Chapter Eight
Amara pulled into the James family farm, tires crunching over gravel older than she was.
Generations had walked this land—her daddy inheriting it when he came back from war, her granddaddy before him. The soybean fields stretched flat and endless, the farmhouse sitting squat and stubborn against the horizon, too proud to fall down, too tired to stand tall.
The porch light flickered dim against the late September dark. A signal. A prayer. A reminder that her mama would still be up—alone in that big kitchen, waiting on a daughter who never stopped running but always came back.
She cut the engine and sat in the heat. Her hand trembled on the wheel.
Back.
That’s all she could offer.
Not home. Not safe. Just…back. For now.
Because if she stayed—really stayed—if she let this place bury her the way it buried everyone else, then maybe Ethan was right.
And she’d rather burn than let him be right.
She climbed out of the truck, boots hitting dirt with too much purpose. The air smelled like cut stems, diesel, and pond algae—home’s old perfume. But there was mildew in it now. Something sour. Something rotting under the skin.
Moths battered themselves against the porch light like they didn’t know what else to want.
Everything else looked the same.
It was she who’d changed.
Amara turned and stared at that wavering porch light. Let herself look for too long. Then said it out loud—just to hear something steady in her own voice, “Just for now.”
She squared her shoulders and started toward the barn.
Night chores first.
Muscle memory would have to do.
The barn door slid rough on its track. Inside, the heat doubled, sweet with hay and old leather.
The stallion lifted his head, ears flicking.
“Hey, boy,” Amara murmured, relief loosening something she didn’t know she’d clenched.
She checked the trough—low—and dragged the hose across the packed dirt.
Water thudded hollow then filled, a cold ribbon in the dark.
She snapped a fresh salt block into the holder, palmed the stallion’s neck, breathed in horse and dust and something like calm.
Out back, she latched the side gate, nudged the trash can lid tight against the raccoons’ midnight raid, kicked a chunk of broken asphalt out of the path so the farm hands wouldn’t trip.
She slowly circled the barn, back to the house. On the porch, the screen door’s spring squealed the same high complaint it had since she was ten. She wiped her hands on her jeans and pushed inside.
Just inside, the kitchen table held a white ring from a sweating glass that hadn’t been moved all day.
A novel lay open but unread, Mama’s reading glasses face down like they’d tried to walk away and failed.
Pill bottles stood at parade rest by the sink—morning, noon, night—fuller than they should be.
The fridge hummed a note that felt like a headache.
Mama had long gone to bed. The place was silent.
Amara washed her hands at the sink, fingers under water gone warm.
The window over the basin framed the same yard she’d memorized barefoot at eight—swing set ghosting out near the pecan, the stump where Daddy quartered a rattler one summer and nailed the skin to the shed to dry.
It was all still there. Only she wasn’t the girl who believed summer was endless and houses didn’t sag and men kept their promises.
Amara flicked off the kitchen light and the house exhaled, shadows settling back to where they lived.
In the hallway, pictures lined the wall—first day of school, barrel-racing medal crooked in its frame, Daddy in dress blues grinning a grin that hid too much.
She touched the glass as she passed and didn’t stop to feel what it did to her.
The shower beat the dust off her like rain on tin.
She stood under it too long, forehead on tile, letting the hot water burn the kiss out of her mouth until her skin prickled.
When the heater coughed cold, she shut it off, wrapped up, and padded to her old room—pink walls painted over, posters gone, ghosts still pinned where tape once was.
She pulled on a tank and cotton shorts, braided her damp hair, and lay back. The ceiling fan clicked like a metronome over a slow, mean song. She made herself think numbers.
Brock’s last invoice—materials only, because he wouldn’t bill his hours yet.
Trusses due in two weeks. Septic permit stalled.
Electrician deposit she didn’t have. Tin for the roof if she could find it secondhand.
That damned irrigation line on life support.
She did the math the way Daddy taught her, steady, no panic.
Bar tips, two doubles this week. If she sold the spare saddle and the old barrel-racing tack, she might cover a third of the truss deposit. Maybe.
She turned on her side and stared at the dark window, screen cut with moth wings. I’ll pay him, she promised the empty room. I don’t know how, but I will.
At some point she slipped under.
It wasn’t sleep so much as falling through rotten boards.
The dream came fast—door slam, breath sour with beer, the glint of a wedding ring right before the world went white.
The old terror, bracing for it. The thud of her own back against drywall.
A voice in her ear, low and mean, saying she made him do it.
She tried to move and couldn’t. She tried to scream and swallowed it.
She jolted awake with a strangled sound, heart sprinting, shirt stuck to her skin. The fan clicked on, on, on. She sat up, fingers pressed hard to the pulse in her throat like she could pin it down.
Water. She needed water.
The glass on the nightstand waited for her. She drank until the ache in her chest eased, then carried it empty to the window and pushed it open. Night heat breathed in—crickets, the damp green of soybeans, a fox yip way out by the tree line. The porch light threw its weak halo over the drive.
That’s when she saw it. The silhouette of a quiet truck squared against the dark, paint dull under dust, bumper dented—familiar now.
Of course.
Ethan, sleeping in his damn truck like he was a watchdog, like the gravel was his post and she was the mission.
The sight hit her someplace wordless—deep in the gut, hot and cold at once.
Anger rose first. What right did he have?
Who asked him to watch the house she was trying not to drown in?
Then something else slipped in behind it, sly and unwelcome, the little drop in her chest that felt like relief.
When was the last time he’d been up this drive?
She was fifteen when he first came here—when Daddy set a plate in front of him, told him to eat like he was family.
She was eighteen since he was last here—with that kiss that had ruined her for easier men.
A decade of nothing, then this—his truck under her window like he’d only stepped out for cigarettes.
She stuffed the thought down hard. This was not comfort. This was not fate. It was a complication with a scar and a gun and a savior complex.
She checked the clock on her phone. 2:07 a.m.
“What am I going to do with this man?” she muttered to the empty room.
She shut the window and the world muted to fan-click and fridge-hum and the faint tick of Ethan’s engine cooling in the night. She slid back under the sheet, turned her face to the wall, and willed her lungs to slow. Home, for now, she told herself again, softer. Just for now.