Chapter Ten #2
She was tired of carrying it all. The fields. The house. Her mother’s moods. Her own damn anger, coiled tight like a storm in her gut. She was tired of being the solution to every problem but her own.
Her skin itched. Sweat in every crease. Dust in every pore. She peeled off her tank top as she crossed the hall, kicked off her boots and jeans in a trail like she meant to shed the whole day one piece at a time.
In the bathroom, she flipped the water on hot and stepped out of what was left.
Steam built fast. Her reflection blurred in the mirror—thank God.
She didn’t want to look at herself.
She just wanted to be clean.
She stepped into the shower when it was fully hot and gasped as it hit her skin—sharp and scalding, a bite of honesty in the fog. Water streamed over her shoulders in rivulets, fast and loud, curling through the crooks of her elbows and down her spine like fingers that weren’t hers.
Amara tipped her head back and tried to let it all go. The fence wire. The heat. The dust in her teeth. Her mother’s voice still in her ears. Him.
She scrubbed hard, like she could erase the day from her skin.
But it wasn’t the dirt she couldn’t shake.
It was the kiss.
It rose in her like steam from the tiles—the tilt of her jaw in his hand, the crush of his mouth, the sudden, breathless surrender before her brain could catch up.
Her body remembered what pride had tried to bury.
Her lips parted at the ghost of pressure.
Her breath caught. Her chest rose too fast, like her body was still waiting for him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop.”
The word disappeared into the spray. It had no weight here.
Want didn’t take orders tonight.
She moved her fingers through her hair slower now, working shampoo into her scalp like she was trying to distract herself with motion. She focused on the texture. The rhythm. The smell of clean.
Anything but him.
But every time her mind wandered, it drifted back to the same place.
The scar along his jaw.
The way he looked at her—like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.
The sound he made when she opened to him.
Her stomach tightened. The ache pulled low.
She rinsed, slow and methodical, palms dragging across her collarbones, down the slope of her breasts, her ribs. The water followed. And God, it felt like his hands had been here first. His mouth. His breath against her neck. Her skin felt too sensitive, too exposed—like memory had worn it thin.
She braced a palm to the tile, knuckles white.
She shouldn’t want this. Not from him. Not again.
Because it hadn’t been just a kiss. It had been everything she used to pray for.
A house. A man. A moment that felt like home.
And now? It felt like danger disguised as safety.
And her body—traitorous, wanting—was too foolish to tell the difference.
“You don’t get to own me,” she whispered.
She didn’t know if she meant Ethan. Or the hunger itself.
She slid her hand down her stomach, meaning only to rinse. To think. To reset.
The water beat steady against her collarbone, urging her somewhere she didn’t want to go.
She tried to anchor herself—to the fence line, the unfinished roof, Brock’s damn invoice sitting open on the counter.
There were survey flags to question, storms to beat, a harvest that wouldn’t wait for her while she lost her head.
But her mind was treacherous.
It slipped the leash.
It drifted back to the truck in the side yard, the low rumble of its engine, the silhouette behind the wheel.
Back to him.
To the mouth that had taken hers like prayer, the weight of his hand that had said stay.
Her palm lingered an inch too long on her hip, the movement slowing without permission.
A pulse of heat. A pull she knew too well.
Stop.
Her jaw clenched.
The water kept falling, relentless.
She could give in—let the thought of him finish what he’d started—or she could keep control.
And control was all she had left.
She forced her hand away, fingers curling against tile instead of skin. She chose the sting of restraint over the ache of remembering. Chose purpose over pleasure.
Because the two were mutually exclusive.
And if she started wanting him again, she’d lose everything she’d built to survive.
By the time she shut off the tap, the room had gone so quiet the fan’s small whir sounded like a threat.
She toweled off, patting rather than dragging, as if her own skin were a bruise.
The mirror cleared in a streak down the center when she wiped it with her palm.
A woman stared back—damp hair hanging dark, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.
