Chapter 3 Calla
Calla
The sky turns fast over the ridge.
One minute the clouds sit heavy and gray. The next they split open and the rain hits the pasture hard. Cold and sudden and soaking through my shirt before I make it halfway down the slope.
I should go back inside.
I don't.
The north fence leans where the ground softened during last night's storm. A post shifted, wire sagging low enough that the horses could test it if they felt curious.
That's all I need. A mare pushing through the fence line with rain coming down sideways and Rowan Cade already stirring up trouble in my barn.
I grab the hammer from the tool bucket and drive it into the dirt beside the post.
The earth smells sharp and wet. Mud pulling at my boots with every step. I like this part. The physical honesty of it.
The post leans worse than I thought.
The rain has softened the ground around the base, so the whole thing tilts east, pulling the wire down in a long, lazy sag.
A horse could step right over it if she had a mind to. And horses always have a mind to when the grass looks greener on the wrong side of a fence.
I dig around the base with the heel of my boot, loosening the mud, then brace my shoulder against the post and shove it upright.
The wood is rough through my shirt. Wet grain pressing into my skin. The post resists for a second, then settles into the hole with a slow sucking sound.
I hold it there. Breathing hard. Rain is running down my face and into my collar.
This is the part of ranching nobody photographs.
Nobody writes songs about a woman standing in the mud at seven in the morning holding a fence post upright with her shoulder while the rain tries to knock her sideways. Nobody puts that on a calendar with a sunset behind it.
But this is the work. This is what the land asks for every single day.
Not the pretty parts. Not the golden hour light on the upper pasture or the colts running in spring. The ugly parts. The mud and the sweat and the fence that falls again three weeks after you fixed it last time.
I love it anyway. I love it because it's mine.
Because nobody else is going to hold this post while the rain comes down. Because the land doesn't care if I'm tired or lonely or carrying a weight I can't name. It just needs the fence fixed.
And there's freedom in that simplicity that I have never found anywhere else.
The staple gun jams on the second pull. I clear it with numb fingers, wiping the rain from the mechanism. My hands are red from the cold. The calluses on my palms catch on the metal.
Good hands. Working hands. My father's hands, though I try not to think about that too often.
He had hands like these before the drinking softened them. Before the ranch fell away from him one season at a time and he stopped trying to hold it.
I hold mine tighter.
No one watches you fix a fence. No one has an opinion about how you hold the staple or how hard you swing.
It's just the work and the land and the satisfaction of a thing standing straight because you made it.
I shove the post upright and wrap the wire tighter around the staple. Rain runs down my face. Into my collar. My hands slip once, then again.
A shadow falls across the fence line.
I feel him before I see him. The shift in the air that happens when Rowan Cade enters. Not loud, not dramatic. Just a change in pressure, like the weather turning.
My body has always registered his presence before my eyes confirm it, and that fact irritates me in a way I refuse to examine too closely.
I don't need to turn.
"You always pick the worst time."
Rowan's voice carries low over the rain. Not teasing. Just stating facts the way he always has.
I keep working. "You don't get to criticize the schedule."
"I get to critique the technique."
I glanced up.
He stands on the other side of the post with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and that pocketknife turning slowly in his hand. Rain darkens his shirt. Water runs along the line of his jaw, down the side of his throat.
My hands tighten on the fence post.
"You planning to help or narrate?"
"Both, if you'll let me."
He says it like he's asking about the fence. He's not asking about the fence. The question underneath it presses against the rain and the mud and the whole cold morning, warm and persistent.
I tighten my grip on the staple gun.
The thing about Rowan is that he doesn't perform.
Every other man I've met since he left has performed something. Toughness, charm, interest, concern. They wear it like a shirt they picked out for the occasion. Rowan just stands there being exactly who he is and lets you decide what to do about it.
It's infuriating. It's also the reason I haven't been able to replace him with anyone, and I've tried. Not often, not with enthusiasm, but I've tried. Two dates in Asheville that felt like job interviews.
