Jesse
Deputy Wainright called as I headed back to the office, ready to spend precious hours of my day finding out where my dad had ended up. Olivia said there was no sign of him at home, and I was trying not to panic.
“Deputy?”
I stood there with my heart hammering. Relief should have hit first. Panic should have come before the what-ifs. That was the order things were supposed to go in, right?
Instead, all I could think was, fuck. I knew what worry was supposed to feel like. I’d felt it before. This wasn’t it.
Was I upset? Nope. I was breathing normally. No rush, no spike, no image of a dad I was supposed to love and respect, bleeding or broken. All I felt was irritation at the phone’s interruption.
“Jesse?”
“Thank you, Simon. You need one of us to get the truck out?” The words came automatically, pure logistics, and even as I said them, I knew they sounded wrong. Where was my compassion?
“Nah, it’s all good, Philby Motors towed it, and said it’s fit for scrap. Ezra’ll call you for sure.”
“Thank you.” At least that took care of my dad driving.
I stood there, phone still warm, and the thought crept in sideways—what it might feel like to share the weight with someone.
Anyone. Someone who could understand how I could hate a man so completely and still have him take up this much space in my head.
I’d spent my life protecting him, smoothing things over, protecting everyone else from his confusion and his messes.
And the question I never let myself ask pressed harder—who the hell was protecting me?
Only one person ever had—my big brother, Hoyt—and he was long gone, off riding bulls and chasing some version of freedom that had never been meant for me.
What was I going to do, call him, after all this time?
There’d been one text in all these years, just one: me telling him Barrett had died and him not replying.
He’d left the ranch when I was a toddler, leaving me here to grow up fast and quiet, and nothing about that had changed.
I shoved the thought down hard. I wasn’t calling Hoyt.
I’d learned a long time ago not to wait for people who didn’t come back.
I need coffee.
Lots of coffee.
Or whiskey.
Lucas appeared, though, as if he’d been conjured out of nothing.
One second, I was numb, phone loose in my hand, the next, he was in front of me, jaw tight, spitting mad about something.
I noticed, impassively, how cute he was anyway, all flashing fire and curls, and hated myself for clocking it when I should have been worrying about my dad, or the ranch, or my future if Lucas ever got his way.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped, raising himself up on tiptoes. “You let the guest cabins rot.”
The words hit, but they didn’t land properly.
Lucas’s anger was a louder thing to deal with than anything I’d felt about my dad putting his truck in a ditch, and that told me more than I wanted to know.
I couldn’t switch gears. Couldn’t go from having no reaction at all to my dad to the spitting fury from a man who wanted to fuck with the ranch.
Lucas didn’t stop. “It’s money wasted! Opportunity wasted!
” He climbed two steps, so he was as tall as me, and leaned onto my space.
I didn’t know if it was residual panic, adrenaline, or anger, but I did know that City and his citrus scent were too close.
His anger dragged my attention straight to his sapphire gaze, and the reaction it sparked wasn’t desire so much as shock, the kind that left me off balance and pissed off at myself for feeling it at all.
He poked at my chest, and the contact short-circuited everything.
I didn’t know what I was feeling—too many things stacked wrong, none of them lining up—and that confusion curdled fast. Heat flashed at being prodded, challenged, and handled.
“Back the fuck off, City,” I snarled, but he didn’t move back, and he poked me again.
“Those cabins aren’t worth anything now, you idiot.” His voice was pitched higher. “They’re dead weight. Anyone with sense would’ve fixed them years ago. I don’t know what kind of ranch you think you’re running, but every day you leave them like that, you’re bleeding my money.”
“Our money!”
No, not money, this is my land, this is my life, this isn’t about money.
“Do you have any idea what they’d be worth on a balance sheet if you’d bothered to work on them?” he shot back.
The noise piled up until it snapped, my jaw locking and my hands curling into fists before I even realized I’d stopped breathing.
“I built them,” I shouted right in his face. “I can let them rot!”
He froze, surprise flashing across his face, but I was already shoving him out of the way and heading for safety before I did something stupid, like hit him or kill him.
