Chapter 19
Boone had worked himself past exhaustion and straight into stubbornness.
The kind of bone-deep fatigue that came from trying to outwork your thoughts—and losing.
Sweat ran down his temple, soaking the collar of his shirt as he hefted the last feed sack onto the stack by the barn.
The morning sun was sitting low, turning the fields gold and making everything look softer than it really was.
It was lying light.
Nothing about his life—or the way he felt—was soft anymore.
He jammed his cowboy hat lower, trying to chase off the image that kept creeping back no matter how hard he pushed: Vivi, standing in his kitchen with that spark in her eye, asking if he wanted help making a dating bio. The question had been teasing but it hit like a punch.
He didn't want a fucking bio. He didn't want anyone else. And judging by the way she looked at him sometimes, he could've sworn she felt that same pull.
He exhaled hard, dragging a sleeve across his face. The attraction between them wasn't just inconvenient, it was a goddamn liability. He wasn't about to be the fool who fell for a woman already planning her exit. He'd done that once and still had the scar to prove it.
So, he'd made up his mind. Two more weeks. That's all he had to survive. Tomorrow, he'd tell her she could skip ranch duties and work exclusively on the bunkhouse. No more joint projects, no early mornings, no more moments that made him forget how to breathe.
He'd get through it, keep things professional, and keep his distance.
The problem was, he'd been telling himself that for two weeks now and the distance kept shrinking.
The ear-piercing beep of a tractor-truck backing up cut through his thoughts. He dropped the sack he was carrying and walked out of the barn and—
What the actual fuck?
His sanctuary was under siege, and he hadn't even realized the war had begun.
The pasture was crawling with people. Lumber, hammers, paint cans, neighbors everywhere. And smack in the middle of the chaos was Vivi.
Clipboard in hand, issuing orders like a general in battle.
Boone stopped walking. He'd known she was ambitious.
Maybe even fearless. But this? He took a slow breath.
She'd pulled the entire town together, convinced strangers to donate their time, all for a guy who’s shot down her idea.
The energy she radiated pulled at him, settled in his chest like a burning ember that was destined to cause a wildfire.
Being from a town of three thousand, there were faces he knew and faces he didn't. Most were neighbors and frequent flyers from the Drunken Rooster and the Tipsy Cow, but there were a handful of volunteers he'd never seen before—which both surprised and touched him in ways he hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever.
He'd spent the last year with his head down, convinced this land was his burden alone to carry.
Turns out the town had just been waiting for an invite.
Vivi had sent out the Save the Date card and they’d all shown up with their plus-one.
Boone had spent so long protecting this land, keeping it rigid and orderly, but watching her, seeing what she could inspire with nothing but sheer force of will, he felt something loosen in him that he'd kept nailed down for over a year.
He shook his head and tried to make himself stop staring.
It didn’t work. Because Vivi was sporting a pair of cutoff jeans that cupped that heart-shaped ass of hers and a tank top doing a piss-poor job of containing her tits.
Her hair—that silky blonde hair—was thrown up in some kind of messy ponytail that made him want to close his hand around it and tilt her head back slowly until she had nowhere to look but at him.
She was sweaty, dusty, bossy as hell, and making it impossible for him to remember what the fuck he was supposed to be doing.
He was so deep in his own head that he didn't hear his brothers approach until Colter's voice cut through the noise. "You're staring at her like she's a rare unicorn."
"I'm observing."
Eli draped one elbow over the fence post. "Observing? Hell, Boone, you've been eye-fucking her for the last five minutes."
"She has a boyfriend," Boone grumbled.
"Not what I heard," Colter said. "She dumped his ass."
Boone went still as the word that spun around in his brain, ricocheting off all the sides of his skull like a pinball machine.
Single.
"Where'd you hear that?" he asked, keeping his voice even.
"From the horse's mouth," Eli said. "If you hadn't been so busy giving her hell about her ideas maybe she would've told you herself."
Little did his brothers know that she’d had the chance, yet, she hadn't told him. Yesterday, he'd apologized, tried to show her that he respected her, tried to undo the damage—and she still hadn't told him.
He didn't blame her. He just didn't like what it said about where he stood.
He squared his shoulders. "Good for her. She deserves better."
His brothers exchanged a look. Grins twitching.
"Deserves better?" Eli said. "You're full of shit. You've been grinning like an idiot ever since she came to town."
