Chapter 15
fifteen
Anson paced the length of the forge, the floor planks creaking beneath his weight.
The kittens slept in their home, tiny bodies curled around each other, oblivious to his restlessness.
He checked their water, their heating pad, the latch on their door—all perfect, all exactly as they should be.
But the sick worry gnawing at his gut wouldn’t settle.
He kept seeing Princess Jellybean wrapped in his flannel, shaking and bloody.
Kept seeing the horror on Maggie’s face when she realized someone had deliberately hurt the cat.
Someone who might have been watching her cabin that first morning.
“Fuck,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
Bramble lifted his head from his bed by the stove, amber eyes tracking his movements.
“Go back to sleep.” He nudged the dog’s flank with his boot. “Just checking on them.”
Bramble huffed but settled back down, his muzzle resting on his paws.
Anson rubbed the back of his neck, muscles tight with tension.
Sleep wasn’t going to happen, not with his mind spinning through worst-case scenarios, not with the image of Maggie’s face—pale, scared—lodged in his brain.
Lila and Bear had taken Princess to the nearest animal hospital, promising to do everything possible.
The cat was stable but critical. Blood loss.
Dehydration. The knife wound had missed her vital organs, but infection had set in.
“Pure fucking luck she’s alive,” Bear had grumbled when he returned.
What kind of person would stab a cat?
The kind who might do worse to a woman?
And Maggie was alone in that cabin.
Anson grabbed his coat and hat off the hook by the door. Bramble stood, stretching.
“Stay,” he commanded, shoving his hat onto his head. “Watch them.”
The wolfhound grumbled his annoyance but settled back down, resting his muzzle on his paws, eyes still fixed on Anson as if to say, “You’re being an idiot.”
Maybe he was. But he needed to know Maggie was safe.
The cold air hit him as he stepped outside, sharp enough to sting his lungs.
The ranch lay quiet under a blanket of stars, buildings dark except for the security lights that Walker had installed after last summer’s trouble.
He crossed the footbridge, boots crunching on the first thin layer of frost. Not quite winter, but close enough to feel its approach in his bones.
The path to Maggie’s cabin seemed longer tonight, each step weighted with uncertainty. What was he doing? What would he say when he got there?
I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d make sure you’re okay?
Pathetic.
But honest.
Her cabin windows glowed with soft light. She was still awake. Standing at the edge of her porch, he raised his hand to knock, then froze.
This was a mistake.
She needed space after today’s shock, not him crowding her with his awkward presence. Not after he’d run from her at the barn. Not after he’d put his hands on her by the creek, saying things he shouldn’t have said, making promises he wasn’t sure he could keep.
He lowered his hand and turned to go.
“Anson?”
His heart stuttered. Maggie sat in the darkness at the far end of the porch, wrapped in what looked like every blanket in her cabin.
“You’re outside,” he said stupidly.
“Couldn’t sleep.” She tugged the blankets tighter around her shoulders. “Too quiet inside. Feels safer out here where I can see what’s coming.”
The admission gutted him—that she felt safer outside in the cold than inside where someone might be watching. He moved up the porch steps without thinking, stopping a few feet from her chair.
“Any word from Lila?” she asked.
“Princess is stable. Critical but fighting.” He shifted his weight, hands awkward at his sides. “She’s got a chance.”
“That’s good.” Her voice was small, almost lost in the rustling of the blankets as she huddled deeper.
He hesitated. He should walk away now. Go back to the forge and the kittens. But his feet wouldn’t move. “Do you… want company?”
“Please.” She gestured to the empty chair beside her.
He settled into it, the old wood creaking beneath his weight. The night wrapped around them, stars scattered like metal shavings across the anvil of the sky. For several minutes, they just breathed together, watching their exhales form ghost-clouds in the cold air.
“Who’s Landry?” he asked after a while. The question had been eating at him since she murmured the man’s name with a look of pure horror on her face.
Maggie went completely still beside him. Then, slowly, she turned to face him, her expression hidden in shadow.
“How did you know that name?”
“You said it. By the creek. When we found Princess.” He kept his voice neutral, careful. “Said ‘it was Landry, wasn’t it?’”
“Oh.” She looked away, staring into the darkness beyond the porch. “I didn’t realize.”
