Chapter 7 Jack
Jack
I lasted four hours.
Four hours of lying in the bunkhouse staring at the ceiling with Sully's head on my boot.
I sat up. Swung my legs off the bunk. Sully raised his head, watching me with those brown eyes that saw too much for a dog.
"Don't judge me, Sul."
His tail swept the floor once. Not judgment. Permission.
I pulled on my boots and stepped out onto the porch. The ranch was quiet—that deep, total quiet you only get in the country, where the silence has texture, and the sky is so full of stars it looks like someone kicked over a bucket of light.
"Come on."
Sully dropped off the porch and matched my stride as I walked into the dark.
I told myself I was checking the property.
I was a goddamn liar.
Maggie's cabin sat apart from the main house, separate and deliberate. She'd chosen that distance—carved out a space that was hers alone, away from the family she loved and the demands they placed on her without meaning to.
The light was on in her window.
I stopped at the tree line. I could turn around. Should turn around. Walking up to her cabin after dark—after six days of professional distance, after the storm, after the truck, after all of it—was the kind of thing that couldn't be taken back.
But I'd watched this woman fight for a dream everyone else kept putting last. I'd shared pieces of Montana I hadn't told anyone in four years.
I'd watched my dog rest his head on her shoulder like he'd found something he'd been looking for, and I'd sat two inches from her mouth in a dark truck and done the noble thing.
I was done doing the noble thing.
I crossed the distance to her porch and knocked.
The door opened faster than I expected.
Maggie stood in the doorway, backlit by the warm glow of her cabin, wearing sleep shorts and an oversized t-shirt that did absolutely nothing to help my self-control.
Her hair was down—six days of braids and ponytails, and I'd been wondering the whole time when I’d get lucky enough to see it down again.
Turns out the answer was now, and the sight of her was just as devastating as I remembered.
Waves fell around her shoulders, catching the light like liquid gold, making my fingers itch to touch it.
She looked soft. Unguarded. Real. The version of her I knew first.
Then she registered who was standing on her porch, and all that softness slammed behind walls so fast I could almost hear them lock into place.
She glanced past me, probably making sure no one could see me on her porch, and took a step towards me. “What are you doing here?"
"Evening, Maggie."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "It's ten o'clock at night."
"I know what time it is."
Her eyes flicked past me to Sully, who was sitting at the bottom of the porch steps with his ears up. "You brought the dog."
"He goes where I go."
"Jack." Her voice was tight, controlled, threaded with something that might have been panic. "We've been doing so well, and you're going to blow it up by showing up at my door in the—"
"I'm not here to cause problems." I kept my voice low. Even. "I'm not going to pretend the truck didn't happen tonight. I'm not going to pretend Wild Creek didn't happen. But I'm not going to push you into anything you don't want, either.”
She blinked. "Then why are you here?"
"Because you've been running through my head since you left me in that motel room, and I'm tired of pretending you haven't. I figured I could lie awake in the bunkhouse for another four hours, or I could come tell you that to your face."
Maggie stared at me. Her expression cycled through irritation, confusion, and something that looked like relief she was trying very hard to kill.
"You can't just say things like that."
"Why not?"
"Because—" She stopped. Started again. "Because this is complicated. You work for my family. We have to see each other every day. If people found out—"
"Then they'd find out two adults made choices about their own lives." I leaned against her doorframe, not entering, not pressing, just present. "I'm not ashamed of what happened between us, Maggie. Are you?"
The question hung in the air.
"No," she said finally, quiet. "I'm not ashamed. I just… I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
"This." She gestured between us, a frustrated sweep of her hand. "Whatever this is. I don't do messy. I don't do complicated."
"I know." I straightened, closing just a little of the distance between us.
Close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat.
Close enough to catch her scent—clean, simple, the same shampoo that had been driving me slowly insane every time the wind shifted in the barn.
"You're good at control, Maggie. At managing everything and everyone.
At putting yourself last and pretending you don't mind. "
Her breath caught. "Jack—"
"I'm not here to be managed. I'm not another problem for you to solve. And I'm not going to pretend I don't want you just because it's inconvenient."