Boone scowled—but the warmth in his chest betrayed him, and they all knew it.
"Doesn't matter. She's leaving."
Colter whistled low. "First she's taken. Now she's leaving. What's next? She's too pretty?"
Eli stepped closer, voice dropping. "You've built a career on overcoming obstacles. You can wrangle cattle, survive a bucking bronco, run this whole damn ranch, and you're telling me you're going to let her walk out because you're scared of what comes next?"
"She's not a problem to solve," Boone said flatly.
"No," Eli agreed. "She's better than that. Which is exactly why you're terrified."
Boone's jaw tightened because he had no response for that—which was its own kind of answer.
"This isn't about Kayla," Boone said and regretted it immediately, because where the hell had that thought even come from?
Eli raised an eyebrow. "Who said anything about Kayla?"
"You might not have said it, but you were both thinking it," Boone said.
Kayla had left a fracture in the part of him that trusted people.
He wanted to believe he was done with that chapter.
But watching Vivi out there, pulling people together, pulling him back toward something he'd locked away, he wasn't sure anymore what he was protecting himself from and what he was just afraid of.
There was a difference. He just couldn't figure it out right now.
"Well," Colter said, pushing off the fence post with a self-satisfied grin. "The woman you're “not interested in” is heading over."
Boone straightened without meaning to. "What?"
"That's what I thought," Colter said.
Eli's voice was quiet but edged with something that sounded a hell of a lot like amusement—asshole. "Real bad, brother. You've got it real bad."
Then Vivi appeared at the edge of the yard—practically bouncing on her toes. She skipped toward him, eyes sparkling, hands clasped together like she couldn't contain what she was feeling.
"Boone! Did you see the turnout? Can you believe all these people showed up? Isn't it amazing?"
Just for a second he let himself look at her—really look at her—and what he saw cracked one of those walls he’d so carefully constructed.
"I can believe it," he said. His voice came out quieter than he intended. Rough around the edges and soft in the middle.
"All of this is because of you too, you know," she said. "You've got the ranch, the community, your family. And now look, everyone's here because it matters to you."
Boone's gaze swept over the scene—the stations she'd marked out, the volunteers coordinating and laughing, the care she'd poured into every last detail—then looked back at her.
"I didn't realize you'd done all this. You pulled this off, all by yourself."
Her chest puffed slightly. "Not by myself. The townspeople pitched in. And your brothers helped."
"That's complete bullshit," Eli said.
"This woman did all the heavy lifting," Colter said. "Every bit of it."
Boone studied her face and, shit, he was in trouble because something rolled over in his chest in a manner that was inconvenient as hell.
"Of course she did," he said, almost to himself. "Look at all this. Look at what you built." Her face lit up. "When you first told me your plan, I thought maybe a few people would show. I never imagined this."
Her smile widened and Boone felt his chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with frustration anymore—and everything to do with the fact that he was running out of reasons to keep his distance.
Colter and Eli exchanged a glance beside him, shit-eating grins spreading across their faces. Boone caught the look and shook his head, a small private groan escaping before he could stop it.
Maybe they were right. Maybe he’d come across something he couldn’t outrun.
"Come on, Cowboy," Vivi said, clapping her hands. "Let's go show everyone where we're starting. You're going to love it!"
"I'll be right there," he said.
She spun away and he watched her go—clipboard tucked under her arm, her new cowgirl boots already muddy, pulling the whole scene along in her wake.
"Don't tell me you're going soft," Colter said under his breath.
"Doesn't change a thing."
Colter nudged him, the grin fading into something more serious. "Yeah, it does. It changes everything, if you let it. Every fence you've mended, every herd you've moved, this is just a new kind of challenge. One I think might be worth it."
Eli's voice went quiet. "You've spent your whole life holding everything together. Maybe it's not always about that, maybe sometimes it's about knowing when to stop defending your heart and actually use it."
Like a heat-seeking missile, Boone's eyes found her across the yard.
She was ass-up while bending over to help Jo move a coffee table and laughing at some kind of inside joke—completely in her element in a town she'd never planned on visiting.
She didn't need him to save her. Hell, she didn't need him at all and that made the wanting worse.
Made it feel less like weakness and more like something he was choosing—whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Maybe the bunkhouse wasn't the only thing that needed fixing. Maybe he had a few walls of his own to tear down.