Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Duke
I know something’s off before I even see her.
That’s the problem with caring about somebody. Once it gets under your skin, you start noticing absences as much as presences.
The way a laugh doesn’t show up where it should. The way a room feels wrong when one specific person hasn’t walked in. The way your whole body clocks a missing thing before your brain gets around to naming it.
Annie skipped dinner, and while sometimes she’s late, skipping it isn’t something she does.
I give it fifteen minutes.
Then twenty.
Then I tell myself I’m just going to check the office because Annie’s got a habit of working straight through hunger until late when something’s chewing at her.
She isn’t in the office or in the upstairs hall. Isn’t on the back porch with her camera or at the paddocks where she goes when she wants air and doesn’t want to admit it.
Which is how I end up crossing the yard in the dark with a flashlight in one hand and a bad feeling in my chest.
The night cool bites a little. The kind of Pacific Northwest cold that sneaks down your collar and reminds you the mountains are always closer than they look.
The yard lights cast long amber pools across the gravel, and the barns sit beyond them, dark and watchful. The tack room door is half open. A stripe of dim yellow light cuts across the packed dirt outside, and there she is…
Sitting on an overturned bucket between the saddle racks and the wall of bridles, shoulders curled in, trying to make herself smaller than she is.
Her blue hair’s still twisted up, but not well anymore. A few bright strands have come loose and stuck to her cheeks. Her elbows are braced on her knees, face in her hands.
I go still.
Then I hear it, the broken edge of a breath she’s trying very hard not to let become anything bigger.
Well.
Hell.
I set the flashlight down on a shelf by the door and lean one shoulder against the frame.
“Hey,” I say, soft enough not to startle.
She jerks anyway.
Her head snaps up, her eyes are red, and there’s no real graceful way to describe what that does to me, except to say I feel it low and immediate, all twisted up.
“Duke,” she rasps. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
She scrubs both hands over her face hard enough I want to stop her. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.”
“Don’t.”
I nod once. “Okay.”
And I mean it.
That’s the thing people get wrong about comfort, I think. They assume it’s questions. Interrogation with a gentler tone. Helpfully cornering somebody until they either confess or cry harder.
Sometimes, maybe.
Not tonight.
Tonight she’s got that brittle look again. She’s one wrong word away from either bolting or shattering and would resent me deeply for either one.
So instead of pushing, I step inside, grab a second overturned bucket from against the wall, and set it down beside her.
Then I sit.
She blinks at me.
“That’s it?” she asks after a second.
“That’s what I’ve got so far.”
“You’re not going to ask?”
“I can, if you want.”
“I don’t.”
“Then no.”
The tack room smells of leather, cedar shavings, and that deep horsey warmth that gets into wood and fabric and skin.
Somewhere outside, a horse stamps in a stall. The barn settles around us, old beams giving little creaks that feel almost conversational in the dark.
Annie stares at the floor.
I stare at the saddle soap tin on the shelf across from us because if I stare at her too hard right now, I’m going to start saying things I probably shouldn’t.
“Who made you cry? I’m gonna need a name.” Or “whatever it is, you don’t carry it alone tonight.”
All true.
All a bit much if she hasn’t invited me in yet.
So I wait, and after a minute or two, her breathing starts to even out a little. It’s a little less jagged around the edges.
“Duke, you have no idea what that thing you do does to me.”
I glance over. “Which thing? I’m extremely charming in a variety of ways.”
“The sitting there thing.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Yeah. Big skill set.”
Her mouth twitches a fraction.
Good.
“I learned a long time ago,” I say, “that people usually talk faster when they don’t feel hunted.”
That gets a real look from her. Tired, puffy-eyed, still piercing as hell.
“Is that your professional opinion?”
“Absolutely. I’m basically a specialist.”
“In what?”
I lean back a little on the bucket and fold my arms. “Snacks, emotional support, strategic nonsense.”
A broken laugh slips out of her before she can stop it. Then her face crumples again, smaller this time, and she presses her lips together hard.
When she talks again, it comes out so soft I nearly miss it. “My brother called.”
Ah.
Well, that’s not what I expected.
“What happened?” I ask.
She lets out a huffed laugh. “He needs money.”
Oh. Okay, this is family stuff I don’t know if I should be a part of… but she is inviting me in.
“How much?” I ask carefully.
She says the number.
I startle. “Jeez.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not ‘can you spot me for groceries’ money.”
“I’m aware.”
