Chapter 2
Ethan
Four-thirty in the morning, and I’m checking the south fence line for the second time, even though nothing is wrong with it, but I need something to do with my hands.
Scout picks her way along the ridge in the dark without so much as a nudge from the reins.
She knows this route, every dip, every loose post, and spot where the ground softens after rain.
I trust her feet more than my eyes out here.
The sky stretches in shades of ink and charcoal, and the silence is so complete that I can hear Scout’s breathing sync with mine.
The not-sleeping is becoming a pattern.
Last night, Jenna laughed at something I said about a cow and a screen door, and the sound went through the phone and into the base of my skull and stayed there. I’m still carrying it. Her tired laugh, the real one, not the one she uses at work. I know the difference now.
Jenna’s coming to the ranch next week. I haven’t told anyone.
Not Daniel, who’d run a threat assessment on my life choices, nor my younger brother Gabriel, who’d turn it into a joke.
Not Maggie, who’d start cooking for twelve and ask pointed questions about bedding arrangements.
I haven’t said it out loud because saying it makes it real and real means a woman I’ve been talking to every night for six months is going to walk through my front door and I’ll see her face and she’ll see mine and we’ll find out whether this thing survives open air.
The mare sidesteps a loose rock, and I correct without thinking, knees steady, weight centered. A thousand mornings of this. My body knows the work even when my head is somewhere else.
I don’t know what Jenna looks like, but I’ve memorized the sound she makes when she forgets to be careful—a startled, unguarded thing, like someone kicked a door open inside her.
I’ve learned that her blood sugar crashes at 4 p.m., and her breathing changes when she’s thinking, becoming slower and more measured, as if she’s rationing the air.
Every night I hang up and press my hand flat against my chest, like I can keep her voice inside my ribcage.
She’ll see my room and the cats and the tech setup I run from the barn loft and the version of me that doesn’t fit the frame—the one with glasses and cold coffee and three browser tabs open at midnight tracking soil data.
The ranch version is easy. Contacts in, hat on, fence line and cattle.
The other version is the one I don’t show people because cowboys don’t hunch over laptops at 2 a.m. or rescue feral kittens.
Cowboys don’t fall in love with women they’ve never seen over the phone, like characters in the books she reads.
Except I did. And she’s coming. And if I stop moving, I’ll have to sit with the size of what I’m feeling, and I don’t have a fence on this ranch big enough to hold it.
The mare stops. Her ears flick forward and her head lifts, her senses attuned to something ahead.
Following her gaze, I see a car in the ditch, nose down, driver’s side crumpled against the fence post I replaced in March. One headlight still throws a weak beam into the scrub.
I dismount, already moving down the slope, boots sliding on the dew-wet grass. My hands become steady, as they always do in emergencies, as my training kicks in. Ordnance training. You don’t shake until after.
The driver’s door is open, and the airbag has been deployed. I can see blood on the steering wheel—not a lot, but enough.
The driver’s seat is empty.
I grab my flashlight from the saddlebag and switch it on, scanning the ditch.
The halo of light falls on broken glass, skid marks, and a woman’s canvas bag lying in the dirt.
I grab it and sling it over my shoulder.
Ten feet from the car, half hidden in the scrub brush, a woman lies on her side, knees drawn up, arms around herself.
For one second, I think she’s dead. Then her ribs move.
I’m on my knees beside her in an instant. “Hey. Can you hear me?”
No response. I gently place my fingers against her neck to check her pulse.
It’s fast but strong. She has a gash on her temple, the blood now clotting.
My gaze moves over her, along with my hands, as I carefully check her for further injuries.
Her hands are scraped raw, and dirt is ground into the heels of her palms. She crawled out.
Pulled herself from the wreck, dragged herself into the brush, and stopped here, curled tight, like an animal finding cover.
Like someone who knows how to hide.
I check for breaks. Nothing. She’s intact. Battered and unconscious, but intact.
I startle as a goat suddenly appears from the darkness and licks her hand. Dorito. Progeny of Cheese Puff and Biscuit, he’s an unholy little terror like his mother. He pushes his mouth against her jacket pocket, sniffing with the single-minded devotion of a goat who has detected a crumb.
“Not now.”
