t move.
Johanna was the one to break the silence, the words slicing sharp: “Did you have to do that in front of everyone?”
He almost told her to save it. But the look on her face shut him down. So he just turned and walked away. He needed air, too.
Johanna chased after him, following him wordlessly until he wound up in his office. She shut the door with a hard click and glared at him, hand on her hip. “That was too far.”
He turned to the window, giving her his back. He couldn’t stand the disappointment in her eyes. “He needed to hear it.”
“He needed connection, not a hammer.” She moved further into the room, her boots quiet on the worn floorboards. “You just confirmed what he already believes—that he’s irredeemable.”
“And what do you suggest?” Frustration bled into every word as he spun back to her. “Let him keep pulling stunts until someone gets killed? Again?”
She didn’t flinch. “Of course not. But there’s a difference between setting boundaries and public humiliation.”
“We’ve tried everything else, Jo. Five months of patience, of individual talks, of therapy sessions that he turns into stand-up routines. Five months of watching him sabotage every chance we give him.” He slumped against the edge of the desk. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Listen to him. Not to what he’s saying—to what he’s not saying. The jokes, the pranks, the constant motion… It’s all a distraction.”
“From what?”
“From what happens in his head when everything gets quiet.” She took another step closer, close enough that the faint vanilla and coconut scent clinging to her hair reached him. “You can’t fix everyone the same way as you did Boone. River’s different.”
His shoulders squared as he crossed his arms over his chest, jaw tightening until a muscle jumped beneath the stubble there. “I didn’t fix Boone. I just gave him—”
“Structure. Purpose. Discipline,” she finished for him. “Tough love. And it worked because that’s what Boone needed. He was drowning in chaos, and you gave him solid ground.” Another step closer. “But River isn’t drowning in chaos, Walker. He’s creating it to keep from drowning in guilt.”
He almost laughed. Instead, he grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed until pain flared. “So what, I’m supposed to coddle him? Pretend it’s fine he almost got someone killed?”
She gave him that look—all dark eyes and stubborn chin and a flash of real anger just under the surface. “You don’t coddle him. You hold him accountable. But you do it with dignity. With grace. Not like you’re trying to break him.”
“Sometimes breaking is the only way somebody figures out how to put themselves back together.”
“That’s not true,” she snapped, stepping so close he could feel the heat of her anger radiating off her. “That’s not what you did for Boone. Or Jonah. You let them feel things. You let them fuck up in private, and didn’t give them a public flogging.”
“That’s not what this was.”
Her laugh was sharp as broken glass. “Sure looked like it to everyone in the barn.”
He turned away, fists clenched, staring at the cracked window glass above his desk.
He wanted a cigarette so bad he could taste the old bitterness on the back of his tongue, but he hadn’t lit up in seven years, and he wasn’t about to start again now.
Instead, he snatched a Tootsie Pop from his desk and yanked the wrapper off, jamming the candy into his cheek. “He’s going to run.”
“Not if you go after him. Not if you fix what you just did.”
He shot her a look. “You think I can put the genie back in the bottle? You saw his face, Jo. He was gone before he hit the door.”
She took a long, shaky breath, obviously centering herself, then crossed to him. Her palm settled on his chest over his heart, and she waited until he lifted his gaze to hers.
“I know failing with Evander shook your confidence in what we’re doing,” she said softly. “But I did some research last night, and you know what I found out? Evander bought the property that borders the north pasture. The old Miller place.”
Walker’s head snapped up, the Tootsie Pop nearly falling from his mouth. “What?”
“I was looking at county records for the zoning issue, and I saw the sale went through last week. It’s his name on the deed.” Her fingers pressed more firmly against his chest. “He’s still here, Walker. He didn’t leave completely. We didn’t fail him.”
Walker stared at her, trying to process what she was saying. Evander had vanished without a word, leaving his bed unmade. But he hadn’t gone far. Just over the ridge, to land that shared a boundary with the ranch.
“Why didn’t he say anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he needed space but not distance.” Her lips curved into a small, hopeful smile. “The point is, he stayed. Even if he couldn’t stay here, he stayed close. That means something.”
Walker looked out the window over her head, north toward where the Miller property lay beyond the ridge.
Evander was there. The sniper who’d spoken maybe fifty words total during his three days at the ranch.
The man who’d disappeared without warning, leaving Walker questioning everything about Valor Ridge’s mission.
“We got through to him,” she said. “Maybe not in the way we expected, but we made a difference. We can do that for River, too.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. He looked down at her hand on his chest, at the slender fingers against the worn cotton of his shirt. Without thinking, he covered her hand with his own.
“I don’t know if I can reach him.”She didn’t move her hand from beneath his. If anything, she leaned closer, the space between them charged with more than just concern for River. “Then let me try it my way now.”
She was close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of gold in her dark eyes.
The past year of restraint, of carefully maintained boundaries, seemed to dissolve in that moment.
His free hand moved of its own volition, rising to touch a strand of hair that had escaped her braid.
His fingers brushed her cheek as he tucked it behind her ear, and he felt her sharp intake of breath.
“Jo.” Just her name, but it carried the weight of everything he hadn’t said. Everything they’d been dancing around for years.
Her eyes darkened, and for a moment, he thought she might close the distance between them. His heart hammered against his ribs as her gaze dropped to his mouth, then came back up to his eyes. The air in the office felt suddenly too thick to breathe, charged with possibility.
He pulled back, letting his hand fall from her face. This wasn’t the time. Not with River’s pain still raw between them, not with Sunny injured and the ranch in turmoil.
The ranch came first.
Always.
“Okay.” His voice was rough with more than just frustration about River. “We’ll try your way.”
She stepped back, too, creating distance between them, though her hand lingered on his chest for a moment longer before falling away.
“Good call. Always knew you were a smart man.” Her voice was light and teasing, but a flush colored her cheeks. “But that means you need to back off him for a while. Give him time. Okay?”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The ghost of her touch lingered on his skin, a reminder of what might have been if he hadn’t pulled away. What might still be, someday, if he could find the courage to cross that final line.
“I’m sorry.” The words were inadequate for everything he meant.
Sorry for losing his temper with River. Sorry for pulling away from her just now.
Sorry for crossing a line with her eight years ago, driving her husband to his death.
Sorry for the three years of waiting for something neither of them seemed brave enough to claim.
Her smile was small but genuine. “I know.” She turned toward the door, then paused with her hand on the knob. “Walker?”
“Yeah?”
“We should talk. About...” She gestured vaguely between them, leaving the rest unsaid.
“We will.”
Another promise added to the pile they’d been collecting for years.
All because the ranch came first.