Seven
CASS
Something had changed between me and Walker, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant.
I couldn’t pinpoint when the shift happened.
Maybe the night in the barn, when we’d traded confessions like precious secrets.
Maybe the long hours in the truck, talking about everything and nothing.
Maybe it was simpler than that—the accumulation of small moments, shared glances, the way his hand brushed mine when he passed me coffee in the morning and neither of us acknowledged it.
Whatever it was, I’d stopped seeing him as an adversary. I’d started seeing him as something that made my pulse quicken whenever he was near.
“You’re smiling,” Dakota observed, sliding into the booth across from me at Rosie’s, one hand resting on her very round belly. “You never smile before noon. Or, really, ever. This is about Walker Kane, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cass. I’ve known you since we were five and you punched Tommy Patterson for pulling my hair. I can tell when you’re lying.”
So I told her. The real him, not the broker persona—the ranch he’d lost, the father who’d worked himself to death, the way he’d helped with the calving, gentle and competent. The way he’d looked at me in the barn like I was something precious instead of just someone useful.
“He sounds good,” Dakota said when I ran out of words. “Different from the ‘arrogant city boy’ Jessie described.”
“He’s different from what I expected too.
But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For him to turn out like everyone who’s ever promised to stay.
” The words came out more bitter than I intended.
“Mom left—not by choice, but she left. Lily left for Austin and barely looks back. Dad left, in a way, when the stroke took so much of who he was. Everyone I’ve trusted to stay has found a reason to go. ”
“Not everyone leaves, Cass.” Dakota squeezed my hand.
“I almost didn’t let Colt in. After everything last year, I was so scared of being hurt that I nearly pushed away the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
I’m not saying jump in with both feet. I’m just saying—don’t let fear make your decisions for you.
Sometimes the scary thing is also the right thing. ”
The trouble was, the fear and the wanting had started arriving at the same time, and I couldn’t always tell them apart anymore.
We spent that afternoon following a thin lead to a feed store two counties over, where the owner thought he might recognize Double Star’s truck.
The lead went nowhere—it usually did—but the drive didn’t.
There was something about the cab of that old truck, the windows cracked, the radio low, that loosened both our tongues.
Walker told me about the towns he’d lived in, the aliases he’d worn, the strange loneliness of a life where no one knew your real name.
I told him about the years right after Mom died, about learning to braid Lily’s hair from a library book because I was too proud to ask the church ladies for help.
“You were what, fourteen?” he said.
“Thirteen.”
He was quiet a moment, watching the road. “You know most people would’ve broken under that.”
“Most people didn’t have a choice. Same as me.” I shrugged, the way I always did when a conversation got too close. But he didn’t let it slide the way most people did.
“Having no choice and not breaking aren’t the same thing, Cass.
Plenty of people fall apart whether they’re allowed to or not.
” He glanced at me. “You held three other human beings together with your bare hands when you were barely more than a kid yourself. I’ve met decorated officers who couldn’t have done it.
I just want to make sure somebody’s told you that. ”
Nobody had. I looked out my window so he wouldn’t see my face do something embarrassing, and we drove the rest of the way in a silence that didn’t feel empty at all.
By the time we pulled back into the ranch, I’d stopped trying to figure out which feeling was the fear and which was the wanting.
They’d tangled together too thoroughly to separate, and I was too tired to keep pretending I wanted to.
The emergency came that evening, just as the sun was starting to paint the western sky orange and pink.
One of the pregnant heifers—the one I’d been watching most closely—went into labor hard and fast, and I could tell from the first glance that something was wrong.
She was straining without progress, her sides heaving with effort that wasn’t producing results.
I called the vet. Dr. Alvarez was forty-five minutes out, dealing with a colic case.
I called Walker without even thinking about it, his number already as familiar as my own.
“I need you. Emergency calving. It’s bad.”
“On my way.”
He showed up in twenty minutes, half-dressed, shirt buttoned wrong, hair a disaster, but his eyes alert and his hands steady. “What do you need?”
“The calf’s breach. I need to turn it.”
What followed was three hours of backbreaking, heartbreaking work.
The calf was positioned completely wrong—legs folded back, head twisted in a way that made delivery impossible.
The heifer was exhausted, her contractions weakening with every minute.
I worked on instinct and desperation, years of experience guiding my hands even as my brain screamed with fear.
Walker was beside me the whole time, following my instructions without argument, holding the heifer when I needed her held, pulling when I told him to pull, talking to her in a low, soothing voice that seemed to calm her even through her pain.
