Chapter 4
HARPER
The drive to Connor's ranch took fifty minutes from town, winding through increasingly remote roads until civilization gave way to endless stretches of fence line and rolling hills dotted with cattle and horses.
The landscape was beautiful in that stark, unforgiving way Wyoming specialized in—all browns and grays under a pale sky, with patches of snow clinging to the shaded areas.
I'd made this drive hundreds of times over the years and could probably do it with my eyes closed, which was good because my hands were too busy being clammy on the steering wheel to be useful for much else.
My heart was beating too fast and my stomach twisted in knots that would've impressed a Boy Scout.
It's just dinner. I'd had dinner at Connor's a hundred times.
But not in months. Not since the night I'd told him that Morgan was using him, that he was wasting his time on someone who would never love him the way he deserved. Connor had defended her, told me I was being unfair, that I didn't understand their relationship, that maybe I was just jealous.
Jealous.
The word had cut deeper than any knife, probably because he'd been right, even if not in the way he'd meant.
I'd left his house that night with tears streaming down my face, and we'd barely spoken since.
Months of careful avoidance, of finding excuses not to be in the same room, of pretending we were fine when we absolutely weren't.
Now here I was, driving back to the place where our friendship had fractured, because I was too weak to say no to Anna and too desperate for any scrap of normalcy in my crumbling life.
I turned down the long gravel driveway, tires crunching over stones, and the ranch house came into view.
It was beautiful. It always had been, in that way that made my cramped apartment feel like a cardboard box by comparison.
A sprawling two-story structure with a wraparound porch that Connor's grandfather had built by hand in the 1950s.
White paint that Connor kept pristine despite Wyoming weather's best efforts, dark green shutters that framed every window.
Warm light glowed from inside, making it look like something out of a home and garden magazine.
Beyond the house stood the massive barn and outbuildings, the pastures where horses grazed, the mountains rising in the distance like sentinels guarding something I'd never quite been part of.
Beautiful, familiar, and painful all at once.
Anna's sedan was already there, parked next to Jaxon's Jeep. Connor's truck sat near the barn, mud-splattered and practical and so quintessentially him it made my chest ache with the kind of longing I'd been trying to ignore for six years.
I parked and sat for a moment, gathering courage I didn't have.
My reflection in the rearview mirror looked pale, tired, like I'd lost a fight with exhaustion and exhaustion had won by knockout.
I'd tried to cover the dark circles under my eyes with concealer, but it hadn't worked, so I'd added mascara and lip gloss in a half-hearted attempt to look like a functioning adult.
I just looked like a tired person with slightly shinier lips. Good enough.
Before I could talk myself out of it, or into driving back to town like a reasonable person, I grabbed the bottle of wine I'd brought and climbed out.
The February air hit me like a slap, crisp and cold, smelling of pine and wood smoke and that clean, sharp scent that meant snow was coming.
From somewhere nearby, horses nickered to each other, the sound carrying on the wind that rustled through the bare trees lining the driveway.
The front door opened before I reached the top of the porch steps.
Anna stood there, grinning like she'd just won the lottery, and pulled me into a hug the moment my boots hit the wood planks.
“Thank God you're here. I desperately need your help.”
“With what?” I pulled back, studying her face. She looked too happy, too excited. Suspicious.
“Connor's truck broke down this morning.” Anna's words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. “He needs to move hay bales from the upper barn to the lower one before the weather turns tomorrow. Jaxon offered to help but Connor's being stubborn about it. I thought maybe if you—”
“Anna.” I stared at her as realization dawned. “You're setting us up.”
“I'm helping!” She had the grace to look slightly guilty as a flush crept into her cheeks.
“You two need to actually talk and spend time together.
Moving hay is perfect! You'll be forced to work together, have actual conversation, maybe remember why you used to be best friends before everything got weird and awkward and painful for everyone around you.”
At least she's honest about it. “I don't think—”
“Harper, please. For me?” Her blue eyes were pleading now, and damn her for knowing exactly how to get to me. “I can't watch you two dance around each other anymore. It's killing me. You're both miserable and I really do think moving those bales tonight is important. There's a storm coming.”
