Chapter 18 #2
Because if you sit in this tack room any longer, your thoughts are going to eat you alive. Because being still isn’t always restful when you’re scared.
Because the world gets smaller when you’re hurting and I want to widen it back up a little.
Because I like you so much it feels stupid and inevitable and I’d rather have you angry in a diner booth than crying alone between saddles.
I shrug instead. “Because the Old Mill serves pie till closing and I’m not above weaponizing carbohydrates.”
“Fine,” she says with a small smile. “But if I regret this, I’m blaming you.”
“Sweetheart, that was already happening.”
The Old Mill Café at night is so much fun.
The front windows shine gold against the dark street, and the little creek behind the building catches slivers of moonlight between the trees. Inside it smells of coffee, butter, cinnamon, and soup that’s been simmering all day.
Low music hums from somewhere near the kitchen. A couple sits in the far corner sharing a slice of pie and not talking. Tommy’s niece is behind the counter tonight, half-buried in a paperback until we walk in.
She grins when she sees me. “You’re out late.”
“Scandalous, I know.”
Her gaze slides to Annie and immediately softens in that observant way women in small towns have perfected over generations. “Kitchen’s still open for a bit.”
“Bless you,” I say.
Annie murmurs a hello and follows me to a booth by the window.
She’s still fragile around the edges, but not in immediate danger of dissolving, which I’m counting as a win.
I slide into the booth across from her and hand her a menu.
“What are you having?” she asks.
“Depends. Are we in a fries emergency or a grilled cheese emergency?”
She huffs a laugh. “Is there a diagnostic chart?”
“There should be.”
“Then… soup? Maybe?”
I point at her. “Excellent call. Soup is emotionally stabilizing.”
“That sounds made up.”
“It’s science.”
“You can’t just call things science.”
“Sure I can. Cody does it all the time.”
That gets a bigger laugh.
By the time the waitress comes over, Annie’s actually looking less ankle-deep in panic and more herself. Piercing, sarcastic, fueled by iced coffee and pure stubbornness.
We order tomato soup, grilled cheese, fries to share, and two coffees because I know she’ll say yes to coffee no matter what state she’s in.
For a little while, I keep things light.
I tell her about Willy accidentally volunteering himself to dress as a historical cowboy for a museum event and getting chased by a third grader with a fake lasso, and about Emmett trying to impress Red by riding a gelding with opinions and nearly getting launched into a manure spreader.
Then I tell her about the time Silas was sixteen and got bucked into a water trough in front of half the county fair and threatened everyone present with death if they ever spoke of it again.
Annie nearly chokes on her coffee laughing at that one.
“Silas?” she says, wiping at her eyes. “Mr. Reputation himself fell in a trough?”
“Like an angry brick.”
“Oh, wow.”
“He was furious.”
“I would’ve paid money to see that.”
“So would I. Still would, honestly.”
She shakes her head, smiling into her mug.
The food helps.
Halfway through the soup, Annie’s shoulders are down from around her ears. By the fries, she’s rolling her eyes at me properly. By the end of the grilled cheese, she’s telling me stories about Evan from when they were kids.
Not the current mess.
The before version.
The sweet troublemaker version. The one who built a ramp off their garage roof with a skateboard and two milk crates because he was “testing aerodynamics.”
The one who used to sneak stray cats into Annie’s room because their mother hated fur on the furniture and Annie, apparently, has been running an unauthorized sanctuary for hopeless things since birth.
I don’t say that last part out loud, mostly because I’m pretty sure she’d throw a fry at me.
But I think it.
And I keep thinking it while she talks, watching how her face changes when she remembers him in a better light. How love stays stubborn even when fear gets tangled up in it.
By the time we leave, she’s smiling more genuinely now.
The night is colder than before, and she tips her face up, letting it wake her up.
“Thank you,” she says as we head back toward the truck.
I glance over. “You don’t owe me thanks for soup.”
“It wasn’t just the soup.”
“No,” I say. “But the soup helped.”
She smiles a little. “It did.”
We drive back in comfortable silence. The kind that comes after a hard thing’s been set down for a while, even if only temporarily.
I keep my eyes on the road and try not to think too hard about how badly I want to reach across the seat and take her hand.
Not for anything dramatic. Just because I suspect she’d let me tonight, and I’m trying very hard to keep being the version of myself she can lean on without having to brace.
The ranch comes into view around the next bend, lights low and familiar against the dark.
Something feels wrong before I know why.
I pull up near the barn and cut the engine. Annie’s already looking toward the office annex.
“The door,” she says.
Yeah.
The back office door is cracked open, just enough to show a blade of light. At this hour, it should be shut, locked.
My whole body goes alert in one smooth shift.
“Stay here,” I say automatically.
She gives me a look. “Absolutely not.”
I get out first, moving fast, putting myself between her and the office without making a big show of it. She’s right behind me, all softness from the café gone hard again in an instant.
I push the door wider.
And there’s Silas.
Standing in the middle of the office with the overhead light on, one hand braced flat against the desk, the other hanging at his side so still it’s almost worse than if he were pacing. His face is thunderous.
His eyes go to Annie first.
Then to me.
Then back again. His warning to keep away from Annie jumps to mind. I can tell he can see right through me, that he knows to me this wasn’t just a friendly thing.
Well.
Hell.