We were both covered in sweat and blood and worse, both running on pure adrenaline and the stubborn refusal to give up. When the calf finally slid free—alive, breathing, fighting—I collapsed against the stall wall, tears streaming down my face before I could stop them.
“You did it,” Walker said, looking at me like I’d worked a miracle. “You saved them both.”
“We saved them.” My voice cracked. “I couldn’t have done it alone.”
He sat beside me, our shoulders touching against the rough wood. The heifer was already cleaning her calf, her rough tongue working over the little body with fierce determination. New life, against all odds. A victory in a world that too often dealt in losses.
“You were amazing,” he said quietly. “The way you stayed calm, kept going when it looked impossible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ve done it before. More times than I can count.”
“That doesn’t make it less impressive.” He was looking at the calf, but I had the sense he was talking about something larger.
“You know what I keep thinking? An hour ago that animal didn’t exist as anything but a problem.
A breach, a thing going wrong in the dark.
And you just—refused to let it die. The same way you refused to let Thunder die.
The same way you refused to let your family fall apart.
” He turned to me then. “You’ve spent your whole life pulling things into the world that everyone else had given up on.
I don’t think you even see it anymore. It’s just what you do. ”
I didn’t have words. Nobody had ever named the thing I did and made it sound like a gift instead of a burden.
I turned to look at him. We were both filthy, both exhausted, the barn dim around us. Something cracked open in my chest, something I’d been holding closed for years.
“Walker—“
“I know.” His eyes met mine, soft in a way I’d never seen. “I know.”
We didn’t kiss. The moment was too fragile, too new.
We just sat there, shoulder to shoulder, watching a new life take its first breaths.
But when he reached out and took my hand, I let him.
When his fingers laced through mine, I squeezed back.
And when he helped me up, his arm around my waist to steady my exhausted legs, I leaned into him instead of pulling away.
I was terrified. But maybe, just maybe, I was ready to be brave.
A few days later, we were driving back from another dead-end interview when I told him to pull over.
“There’s a spot up ahead,” I said. “Turn here.”
He bounced the truck up a narrow dirt road that wound to the top of a small hill, and at the top was a clearing that stopped his breath—I watched it happen.
Rolling hills in every direction, painted in the last gold of sunset.
The creek glittering in the distance like scattered diamonds.
The vast Texas sky bleeding from coral to violet to deep indigo.
“My mother used to bring me here,” I said, getting out. “When I was little. Before she got sick. She said it was the best view in the county.” I paused. “She was right.”
Walker came to stand beside me at the edge of the overlook. “It’s beautiful,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at the view. He was looking at me.
“Don’t,” I said, holding up a hand. “Whatever warning you’re about to give me about this being complicated or unprofessional or a terrible idea—I know. I know all of it.”
“I was going to say you’re beautiful.”
I blinked, completely thrown. “What?”
“You’re beautiful.” He stepped closer, drawn by something stronger than common sense. “I should be keeping my distance. I know that. But I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop wanting to be near you. And I don’t know what to do about it anymore.”
My chest rose and fell with quickened breath. “I haven’t let anyone close in a long time. I convinced myself it was safer. You let people in, they find a reason to leave.” I shook my head. “But being around you makes me want things I’d given up on wanting. And that terrifies me.”
“I terrify you?”
“The way I feel about you terrifies me.”
The sun sank lower. Somewhere a mockingbird sang its evening song. And I was so tired of being alone, and he was looking at me like I was someone worth wanting—
He kissed me.
His lips were soft, hesitant for a fraction of a second before I responded. My hands came up to grip the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. He tasted like coffee and possibility, like the beginning of something I’d stopped believing in years ago.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
“That was a mistake,” I said.
“Probably.”
“We shouldn’t do it again.”
“Probably not.”
Neither of us moved away. The first stars were appearing overhead. “Walker,” I whispered. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “But I don’t want to stop.”
“Neither do I.”
We drove back with our hands linked across the center console like teenagers on a first date. At my porch, he kissed me again—soft and slow, a promise.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Whatever this is. Together.”
“Together?”
“Together.”
I smiled—a real smile, open and unguarded in a way I hadn’t been in years. “Goodnight, Walker.”
I watched him drive off, my heart doing something complicated in my chest that I didn’t have words for. Something had shifted tonight. I wasn’t sure if it was good or terrifying or both.