He followed me, still talking, and I quickened my pace, past the dining hall, straight into my office, slamming the door shut and locking it, the click loud in the sudden quiet.
“We need to talk!” Lucas tried to open the door, was thwarted, then cursed, and I could hear his curses.
“I’m busy!”
“I expect you to find me when you’re done hiding your head in the sand!
” His footsteps retreated down the hall.
He could call it hiding if he wanted. I knew the truth—I’d just hit my limit.
There was only so much noise, pressure, and accusation I could take before something broke, and locking that door had been the only way to stop it being me.
I doubt he was done for the day, but whatever, I was in there for now, and he could take his anger and shove it where the sun didn’t shine.
Blessed silence.
The radio crackled in my pocket, then crackled again, louder this time. Five minutes is all I wanted.
“Boss?” Jake’s voice cut through the static. “Hey, you copy?”
I ignored it for a second. “Copy.”
“You still want us to keep looking?”
Shit, I hadn’t even called Jake off from looking for Dad. “No, he’s okay. Deputy got him. Pass it around.”
“Will do. Also, how many head we got in the south pasture? Miguel’s saying fourteen, I’m counting fifteen, and the east fence by the creek’s down again.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the office door.
“Fifteen,” I said. “Flag the fence with Gunner to start. I’ll be out there in thirty.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Feed orders are running low, too. You want me to—”
“I’m on it,” I cut in.
“Copy that, boss.”
I unlocked the office door and leaned back against it, breathing hard, then stilled—listening.
For footsteps. For his voice. The realization hit that I was scared to step out.
Was it because I couldn’t handle him? Or because I couldn’t handle anything else.
I shoved off the door, furious with myself.
This was my space, and I stayed in it. Wanting him didn’t change that.
“You don’t get to live in my head,” I muttered.
I let the feeling hit, then let it pass.
Work was waiting. Wanting something I couldn’t control didn’t mean I had to mess up everywhere else.
I went out the back anyway, not avoiding anything, just choosing my own direction, then headed for the barn to saddle Boone.
I did it fast—faster than usual—and jumped at every sound.
I felt raw—the dude ranch might have been my project, but when the money got tight, and my dad’s drinking had gotten worse, I was the one picking up everyone’s slack, and the bright, shiny idea had burned down to ash.
It wasn’t my fault.
Gunner was already there when I reached the south pasture, collar turned up, breath puffing white as he worked.
The cold had teeth today—hard frost locked over yesterday’s snow, the top crust brittle enough to crunch under my boots while the ground beneath stayed soft and treacherous.
Meltwater from the last day of weak sunshine had run downhill, pooled, then frozen again, and it had undercut the fence line along the creek.
One corner post had shifted enough to throw the tension off. Wire sagging. Staples pulled crooked where the soil had slumped away. Fuck Lucas, there was no neglect on this ranch—just physics, water, and freeze-thaw doing what they always did if we didn’t stay ahead of it.
I took the post maul from Gunner without a word and set my feet.
Gunner was a quiet guy. Always had been.
Some people filled the silence because they couldn’t stand it.
Gunner didn’t, aside from when he hummed classic rock, which I didn’t think he was even aware he did.
Out here, with a job to do, silence felt right.
The steel rang in the cold as I drove the post deeper, each strike jarring up my arms. My fingers ached even through gloves, knuckles stiff, breath burning my lungs.
We reset the brace, re-tensioned the wire, and cinched it tight until it sang when I snapped it with my thumb.
This was work I understood. Clear cause. Clear fix. No balance sheets. No voices in my ear. Just frozen ground, good wire, and the quiet certainty that if I didn’t do this, no one else would.
“Saw the new guy,” Gunner murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Said he was checking the cabins.”
“Yep.”
“Dangerous over there.”
“Yep.”
“He got a radio?”
“Yep.”
I carried on working—it was up to Lucas where he went and why. But, yeah, the cabins had seen better days, and what if Lucas had gone over there and gotten himself hurt, or fallen? Not that I cared, but the idea of him hurt out there—on my land—twisted something ugly in my chest.
Maybe I cared too much.
Shit.