He licks her hand again.
Straightening, I grab the keys from the ignition and quickly return to the injured woman.
It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the house.
I can’t mount the horse with her in my arms, so I slide one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders, and lift.
Her head tips against my shoulder, and her warmth seeps into me through both our jackets.
I absorb everything about her in a heartbeat—the curve of her waist under my arm, the smell of her hair beneath the road dust. My body notices every point of contact, filing data my brain didn’t authorize, and I can’t make it stop.
The mare follows without being led, and Dorito trails behind, like a chaperone nobody asked for, his hooves kicking up dust.
The sky is opening up, becoming pink at the edges. The ranch house is a dark shape on the hill. My arms burn as I carry my burden, but I don’t adjust my grip. I hold her exactly the way I picked her up because the way she’s settled against me feels like a lock clicking into place.
Halfway back, she stirs. Her fingers curl into the fabric of my jacket with the grip of someone who holds on to whatever's solid.
Her eyes crack open, unfocused and concussion-cloudy. But I know.
“Jenna?”
It comes out before I can stop it. Her name is in the open air for the first time, not into a phone, not in the dark of my room. Here. With her blood on my shirt.
She doesn’t respond. Her fingers tighten on my jacket for one breath, then go slack.
I walk faster.
Entering the living room, I place her in the corner of the couch, where the arm meets the back cushion, so that when she wakes, she’ll feel supported and safe.
I don’t think about why I know she needs that sense of security or why she’s here early.
I just do it. The desire to take care of her is instinctual.
I carefully remove her sneakers, noticing they’re worn at the heels, the laces knotted instead of tied.
I set them by the couch, pointing toward the door.
Easy to find. I lay the wool blanket over her without tucking it in so she doesn’t feel trapped when she wakes.
Her dark-framed, oversized glasses are askew.
My thumb brushes her temples as I reach out instinctively to remove them, and I pull my hand back as if I’ve been burned.
Her bag goes by the door. Her keys on the side table.
Maggie, always an early riser, appears in the doorway as I stand over her, taking in the scene with the calm of a woman who’s raised Sutton men for thirty years. She sees the blood on my shirt, the woman on the couch, and doesn’t flinch.
“Found her in the ditch by the south fence,” I say. “Car’s wrecked. Head wound, scrapes, possible concussion.”
“I’ll call Doc Henderson.” Maggie disappears.
A minute later, I hear her on the phone, followed by the click of the stove. Maggie’s solution to every crisis is to feed everyone.
In the lamplight, I look at her properly for the first time.
The bitten nails, gnawed to the quick. Dark circles so deep they look painted on.
Slight and wiry, built like someone who takes up as little space as possible.
Her sleeves have ridden up, and the skin on her forearms is red and inflamed, raised in patches that have nothing to do with any car wreck.
Maggie returns with a mug of coffee, which she holds out to me. She gives me a knowing look, but she doesn’t voice all the questions in her eyes. This woman, who’s been like a mother to me, is giving me the space to deal with whatever is happening here.
Every cell in my body says that this woman on the couch is mine, my Jenna, but I can’t prove it. I’ve never had a “my” girl. I’ve had fences to fix and brothers to hold together and cats to rescue and a life built around being needed without needing anything back.
Until she wakes up and confirms her name, I’m just a stranger, hoping. And hope is something I don’t usually allow myself because hope means wanting, and wanting means it can be taken away. I’ve built an entire life around not putting myself in that position.
Maggie squeezes my shoulder, pushes the door open to the kitchen, and leaves without asking any more questions.
Doc Henderson arrives twenty minutes later with a black bag older than I am and the unhurried pace of a man who’s delivered babies and bad news in equal measure. He nods at me, glances at the woman, and doesn’t ask questions I can’t answer yet.
I step back, not far, but enough to give him room to work.
He checks her pupils with a penlight. Listens to her breathing. Presses gently along her ribs while I watch his hands and remind myself that he’s a doctor and this is medicine and my objections to him touching her are irrational.
“She’s lucky,” he says, straightening. “Mild concussion, and her scrapes are superficial.” He pauses, turning her arm gently. His brow furrows at the inflamed patches running from her wrists to her elbows. “This isn’t from the crash.”
“I know.”