10. Chapter 10
Cade
The fence post comes out of the ground easier than expected, which means I've been getting stronger without noticing. Noah hands me the replacement, and I drop it into the hole, holding it steady while he packs dirt around the base.
"She filed the notes yesterday afternoon," he says without looking up. "Paige told me."
"I know." I watched Quinn disappear into the barn with her laptop, watched her come out an hour later with shadows under her eyes and her jaw set like she was going to war. "She's building something. A defense."
Noah straightens, brushing dirt off his jeans. "My sister doesn't build defenses. She builds walls. There's a difference."
The distinction lands harder than it should. I've seen the rubber band on her wrist. She snaps it when I get too close, when the music runs too long, when her guard slips and something real shows through. That's not defense. That's survival.
Noah studies me for a long moment, his lawyer eyes assessing. Whatever he sees makes him exhale slowly through his nose. "She's been doing things alone for five years. Since that pitcher decided lying was easier than accepting rejection."
The story I've heard in pieces. The career she rebuilt brick by brick.
The ethics policy she helped write because someone used her professionalism against her.
I've been careful not to ask for details because they're hers to give, but knowing the shape of the wound makes me want to find the man responsible and have a conversation.
"I'm not him," I say.
"No." Noah picks up the post hole digger and moves toward the next marker. "You're potentially worse. Because she cares what you think."
I follow him across the field, processing.
Quinn cares what I think. Quinn, who deflects every compliment with clinical precision.
Quinn, who tracks my progress in color-coded folders and won't meet my eyes during dinner.
Quinn, who plays guitar beside me in the dark like music is the only language she trusts.
"I'm not going to hurt her."
"You might not mean to." Noah drives the digger into the ground with more force than necessary. "But she's put everything into this protocol. Her reputation. Her career. Her family's property. If that call goes wrong, she loses it all. And if you're the reason it goes wrong..."
He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.
I grab the other side of the digger and help him pull. The Montana soil gives way, dark and rich, nothing like the clay back East. "What can I do?"
"Stay out of the way. Let her documentation speak for itself."
"What if it's not enough?"
Noah pauses, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool morning air. "Then you decide whether you're the kind of man who stays when things get hard, or the kind who was only here for the convenient part."
I think about the dugout. The empty bench I couldn't sit in because watching my team play without me felt like drowning. I think about the six months after my shoulder, when staying meant waking up every morning to pain and uncertainty and the possibility that I'd never catch again. I stayed then.
"I'm staying," I say.
Noah nods once. "Good. Now help me finish this fence before my sister comes out here and yells at both of us for exceeding your load parameters."
We work in silence for another hour. The sun climbs higher, warming my back through my shirt.
My elbow aches in the familiar way it has since week two, a low-grade reminder rather than the sharp warning it used to be.
Progress. Quinn would document this moment, add it to her charts, note the date and the activity level and the pain scale.
She documents everything except the look she gave me on the porch last night.
By the time we finish the last post, my shoulders burn and my hands are rough with dirt.
Noah drives us back to the house in his truck, and I spot Quinn in the barn through the open door.
She's at the table with her folders spread around her, laptop open, rubber band nowhere in sight because her fingers are too busy typing.
"Don't," Noah says quietly.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were going to offer to help. She doesn't need help. She needs to feel like she's managing something."
I understand that. Intimately. When baseball took my body away, I managed what I could. Ice schedules. Tape jobs. The exact pressure of my grip on a ball I wasn't allowed to throw. Managing is the last refuge when everything else falls apart.
So I go to the house instead. Shower off the dirt and sweat. There's a text from Diaz about pitch sequencing. I type back a two-line breakdown and send it before I can second-guess it. He's learning fast — maybe faster than I did at his age.
I push the thought away and focus on what I can do. Getting healthy. Staying out of Quinn's way. Being here when she needs me and invisible when she doesn't.
***
Dinner happens at six. Noah makes something with chicken and vegetables that tastes better than it looks, and Quinn appears from the barn with her laptop under her arm and her hair escaping its ponytail.
She sits across from me, same as always, and talks about ranch logistics with the clinical precision she uses for everything.
"The irrigation's holding," Noah says. "Whatever you two fixed is working."
"It was mostly Cade." Quinn doesn't look at me when she says it. "I just approved the activity level."