Her gaze swept over me, her eyes darker than before when they met mine again. "What do you want, then?"
"You. Same as I wanted you in Wild Creek." I reached up, slow enough that she could pull away, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She didn't pull away. "I want to be the place you put the weight down."
She was trembling. I could feel it—the slight vibration in her body, the tension coiled tight beneath her skin.
"And at work?" she asked, her voice a little breathless. "How does this work?"
My thumb glided along the soft curve of her cheekbone. "At work, you're my boss. I follow your lead. Nobody needs to know anything you don't want them to know."
"Just like that?"
I nodded, eyes locked on her mouth. “Yeah, beautiful, just like that."
She studied me for a long moment, searching my face for lies or angles or hidden agendas. I let her look. I had nothing to hide.
"This is a bad idea," she said.
“I beg to differ.” This was easily the greatest idea I’d ever had, and I was kicking myself for not walking over here my first night on this ranch.
She wetted her lips. Swallowed. “If anyone finds out—"
My heart pounded against my ribs as if I were running a marathon and the finish line was just around the bend. "They won't. Not until you want them to."
"I don't know what I want."
"Yeah, you do. You've known since the truck. Since you were bold at the Bull Pen.”
Something in her expression cracked. Not broke—cracked. A fissure in the wall she'd spent six days reinforcing, letting just a sliver of light through. The night was quiet around us, nothing but crickets and starlight and the weight of everything we'd spent a week not saying.
Then Maggie stepped back from the doorway. "Get inside before someone sees you."
The cabin was small and warm, and it was Maggie in a way the ranch wasn’t—personal, another layer stripped back.
Books were stacked on nearly every surface—horse breeding manuals mixed with dog-eared paperback novels.
A quilt thrown over the couch that looked handmade.
Photos on the walls—family shots, horses, a sunset over land I recognized as Blackwood property.
And on her desk, laptop still open, the horse breeding proposal glowing on the screen. Charts, projections, bloodline data. She'd been working on it when I knocked.
That woman. Building her dream at ten o'clock at night, alone in her cabin, because that was the only time no one needed anything from her.
Sully had stayed on the porch without being told. Brad used to joke that the dog was a better wingman than most humans. He knows when to give a guy privacy, Remington. More than I can say for you.
The door clicked shut behind me, and then it was just us. Maggie and I, standing in her living room, the air thick with six days of pretending.
She crossed her arms. "So."
"You don't have to need me, Maggie." I closed the distance between us, stopping just short of touching her. "You can just want me. That's allowed."
"Is it?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Because it doesn't feel allowed. It feels dangerous."
"What does?"
"You." She reached up, her hand hovering near my chest without making contact. "The way you look at me like you actually see me and not just what I can do for you."
"I do see you." I caught her hand, pressed it flat against my heart. "I've seen you since Wild Creek. The woman underneath all the armor. And I like her, Maggie. Every stubborn, sharp-tongued, beautiful inch of her."
Her eyes drifted shut. "Jack…"
I lowered my head, bringing my mouth close to her ear.
"Let me show you how much.” I placed a gentle kiss on the curve of her jaw.
A breathy sigh shuddered past her lips. Her other hand settled on my chest for balance.
“How much I’ve missed having you like this.
” She whimpered when my hands settled on her hips, her nails digging into my chest. “Say yes, Maggie. Tell me you want this as much as I do.”
“I want it,” she whispered. “I want it all.”
I kissed her.
Not gentle. Not the careful, questioning kiss of Wild Creek. This was the week I spent thinking I’d never see her again, six days of professional distance, and everything that had built between us during. All of it came crashing together into something I couldn't have controlled if I'd wanted to.
Maggie kissed me back with equal force—her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer, making a sound against my mouth that was half relief and half fury, like she was angry at both of us for taking this long.
I knew I was.
I walked her backward until we hit the wall, caging her with my arms, giving her nowhere to go except into me. She arched against me, and the contact—her body pressed full-length against mine—sent a jolt through me that wiped out whatever was left of my restraint.