The dryness in her tone would almost be funny if her eyes weren’t full again.
“What kind of trouble?”
She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t tell me everything.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s irritating.”
“I know.”
“Do you know enough?”
“I know he sounded scared,” she says, and that’s the part that does it. That’s the knife in it. “Really scared.”
Well.
That makes it worse.
She rubs both palms over her jeans. “I said I’d help.”
“Of course you did.”
She finally looks at me then, defensive already. “He’s my brother.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t have anyone else.”
I tilt my head. “You don’t have to sell me on loving him, Annie. I’m not arguing with that part. You’ve met my brothers, right? I know it isn’t always easy.”
Some of the fight leaves her shoulders.
“It’s just hard,” she eventually stumbles out. “I don’t know how long I should keep helping him for. But I also can’t stand the idea of something bad happening to him.”
There’s so much packed into that I don’t even know where to start, so I pick the most important part. “You’re not weak for loving somebody who needs you.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “Feels stupid.”
“Not the same thing.”
Her eyes slide shut.
I can see how hard she’s working to keep it together. Not just tonight. In general. All the time. Annie moves through the world as if she’s learned not to expect softness unless she manufactures it herself. Asking for help is just another way to end up beholden.
I hate that.
Hate it in that deep, personal way that means I’m already too far gone.
Because here’s the truth I’m not saying out loud yet: I definitely like her. More than I should. More than is practical. More than I’ve ever liked anybody with this kind of speed and certainty, which seems unfair considering I’ve been trying to behave all civilized about it.
And I think maybe the reason I’m not panicking about that is because some part of me has already decided it doesn’t matter what this turns into.
Right now, tonight, she needs somebody who doesn’t flinch at her life.
I can do that. Easy.
I lean forward, forearms on my knees. “How fast do you need the money?”
“Fast.”
“Like tonight fast?”
“Like tomorrow morning would already be pushing it.”
I breathe out through my nose. “Okay.”
Her head lifts.
“I can help,” I say.
Her entire body goes rigid. “No.”
I should’ve expected that.
Still, I hate the way the panic hits her face. I wish there was more I could do for her.
“Annie—”
“No.” She shakes her head hard. “Absolutely not. I’ve sent him the money already.”
“Then let me send it to you. It’s just money.”
“To you.”
That stops me.
Money means something different on this ranch than it does in most places. Ironwood’s got the kind of generational wealth that makes practical people twitch.
But Annie doesn’t say it cruelly. She says it as fact.
Worse, she says it as a fact she’s embarrassed to point out.
I nod slowly. “Fair.”
“I’m not taking your money. I just needed someone to talk to.”
“You don’t have to say it like I offered you a kidney.”
Her mouth pulls tight. “Duke.”
“Alright. Alright.” I lift both hands. “I hear you.”
She watches me, waiting for the push. The argument. The whole let me fix this for you whether you like it or not act that men with resources and affection sometimes confuse for love.
I don’t give it to her.
Because her refusal isn’t rejection. Not really.
It’s information.
It tells me exactly where the edges of her panic live. Exactly what kind of help feels unbearable and what kind of shame she’s carrying around being the person everyone leans on.
So no, I’m not going to keep offering the one thing she just told me she can’t hold.
Instead, I nod once and say, “Okay.”
Suspicion flickers across her face. “Okay?”
“Okay. No money.”
I can practically see her recalculating. “You’re not going to fight me on it?”
“Nah.” I lean back a little. “Seems like you’re already fighting enough.”
That gets me a long look.
And under the sadness, under the stress and pride and fear, her expression loosens. Not because I fixed anything. Because I didn’t make it worse.
Good.
We sit there another minute. Then I glance at the tack room around us and decide I’m done letting her drown in here in her worries.
“Come on,” I say, standing.
She frowns up at me. “Where are we going?”
“Out.”
“At…” she checks her phone, “ten at night?”
“Best time for it.”
“I’m not really in the mood for an adventure.”
“Good thing I said fresh air and food, then.”
She stares at me. “You think food is the answer to everything.”
“Almost everything.”
“This is deeply on brand.”
“Thank you.”
I hold out a hand, not because I think she needs help standing, but because it gives her something simple to decide.
After a second, she takes it.
I pull her to her feet and let go right away, because if I remain I’ll think too hard about how right her hand felt in mine, even for half a second.
“You’re taking me into town,” she says slowly. I guess she still can’t decide if I’m a saint or a problem.
“Yup.”
“Why?”