"The man dug post holes for three hours. Pretty sure he did more than hold the post."
Quinn's fork pauses halfway to her mouth. "Three hours?"
"Within parameters," I say quickly. "No sharp pain. Controlled loading."
She sets her fork down. Studies me with those assessing eyes that see everything. "Your elbow?"
"Fine."
"Scale of one to ten."
"Two. Maybe two and a half after the last forty minutes."
Her fingers twitch toward her wrist, but the rubber band isn't there. I watch her process the number, run it against her internal charts, decide whether to lecture me or let it go. The tension in her shoulders drops as she decides.
"I'll add it to the notes," she says, and picks up her fork again.
Progress.
***
After dinner, I help Noah with the dishes while Quinn retreats to the porch. I can see her through the window, guitar across her lap, fingers picking out something slow and sad. The song drifts in through the screen door, mixing with the sound of water running and plates clinking.
"She plays every night," Noah says. "Has since we were kids.
Mom taught her on that guitar." He hands me a wet plate to dry.
"Quinn was the one who took to it. When we lost them — Mom and Dad both, to a car accident about six years back — she stopped for a while.
It took her a long time to find her way back to it.
" He's quiet for a moment. "Then Boston happened, and she put it down for two more years.
She wouldn't even look at it. Said music made her feel too much. Made it harder to keep the walls up."
I turn the plate over in my hands, not seeing it. Two losses, not one. Two times Quinn rebuilt herself from nothing and chose to keep going. The pitcher didn't break someone who was whole. He broke someone who was already carrying the weight of the first time she'd had to start over.
"I should..." I nod toward the door.
"You should." Noah takes the dish towel from my hands. "Just remember what I said. She needs to feel in control. Don't push."
I don't push. I grab my guitar from the guest room and walk out to the porch as quietly as I can manage. Quinn's eyes flick up when the screen door opens, but she doesn't stop playing. I settle onto my usual step, the one that creaks under my weight, and find the chord she's holding.
We play.
The song shifts and changes, her leading, me following. She moves from sad to something almost hopeful, and I match her. The Montana sky darkens above us, stars appearing one by one, and the cattle settle in the distant pasture.
"Kristen will have questions about every decision I've made since you walked into my office," she says between songs.
"I know."
"If she finds anything, if there's any indication that this protocol was compromised by personal factors..."
"Quinn."
She stops playing. Her fingers rest on the strings, silencing them. I can see her profile in the dim light from the house, the tension in her jaw, her shoulders curved forward and braced.
"I'm not going to make this harder for you," I say. "I know what's at stake. Your career. Your reputation. Everything you built after..." I don't finish. I don't have to.
"He told people I was unprofessional." Her voice is barely above a whisper. "That I let feelings interfere with treatment. I didn't. I never. But it didn't matter because once someone says it, people believe it."
"Quinn."
"I can't go through that again. I won't survive it twice."
The admission costs her something. I can see it in the way her shoulders curve further in, her fingers tightening on the guitar neck. This is the wall Noah mentioned. The one she built to survive.
"You're not going through it again," I say. "Your documentation is airtight. Your outcomes are the best Reyes has seen in years. Kristen can ask every question she wants, but she can't argue with results."
"Results don't matter if the process is tainted."
"The process isn't tainted." I set my guitar aside and turn to face her fully.
"You've been nothing but professional. Every boundary you set, I've respected.
Every rule you made, I've followed. If Kristen wants to claim otherwise, she'll have to explain why your patient is ahead of schedule with zero complications. "
Quinn looks up from her guitar and meets my eyes. Really meets them, not through me but at me — and I hold her gaze without looking away.
"You followed the rules," she says slowly.
"Every single one."
"Even when you didn't want to."
I think about the porch. The music. The nights I wanted to reach across the space between us and pull her close. The mornings I wanted to ask if she'd thought about me the way I thought about her. The way I still think about her.
"Even when I didn't want to."
She exhales slowly. Her fingers release the guitar neck, and I watch the tension drain out of her hands.
"Friday," I say. "After the call. When you've proven that everything you did was right. What happens then?"
She doesn't answer right away. Just looks out at the dark pasture, her guitar quiet across her lap.
"I don't know yet," she says finally. "But ask me again after Friday."
It's not a promise. But it's the closest thing to one she's offered, and tonight that's enough.