A rancher from the next county who brought flowers and talked about himself for ninety minutes straight.
A farrier named Cole who was kind and steady and looked at me like I was something worth knowing, and I still couldn't make myself feel anything beyond mild appreciation for his skill with a hoof knife.
None of them stood in the rain like it was nothing. None of them reached for the wire without being asked.
None of them were him.
The corner of my mouth wants to lift. I don't let it.
He steps over the wire without hesitation. Boots sinking into the mud like nothing. He grabs the sagging line and pulls it tight with one hand, the muscle in his forearm flexing hard against the tension and holds it there without being asked.
"Hold the post."
I wrap both hands around the wood. Rough grain pressing into my palms.
Rowan bends to drive the staple deeper. The hammer hits metal. Sharp. Precise. The fence line stiffens between us.
The rain keeps falling.
We work like that for a few minutes. No conversation, just the rhythm of it, the way work has always been its own language on this ranch.
I used to love that about him. The way he never needed to fill silence. The way his hands already knew what to do.
His shoulder brushes mine when he reaches for the next staple. The contact sends a jolt through my arm that I pretend is from the cold. He pretends not to notice. We are both very good at pretending by now.
The rain thickens. It runs down the wire between us in silver lines, dripping from the barbs in small bright drops. The pasture beyond the fence is a wash of gray and green.
The horses have moved to the tree line for shelter, standing shoulder to shoulder the way horses do when the weather turns, their breath making small clouds in the cold air.
I watch Rowan's hands on the wire. The way he wraps the loose end around the post with three quick turns. The efficiency of it. The care. He handles the wire the way he handles everything. Like the thing in his hands matters, regardless of what it is.
My father worked the same way. Quiet attention paid to every task, no matter how small. Fence post or foaling stall, feed order or water line. The same hands, the same focus.
I think that's what my father recognized in Rowan before he recognized it as a threat. A boy who worked like he belonged here. A boy who loved the land the way the land deserved to be loved.
And then loved the rancher's daughter the same way.
"You're better at this than you were," he says. Not a compliment. An observation.
"I've had eight years of practice without you."
"Shows."
I don't know what to do with that. A man who left me complimenting the woman I became without him. So I do what I always do when I don't know what to feel. I work harder.
I shift my grip on the post. My boot slides on wet grass.
The ground tilts.
Rowan's hand catches my waist before I hit the mud. Solid and warm straight through the soaked denim. For one full second neither of us moves.
My breath stops somewhere behind my ribs.
His grip tightens. Just enough to steady me. Just enough that I feel every point of contact like a brand.
"Careful, sunshine."
The nickname lands low. Almost mocking. Almost something else entirely.
I straighten slowly. His hand stays at my waist a beat longer than necessary. Two beats.
"I don't need catching."
His fingers slide away. "That's never been true."
Lightning cracks somewhere over the ridge. The sound rolls through the pasture like a warning neither of us takes seriously enough.
I reach for the wire again. Rowan reaches at the same moment.
Our hands meet.
His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist. Small, accidental. The skin there goes so hot it feels like a burn and I'm sure he feels the change because his whole body goes still.
The rain runs down both of us. My shirt clings to my skin. His gaze drops for a second and the heat in it is enough to make me forget the cold entirely.
Then his eyes lift.
"You shouldn't be out here."
"It's my fence."
"That's not what I meant."
I tilt my head. "Then say what you mean."
He looks at me the way he used to at the stream. Like the words cost more than he wants to pay.
"You always run toward trouble."
"And you always think you can stop it."
The wire hums between us. Tension pulled tight enough to snap.
"You going to run again?"
His jaw sets. "No."
One word. No explanation. Just the word sitting there like a stone that he means to leave in the ground permanently.
I push the last staple into the post. The fence stands straight again.
Rowan's hand rests on the top wire. My fingers still grip the wood.