He waited, giving her space to decide whether to answer. The silence stretched between them, comfortable despite the weight of unspoken things.
“Landry was my co-host,” she finally said. “Before I got my own show. We dated for a while, too.” She pulled the blanket tighter. “It didn’t end well.”
Anson nodded, sensing there was more. His hands curled into fists on his thighs, already hating this man he’d never met.
“When the network gave me my own show, he didn’t take it well.
Started showing up places he shouldn’t be.
Calling at all hours. Leaving things at my house to let me know he’d been inside.
” Her voice remained steady, but he could see the tension in her jaw, the way her knuckles whitened around the blanket’s edge.
“I filed police reports. Multiple restraining orders. Nothing stuck.”
He remembered exactly when her letters changed—she’d talked about tools disappearing or things just not feeling right, and no matter how cheerful her words, he’d sensed the undercurrent of fear in them. “Jesus, Maggie. This has been going on for years, hasn’t it?”
She nodded slowly. “At first, I thought I was paranoid. Things would move in my house—nothing big, just... a mug on a different shelf. A chair at a different angle. I’d think I was losing my mind.”
“You’re not.” He fought to keep his voice steady. “Crazy.”
“I know that now.” She tucked her knees to her chest beneath the blankets. “But when you’ve spent your whole life being shuffled around, never having stability... you learn to question yourself first.”
“Shuffled around?”
“Foster care.” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “Eight homes in ten years. Some good, some... not so good. You get used to adapting, becoming whoever they need you to be to stay. But you never really belong anywhere.”
The admission pierced something deep in his chest. All those letters they’d exchanged, and she’d never shared this part of herself. Never mentioned the childhood that had taught her to question her own perceptions, to adapt or be abandoned.
“Where’d you find peace?” he asked, because he needed to know, needed to understand the woman who had driven two thousand miles to find him. “As a kid.”
“Abandoned places.” Her voice softened. “Construction sites after the workers went home. Half-built houses. Places where I could see the bones of things.” She shifted in her chair, leaning closer to him.
“I’d imagine how they’d look finished. What I’d do differently.
It was... control, I guess. Over something. ”
“That’s how you started. Building.”
She nodded. “By sixteen, I was hanging out at construction sites, asking questions. By eighteen, I was working with a small crew renovating houses. No one cared that I was a foster kid with no family. They just cared that I could frame a wall faster than guys twice my size.”
He understood that—the refuge of work, of creating something concrete in a world that made no sense. The forge had saved him in the same way.
“Is that why you came here? Really?” He turned to face her fully. “Because of Landry?”
For a long moment, she didn’t answer. The blankets slipped from her shoulders as she leaned forward, her face half in shadow.
“He started showing up places—restaurants, work sites, once at my dentist.” Her voice grew tight. “The police said there was nothing they could do because he hadn’t threatened me. But I felt threatened.”
Anger coiled in his gut, hot and dangerous. “Fucking cops.”
“Then someone broke into my house while I was filming. Nothing taken, but there was a photo left on my nightstand.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “A photo of me sleeping in that very bed. Taken that week.”
The anger ignited into something darker. Something that made his hands clench into fists.
“The police said there was no sign of forced entry. Suggested I’d let someone in and forgotten. Or maybe I’d taken the photo myself for attention.” Her laugh was brittle. “Can you imagine? Taking a photo of yourself sleeping for attention?”
“What did you do?”
“I filed for a restraining order. It kept getting ‘lost’ in the system. I installed cameras. Changed the locks. Started sleeping with a baseball bat. Considered getting a gun, but then I was afraid he’d use it against me.
” She closed her eyes. “Then one night I came home and my back door was open. Wide open. No cameras triggered. No alarm. Nothing missing. Just... open. Like a message. ‘I can get to you anytime.’”
“Jesus.” The word came out like a prayer.
“That’s when I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t keep living like that, jumping at every shadow.
” She looked at him directly. “And you were the only person who ever really listened when I talked about feeling unsafe. In your letters. You never dismissed it or told me I was overreacting. So I came here.”
“To hide.”
“At first. But now...” She hesitated. “Now I don’t want to hide anymore. I want my life back. I want to stop being afraid. I want—”