CHAPTER 4 #2
The words hit too near the place he kept sealed. He reached for the come-along instead of answering.
They rigged the pull from the new anchor to the sagging top strand.
Colt set the hook. Tuck checked the bite.
Wren moved along the creek to lift the bottom wire free of a limestone notch with the cedar stay, careful not to put her hands where the barbs could catch.
She knew enough to respect stored tension, and still his skin prickled every time she leaned in.
"Step back," Colt said.
"I need another inch."
"Wren."
"I heard you."
She worked the wire up, jaw set. The strand came free with a sound like a plucked instrument, the barbed wire humming under tension as the pull shifted through the broken gap. The calves startled. One bolted along the bank. Another lunged forward.
Wren slapped the stay down and blocked it, but her boot slid in the slick hollow.
Colt moved before thought could catch him.
The come-along handle kicked. The top strand snapped upward, still caught and mean enough to take a strip from skin. Wren's balance went. She pitched sideways toward the wire.
Colt hit the creek with both boots, cold water shocking through denim. He caught her around the waist and hauled her back against him. The loose strand hissed past where her ribs had been, barbs flashing dull in the sun.
For one beat, neither of them moved.
His hands were locked at her waist. Her back pressed to his chest. Water shoved around their legs, cold from the shaded cut, and the wire sang above them with a thin, angry tremor.
He felt the hard pull of her breath, the way she held herself still, as if any motion would name what had just gone through both of them.
She was alive. Uncut. In his hands. That should have been the end of what mattered.
Nothing about it was fair. Her shirt was soaked under his palms, and memory moved through him before he could stop it. He had no right to keep it, not after the life he had built, not after Harlow, not with Beau waiting for every stable piece of him.
Colt let go.
Wren stepped forward so fast water splashed against both of them. She did not look at him. "Thank you."
"You hurt?"
"No."
"Look at me."
"I'm looking at the wire that tried to skin me."
"Wren."
She turned then. Color rode high in her face, but her eyes were clear, scared and angry at being scared.
"I'm not hurt," she said. "Are you?"
"No."
Tuck stood on the bank with one hand on the come-along, expression carved down to almost nothing. "I set the brake."
Colt nodded once. His heart had not settled. "Good."
"Need her out of the creek?"
Yes, Colt thought.
Wren said, "Need this fixed before your calves discover free will."
Tuck's mouth moved again. Colt would have paid actual money for the man to stop almost smiling.
Colt climbed out first, then offered Wren a hand because the bank was slick and refusing would make the moment larger. She studied his hand, breath caught, then took it.
Her fingers were cold through the wet glove.
He pulled her up. She gained the bank, released him, and bent to wring creek water from the bottom of her shirt. He looked away because looking felt like taking something.
"I'll handle the pull," he said.
"I can keep the calves back from up here."
"You can stand behind me from up here."
She straightened. "That sounds a lot like an order."
"That's because it is."
"I don't work for you."
"Then consider it a request with teeth."
Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment he saw the girl who used to dare him across low-water crossings after storms. "You always did think teeth improved a request."
"And you always did think arguing counted as helping."
"It does when I'm right."
He nearly kept from smiling. The bare hint of it changed the air anyway.
Tuck cleared his throat. "Calves."
The red calf had crept forward again. Wren scooped up the cedar stay and smacked it against the dry weeds this time. "Back with your bad ideas."
The calf backed.
Colt returned to the come-along. This time they moved with more care.
Tuck held the brake and called the tension.
Colt ratcheted slow. Wren stood upslope and kept the calves from crowding, her body placed exactly where pressure would turn them without panic.
She never crowded their eyes. Never chased.
She made the wrong choice inconvenient until they chose the right one.
Old knowledge. Old Wren.
No. That was too simple. She was this woman with mud on her boots and secrets behind her mouth, wearing city polish over ranch sense and shame he could see but not read.
Reading it scared him. That was the lie he kept using because it held better than most.
When the top strand came tight, it gave a clean, low note. Colt stapled it to the new post, leaving enough play for water. Tuck cut and passed tie wire. Wren asked for pliers before Colt could reach for them, then twisted a repair loop with neat, economical turns.
Colt watched her hands.
"What?" she asked without looking up.
"Nothing."
"You've been staring like I'm using a dinner fork."
"Didn't know you remembered that knot."
"It's not a knot."
"Twist, then."
"And I didn't forget everything just because I left."
There it was. The word with all its weight set between them.
Tuck took a sudden interest in hauling the loose bottom strand out of the creek.
Colt pressed a staple against cedar with his thumb. "Some things looked forgotten from here."
Wren's pliers stilled.
He regretted it. He also meant it.
She resumed twisting the wire. "Eight years is a long view."
"Long enough."
"For what?"
He drove the staple in with two sharp strikes. "For a person to know when somebody isn't coming back."
The creek made its small hard sounds over stone. A cow bawled from the ridge. Heat pressed down, but Wren stood in the shade of the leaning live oak and looked cold all at once.
"I came back for Della," she said.
"I know why you're here."
"Do you?"
He looked at the muddy boots, the wet denim, the feed-store gloves too big for her hands.
He looked at the supplies she had brought for Sudie's fence and spent on his emergency without wanting reimbursement.
He thought of the quick panic in her voice when he offered to pay.
Pride, maybe. Or maybe she did not want a Duvane debt tying her to town when she planned to leave as clean as she could.
People who could afford to leave always talked like leaving was weather, something everyone else had to stand in.
"You'll help with the wedding," he said. "You'll fix what needs fixing, charm who needs charming, prove whatever you came to prove. Then you'll go back to Austin or wherever comes next."
Wren looked at him a long moment. "You say that like I have a map already printed."
"Don't you?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. In the old days she would have thrown truth at him because she had trusted him to catch it. Now she tucked it away where he could not reach. "No map survives Dusthallow roads."
"That's a dodge."
"So was yours about Beau."
His patience thinned. "Leave Beau out of this."
The color drained from her expression so fast he felt the cruelty of his own tone. She had protected Beau's routine with a schedule question, the kind any decent person in his orbit knew mattered. Fear had shouted over what he knew.
Wren set the pliers on the post. "I wasn't bringing her into anything. I asked because I know you need to pick up your daughter."
"Junie has her."
"And you still know exactly how late you are."
He looked away first.
That was another thing he hated.
They finished the brace in work silence, passing tools, shifting weight, reading weather off each other's shoulders.
Wren held cedar stays while he wired them.
Tuck drove the second post. Colt rebuilt the lower swing with a chain length that would give in a rise and hang true in a dry week.
They used Wren's tie wire because it was there and because pride was expensive when calves were involved.