Chapter 4 #2
Ash’s jaw tightens until I can hear his teeth grinding, eyes narrow with concentration.
And that’s when I see it again, a metallic glimmer beneath the cuff of his sleeve.
“You’re glowing again,” I say drily, trying not to stare.
He grunts, frowning.
Thunder rolls distant.
Our arms brush again, barbed wire singing between us as he hesitates for one brief second, then pulls back like I’ve stung him.
In his haste, his shirt snags along a rusty barb, digging deep. Fabric tears, blood spills.
“Hold him,” he grunts testily, his other hand going to his upper arm as blood spills between fingers. A moment’s hesitation. Then, back to work.
The calf doesn’t bolt when the barbed wire snaps. It just crumples, sides heaving, one leg bleeding dark and quick.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Ash mutters. He lifts it like it weighs nothing. “Thank you for your help.”
I scoop up my notebook and run beside him. The air smells like iron and sage, a storm close enough to taste. “I can help.”
He shakes his head, pausing at Winnie. Then, his shoulders bow with resignation.
“You’ll hold him in the saddle?” he asks, nodding toward his mare.
He doesn’t want me out here alone in the dark. It couldn’t be more obvious.
I grimace.
“Afraid of blood on your jeans?” he adds like a challenge.
“Of course not.” I climb into the saddle, journal tucked into his saddle bag, steadying the baby when he pitches him over the saddle.
He should ride the baby in himself. But I can tell by the stubborn cut of his jaw he won’t.
He leads the reins. So unnecessary.
Tension simmers thick between us. There’s more I want to say. About him following me today. About the current situation. But the calf is weak, weak enough that I count its breaths.
Inside the barn, the light is dull, amber slats filtered through boards. Dust motes float like prayers.
“You should go,” he warns.
But I don’t want to, not until I know what happens to the baby.
He sets the calf on a bed of hay, his breath ragged, jaw clenched against the pain in his own torn arm.
“Grandpa would’ve shot him,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says. “But some things deserve a fighting chance.”
He grabs the first-aid kit, kneeling next to the calf and making quick work of cleaning and bandaging the wound. I kneel beside him, the scene too intimate, like I’m watching something I shouldn’t.
The calf shivers and bleats, then stills when the bandaging ends.
“Repack the kit?” he asks, like he can’t get rid of me. “Need to get warm milk in him.”
That’s when I notice his arm. The one he snagged earlier. No longer bleeding through torn fabric. Instead, the laceration looks half-knitted, more pale scar than angry wound. And shimmering with strange ink.
I catch his shoulder before he can turn away. “Your arm—”
He jerks free. “It’s nothing.”
Our eyes lock.
“But it was bleeding before. I saw you snag it.”
“Guess it changed its mind.”
We’re too close. And I have too many questions to move.
The barn creaks against a gust of wind, lantern light fighting to fill the darkening space.
He inhales sharply, blinking hard like he can’t believe his vision. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. The whole barn seems to listen.
“Don’t,” he whispers, eyes dropping to my mouth.
My breath stutters.
Lightning flashes through the open loft window, and he’s on his feet, shaking, furious.
“You should go, Josephine.”
I rise, reluctantly, eyes training on the baby. Body feeling something else entirely. The air is charged—alive—the barn leaning into the storm.
“Right,” I manage, though my voice sounds far away, not mine at all.
Rain hammers the roof. Wind howls through the eaves. Behind me, lightning splits the sky, and for an instant his silhouette flashes against it—head bowed, shoulders bent, as if the storm itself is breaking through him.
Then, I remember. My journal in Winnie’s saddle bag. “Sorry,” I mutter, annoyed by the breathiness of my voice as I approach the mare, sliding a hand over her back before I go for my journal.
He tips his hat, jaw unyielding.
Wind threads through wires, pushing me along as I sprint for the ranch house.
Patterns surround me as I near the porch. The snort of a horse, the steady pump of my heart, the splattering of rain. Inside, I hear the hiss of the radio.
Then, silence.
Grandpa has a headache. He decides to lie down for a nap.
Grandma hums an old hymn. I can’t place the name, but the tune somehow matches the low note of the range.
The distant Starborn Mountains shimmer near the cloud line, as if they’re the source of this weather. Lightning forks along the ridgeline and vanishes.
The thought shudders through me. If it weren’t for Ash, I’d be out there now, huddled beneath decorated rock, waiting for the downpour to pass.
But the cut on his arm?
I shake my head.
Some people heal faster than others, maybe?
But still…
“You’re drenched,” Grandma scolds, eyeing my clothes.
“The storm didn’t give much warning,” I excuse. “I’m gonna get cleaned up and change.”
She nods, song still pressed to her lips.
In the shower stall, steam rises. Warm and soft like it could wash away all of this.
Could but doesn’t.
Storms that never fully break. Glowing ink. Those things have explanations. Weird but not impossible.
Cuts that heal too quickly? There has to be an explanation.
Excess iron in his diet. Genetics. Something else?
You’re not here to figure out the neighbor, Jo.
I’m here for my dissertation. To pave the groundwork, tighten my thesis. Survey and record, document and preserve.
Afterwards, I stand shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen with Grandma, preparing a simple dinner of bread, cold cuts, thick slices of cheese, and mustard.
A thrill passes through me at the thought that Ash might come for dinner. I try to push it away, but it presses back, electric anticipation.
No, this is scientific curiosity. This is wanting answers, I tell myself.
But Grandpa stays upstairs, the barometric pressure still too much for him. And Grandma only sets out two plates.
The house lights dim and flicker. Grandma shakes her head, heading to the pantry to retrieve candles and matches. “Just in case.”
I slice salami in silence, trying to quell the storm of my thoughts.
“You look a thousand miles away.”
“Light years,” I answer, corners of my mouth tilting up.
He never comes.
The rest of the evening is a blur, blood heated, still sparking with whatever I felt when my arm brushed the cowboy’s. Focus distilled down to Ash’s closeness, and the things I can’t explain.
I sleep fitfully, tossing and turning, unable to quiet my mind. I should be more disciplined than this. Not let my eyes fool me…
But I saw what I saw.
As a scientist, that’s hard to deny.
Blackness crowds like an inky pool. Stuck somewhere between dream and wakefulness, a vision wraps me tight.
I’m at the bedroom window, curtains billowing and swirling as I look down.
Ash stands below the window. Bare chested. His markings faintly luminous—or maybe just moonlight.
Like a language.
That’s the last thing I remember before my eyes snap open.
It takes a long time to fall asleep again after that, lulled by the house’s soft creaks and groans.
When I rise the next morning, everything is back in place. The way it should be.
Sky unbroken blue, sun shining, mist enveloping the distant mountains as if they might be forgotten. No trace of the cowboy.
A dream.
I perch on the edge of my bed, grabbing my journal and opening it to a fresh page.
That’s where I sketch what I saw.
This isn’t data.
And yet, as my fingers work and the details come back more vividly, I can’t fight the feeling that this is somehow part of everything.