Not a girl. Not saved. Not ruined. Just caught.
She pulled on a soft tank and sleep shorts, water still beading on her collarbone, and leaned her hips against the vanity.
The house creaked the way it always did at day’s end.
Somewhere down the hall, the fridge kicked on.
Crickets crowded the window screen with their electric song.
She closed her eyes and counted—four in, four out—the way she’d taught herself after the marriage, after the nights that made her small.
Control wasn’t a man’s hand. It was breath. It was choice.
She went to the window and pushed it up an inch.
Night slid in, humid and sweet with honeysuckle and damp soybean.
If she angled just right, she could see the side yard through the oak leaves.
The dented truck sat where it had all afternoon, quiet as a held breath.
No movement. No light. The sight tugged something deep and primitive—anger braided with relief until she couldn’t separate them.
He kept watch. Of course he did.
Her pulse fluttered again, softer now, the way it does after a run when the body hasn’t decided whether to settle or sprint. She let the curtain fall. Enough. She couldn’t live in the space his mouth left behind. She wouldn’t.
Amara slipped into a plaid jacket and eased the screen door shut with her hip. The air had cooled just enough to raise goosebumps where her hair dampened the back of her neck.
One last check.
Gravel whispered under her boots. The yard smelled like cut stems and old rain, a hint of honeysuckle pushed thin by the soybean fields breathing out their heat. The porch light threw its small, tired circle across the drive.
Ethan’s truck sat in it.
Dark. Quiet. Empty.
She paused a few steps shy, hand tightening around the jacket lapel. The cab showed only shapes—thermos, a folded map, a hat ghosting the seat back. No movement. No silhouette.
Where are you?
She made herself move. The barn door slid on its track with the same groan it always had.
Inside, the stallion snorted and bobbed his head, lantern eyes reflecting a slice of light from Amara’s phone.
“Hey, boy,” she murmured. Latch secured.
Water fine. Feed bin closed tight. She tugged the stall chain twice, a nervous habit, until the metal rang like a low bell.
Back outside, the night had deepened. Crickets layered themselves until the sound felt like a skin. In the fields, leaves shivered in a wind she couldn’t feel. The tin on the barn roof ticked once, cooling.
She turned slowly, scanning the yard. The driveway ended in black. The hedgerow at the south line stood darker than dark, a cutout against the sky. Somewhere far off a fox barked, closer, a whip-poor-will switched on, insistent and unseen.
Ethan’s truck was still a shadow with edges.
A prickling crawled up her arms, small and precise. Not fear—recognition. The sense you get when you’ve walked straight through a web and can’t find the threads. She brushed a palm over her cheek anyway, irrational, half-expecting silk.
The spider’s here. You just can’t see it.
She lifted her phone and let the flashlight paint a narrow path over gravel. Fresh prints—lug soles, big—cut from the truck toward the south fence, then vanished where the grass grew up thick. Another set, lighter, crossed at an angle. Her own, maybe. Maybe not.
“Ethan?” she called, low. The name went nowhere and came back thinner.
She took two steps toward the hedgerow and stopped. The soy whispered like someone moving careful between the rows. A light flickered deep beyond the trees—one quick blink—and died. The hair at her nape lifted.
She stood very still, breath shallow. The night resumed its chorus as if nothing had happened.
Where’s the spider?
She looked back at the truck. Still empty.
Still quiet. For a beat she pictured him out there, crouched at the fence line, listening to a world she couldn’t hear.
Another image elbowed in—someone else in the fields, clipboard boy without a card, white truck with no front plate, Roulstone’s shadow in a pressed shirt.
A twig cracked softly in the hedgerow.
Her heart thudded once, hard enough to hurt. She didn’t run. She didn’t call again. She let her phone light drop to the ground and blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
After a long minute, she backed away, slow and steady, never turning her back fully on the hedge. At the porch she looked once more at the empty cab, the dark fields, the thin seam of sky.
No answers.
Just the sense of something spinning its web, far too close.