Chapter 3
Chapter three
Sloane
Ispend the day in a fog that has nothing to do with the Texas heat and everything to do with the way Cash kissed me on that ridge. The way his hands felt on my waist. The way he said everything like it was a vow instead of a word.
Lucinda assigns me to fence repair after breakfast because I tell her I need to do something with my hands.
The retreat offers all the standard wellness programs like yoga, nutrition, and mindful meditation.
However, I’m bombarded with so much of that in my life at home that I can’t sit through another seminar on how to center my mind.
I told her I needed to immerse myself in things I can’t recreate in the city.
Working with my hands is the polar opposite of yoga and something I never get to do at home.
Cash is already there when I arrive, stretching wire between posts with easy competence, sweat darkening the back of his shirt. He doesn't look up when I approach, but his shoulders tense. He knows I'm here.
"Hand me those pliers," he says.
I grab them from the toolbox and walk them over. Our fingers brush during the exchange, and heat shoots up my arm. His jaw tightens, but he doesn't acknowledge it. Just turns back to the fence and twists the wire like he’s done it a thousand times, his forearms flexing with each rotation.
We work without small talk. He teaches me how to set posts and check tension.
His hands move with certainty, and I find myself watching the flex of muscle under his sun-darkened skin, the way his fingers curl around the wire cutters.
He catches me staring twice. He doesn't call me on it, only holds my gaze until I look away first, heat prickling under my clothes.
By lunch, my hands are blistered and my shoulders ache, but the tension in my chest has loosened.
The physical work feels good, quieting the constant calculation in my head about what I should be doing instead.
It’s satisfying to see what I’ve accomplished, rather than lying on a yoga mat wondering if I’m centered enough.
I humor Lucinda in the afternoon and attend a journaling workshop.
The instructor gives a few prompts and says to write, just write.
If we don’t know what to write, she says the words I don’t know what to write, written over and over again, will turn into something.
She’s right, but I stop when I’ve doodled three different versions of Cash’s name like a twelve-year-old with a crush.
My cheeks burn pink with embarrassment until I remember that nobody’s going to check my work.
Dinner is communal in the main lodge, with ranch hands and guests at long tables passing family-style platters of brisket and cornbread.
I sit next to a woman from Dallas who's here for the same reason I am.
Burnout. She talks about her marketing firm while I push green beans around my plate, fork scraping porcelain, barely tasting the food.
I nod and make appropriate sounds, but I'm tracking Cash across the room where he sits with the ranch hands.
He's laughing at something one of them said, relaxed in a way I never am.
When his eyes meet mine across thirty feet of crowded space, heat crawls down my spine and blooms in my pussy.
The condensation on my water glass wets my palm, and I have to set it down before I drop it.
After dinner, I retreat to Cabin 5. I open my laptop, but the Wi-Fi barely reaches, and my brain won't focus anyway. Every time I close my eyes, I feel his mouth on mine. I taste coffee and want and seventeen years of waiting.
The knock comes just as the sky is going purple.
I know who it is before I open the door.
Cash stands on my porch holding a plate covered with a kitchen towel. He's showered since dinner, hair still damp, wearing clean jeans and a Henley that makes his eyes look almost black in the fading light.
"You didn't eat enough," he says.
"I ate."
"Not enough." He lifts the towel. Brisket. Cornbread. Peach cobbler that's still warm. "Can I come in?"
I should say no. Should maintain boundaries. Should remember that I'm here for two weeks and then I go home to real life and a career that's waiting for me to prove I'm not broken.
Instead, I step aside.
He walks past me, and the cabin shrinks around his size. He sets the plate on the small table and pulls out a chair for me, waiting. I sit because my legs won't hold me anymore. He takes the other chair, turns it around, and straddles it with his forearms resting on the back.
"Eat," he says.
I pick up the fork with shaking hands and take a bite of brisket.
It's good. Better than good. This is the kind of food that tastes like someone cared about making it.
I take my time with the meal, aware of his gaze.
Each bite is a stalling tactic, a way to navigate the heavy, unvoiced tension that fills the gap between us.