The distance between us shrinks until I can hear the change in his breathing. Slower now, more controlled, like he's working to keep it even.
"You keep calling me sunshine."
His mouth tilts. The closest thing to a smile I've seen from him since he walked back into my barn.
"You keep answering."
"I told you to stop."
"You told me why."
I step closer. Just enough that the wire presses lightly between us. A thin line that doesn't stop anything.
"And."
"And I don't believe you."
The words hang there between us, rain sliding down the back of my neck, the storm easing just enough to hear each other clearly.
I should step back. I know that.
I don't move.
Neither does he.
Rowan's gaze drops to my mouth.
He doesn't ask.
He doesn't warn me.
His hand slides from the wire to my jaw. Rough fingers, warm palm. And he kisses me.
Not soft. Not careful. The kind of kiss that says I've been waiting eight years and I'm done waiting.
My hands hit his chest. Not to push him away. Just to hold on.
He pulls me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist, and the kiss deepens. Slow and hungry and completely unashamed. Rain soaks us both. I don't care.
His mouth moves against mine like he's memorizing something he once lost and has no intention of losing again.
His hands slid down my waist. My hips. He grips and pulls me flush against him and the contact hits me everywhere at once. The fence rail digs into my lower back.
His body is hard against mine, chest, hips, thighs, and I can feel exactly what this is doing to him.
A sound leaves my throat that I didn't give permission for.
Rowan groans against my mouth. Low. Rough. The sound of a man who has been holding himself in check and just lost the argument.
His mouth drags from my lips to my jaw. The curve of my throat. His teeth graze the place where my pulse hammers and my head tips back and the rain hits my face and I don't care about any of it except the heat of his mouth on my skin.
My hands pulled at his shirt. Untucking it. My fingers find bare skin above his belt, hot and rain-slick and real, and he shudders. Actually shudders.
The controlled, grumpy, unreadable man shudders under my hands like I've cracked him open.
"Calla." My name breaks against my throat. Not a warning. A surrender.
His hand slides under the hem of my flannel. Palm flat against my bare waist. His thumb traces the curve of my ribs, and I arch into him and the wire behind me groans under our combined weight.
I want more. I want his hands everywhere. I want the shirt off and the rain on both of us and nothing between his skin and mine.
I reach for his collar.
He catches my wrist. Gently. His breathing is ragged. His forehead drops to mine.
"Not here."
The words come out wrecked. Nothing controlled about them.
I open my eyes. His are dark. Pupils blown. He looks like a man fighting himself and losing badly.
"Why."
"Because if I don't stop now, I won't stop at all. And you deserve better than a fence line in the rain."
My body screams at me to argue. Every nerve I have is lit and aching and furious at the concept of stopping.
But I see his hands trembling where they grip my waist. I see what it costs him to hold still. And I understand.
He's not pulling away because he doesn't want this. He's pulling away because he wants it too much to do it wrong.
I press my palm flat against his chest. His heart slams against my hand. Fast. Desperate. Nothing like the still expression on his face.
"This isn't over," I say.
"No." His voice is raw. "It isn't."
He steps back. One pace. Just enough space to breathe.
The cold rushes in between us like a punishment.
I grip the fence post to keep myself upright. My legs are not entirely trustworthy now. My shirt is half untucked and my skin is still burning everywhere he touched me.
I look like a woman who just got kissed within an inch of her life against a fence post in a rainstorm. Because I did.
Rowan runs a hand over his face. Rain drips from his jaw. He looks at the ridge road and goes still.
I follow his gaze.
Tire tracks. Fresh. Running parallel to the fence line in the mud, close enough that whoever drove them could have watched us from thirty feet away.
My stomach is dropping.
"Halford," Rowan says.
I look at the tracks. At the distance. At the clear view of two people who forgot the world existed for thirty seconds.
Rowan's hand finds mine. Squeezes once.
"We should go inside."
But I don't move. Because the part that scares me isn't Halford seeing us.
It's that I don't care that he did.