I wanted to argue, to protect myself from the inevitable awkwardness, the way Connor would avoid looking at me and the reminder of everything we'd lost and would probably never get back.
But she was right, we couldn't keep doing this forever.
Avoiding each other like we were opposing magnets, pretending everything was fine when it absolutely wasn't. And maybe if we spent time together, worked together, we could find some fragments of what we used to have.
Or maybe we'd just make things worse. But at this point, how much worse could it get?
“Fine.” The word came out defeated, like I'd just agreed to my own execution. “Where is he?”
“The main barn.” Anna squeezed my arm before taking the wine bottle from my hand, her expression softening into something that looked almost like hope. “Thank you. And Harper? Just…be yourself.”
She disappeared back inside before I could respond, leaving me standing on Connor's porch trying to calm my racing heart. Be myself. What if that wasn’t enough anymore?
I walked around the side of the house toward the barn, my boots crunching on gravel, breath fogging in the cold air like tiny ghosts of all the things I wanted to say but wouldn't. The barn doors were open, warm light spilling out into the gathering dusk. I could hear horses moving inside and the distinct stomp of someone’s boots as they worked inside.
I stepped through the doors and stopped.
Connor stood in the center of the barn, loading hay bales onto a flatbed trailer hitched to an ATV like it was the easiest thing in the world.
He'd shed his jacket despite the cold, working in jeans and a dark gray thermal that clung to his shoulders and back in a way that should probably be illegal.
I could see the muscles in his arms flexing as he lifted each bale like it weighed nothing and the way his back moved under the thin fabric.
He looked good. Too good, which seemed fundamentally unfair given that I probably looked like I'd been dragged through a hedge backward.
His brown hair was messy, sticking up in the back like he'd run his hands through it, and there was hay stuck to his left shoulder. Dust motes danced in the light around him, and the barn smelled the way it always did of leather, hay and horses.
My heart ached with wanting something I couldn't have, which was becoming a depressingly familiar feeling.
He must have sensed me standing there like a creeper, because he turned and our eyes met. For a moment, neither of us moved. The barn was quiet except for the horses shifting in their stalls, the occasional soft nicker breaking the silence that stretched between us like a living thing.
“Harper.” My name sounded rough in his voice. Surprised, almost disbelieving, like he couldn't quite believe I was really standing there.
“Hey.” I forced myself to move closer, my boots loud on the concrete floor in a way that made me want to tiptoe. “Anna said you needed help moving hay.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath his stubble. “She did, did she?” Oh, he knows exactly what Anna's doing.
“I can go if you don't—”
“No.” The word came out too fast, too emphatic, like it had escaped before he could stop it. He took a breath, his chest rising and falling and I could tell he was trying to calm himself down. “No, I could use the help. If you don't mind.”
“I don't mind.” Liar. You mind everything. You mind that he can barely look at you. You mind that being near him hurts. You mind that you love him and he doesn't love you back.
But I grabbed work gloves from the hook by the door anyway and moved to help him, because apparently self-preservation wasn't one of my strong suits. We worked in silence at first, loading bales onto the trailer in a rhythm that would've been comfortable if we'd been anyone else.
The work was physical, demanding in a way my boutique-owner arms weren't prepared for.
Each bale weighed at least fifty pounds, the twine rough against my gloved hands, the hay scratchy and dry.
I focused on that instead of the tension crackling between us like static electricity before a storm.
Lift, carry, stack. Repeat. Don't think. Don't feel. Just work.
The hay was heavier than I remembered from the last time I helped him, or maybe I was just tired from months of skipping meals to save money and sleeping poorly because my life was a disaster.
After the third bale, my arms were already burning, the muscles trembling with effort.
I could feel sweat starting to bead at my hairline despite the cold, my heart pounding from exertion and proximity to Connor and the general unfairness of life.
“You don't have to do this.” Connor's voice was quiet, careful, like he was talking to a spooked horse, though he didn't look at me. “I know Anna ambushed you.”