When the plate is half-empty, I set down the fork. "Why didn't you ever reach out?"
The question has been building all day. All seventeen years, if I'm honest.
He's quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing random arcs on the back of the chair. Then he leans forward with clasped hands. "You left for a reason. I didn’t want to be the thing that held you back."
"You wouldn't have—"
"Yes, I would have." His eyes hold mine. "You had this whole life planned. College graduation. Job in Seattle. You talked about it that last morning like it was the only path that made sense. I was a ranch hand making minimum wage. What was I going to offer you? A trailer and uncertainty?"
Words stick behind my breastbone. "I shouldn’t have cared about that."
"You damn well should have." He reaches across the table, taking my hand. His palm is comforting and warm, and I don't pull away. "You were twenty-one. You had your whole life ahead of you. I wasn't going to be the reason you gave that up."
"So you just let me go."
"Hardest thing I've ever done." His thumb strokes across my knuckles, and the touch sends sparks up my arm. "But I thought it was the right thing. Thought you'd move on. Build your life. Find someone who could give you what you deserved."
"I did move on." The lie tastes bitter. "I built my career. Got promoted. Made VP before I was thirty-five."
"And?"
"And I thought about you." The confession breaks a lock in my chest. "More than I should have. You were the one who got away. Every time I went on a date. Every time someone tried to get close. I compared them all to you, and none of them ever measured up."
His grip tightens on my hand. "Sloane." The muscle in his jaw jumps. "How much is 'more than you should have'?" he asks, voice rough. I look away, but he catches my chin with his free hand and turns my face back to his. The calluses on his fingers rasp against my skin. "Tell me."
"Enough that no one else ever felt right." The words are raw and true. "Enough that I'm thirty-eight years old and I've never—" I stop, unable to finish.
"Never what?"
My shoulders curl inward, arms wrapping around my ribs like I can hold the truth inside. "Felt safe enough to let go and really give myself to them." The admission makes my eyes burn. "With anyone. Ever."
The world around us stops. He pulls me up, and the distance between us vanishes into a feverish heat. I’m pinned against the hard planes of his chest, his hands anchoring my waist while his breath ghosts over my lips.
"I'm not letting you run this time," he says quietly. "Not unless you tell me you don't want this."
"I don't know what I want. I don't even know who I am anymore."
"I do." He cups my neck, closing the distance until our foreheads touch, and his thumb finds my pulse point.
"You're the woman who stayed three extra days because you didn't want to leave.
The woman who laughed at herself when her horse spooked that second morning, who said well, that's embarrassing like admitting fear was the worst thing she could do.
I remember everything about you, Sloane. You're still her."
The specific memory undoes me. That I'm not just a blur of spring break to him. That he kept the details.
I shake my head against his. "That girl was reckless. I had to grow up."
"No. You had to survive. There's a difference."
The truth lodges beneath my ribs. He's not wrong.
Somewhere between twenty-one and thirty-eight, I stopped choosing joy and started choosing achievement.
Stopped asking what I wanted and started asking what I should want.
I built a life that looks successful from the outside but feels empty from the inside.
"Cash." His name breaks on my tongue, a breathless surrender that I couldn't have held back even if I’d tried.
He steps back, giving me space I don't want, and walks to the door. For one terrible second, I think he's leaving. Then he turns the lock. He comes back and stands in front of me with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes burning into mine.
"I'm not asking for forever," he says. "I'm asking for permission."
My breath catches. "Permission for what?"
"To take care of you." He steps closer, walking me backwards until I hit the bed. "To show you what it feels like when someone puts you first. To prove that letting go doesn't mean losing yourself."
I should step back. My body moves closer instead, choosing him before my brain can object. "Okay," I whisper.
There’s no rush in him, only a quiet, respectful deliberation.
When his fingers find the skin beneath the hem of my shirt, he lingers, his thumbs tracing my ribs while he waits for my permission.
I give him a small nod, and he pulls the shirt over my head.
Cool air hits me, but it’s his darkening, intense expression that takes my breath away.