Chapter 6
Chapter Six
CADE
Idon't sleep.
The cattle don't care. Four thirty comes and I'm already dressed, already fed, already out the door with my jaw clenched and my hands looking for work. Buck gets saddled. The east line gets ridden. The heifers are fine. The fence is fine. Everything on my property is fine.
The thing that isn't fine is across the fence line with dark hair and a voice that can take a man apart with one word.
Useful.
She's not wrong. That's the part that sits in my chest and won't stop burning.
I've been useful my whole life. Useful to my family, useful on the ranch, useful to anyone who needs a fence mended or a board cut.
Women have always liked me well enough in the beginning.
Then they see the limits. A man who communicates through fence posts isn't exactly stimulating company.
My last relationship ended because she said I'd rather talk to a horse than have a conversation about feelings.
She was right. Horses don't ask you to explain yourself. They just need you to show up.
I showed up for Shelby every day for a month. Firewood. Fence. Generator parts. A porch board sanded smooth because the gap bothered me every time I stepped over it.
She saw exactly what I was doing. And she named it. The closest broken thing to his property line.
By noon, I've run out of work. Everything on the property is done. Fixed. Maintained. No excuse to keep moving.
I sit on my porch with coffee going cold. Across the fence, smoke from her chimney. She's there. Awake. Probably standing in her kitchen gripping the counter with that expression she makes when she's fighting something she can't hit.
Griffin calls at two.
"Jasper says you look like hell."
"Jasper hasn't seen me."
"Mabel saw you at the feed store this morning. Said you bought forty pounds of mineral block and forgot to pay for it. She put it on your account."
Great. "I'll settle up."
"What happened with the neighbor?"
"Nothing."
Silence. Griffin's good at silence. It's what makes him a decent sheriff. He lets people talk themselves into the truth.
"She pushed me away," I say. "And she had good reasons. Her ex is threatening the property. Lawyer stuff. She's scared and she took it out on me."
"That's not the part that's bothering you."
"No."
"What'd she say?"
The words come out flat. "That I only show up because fixing things makes me feel needed. That she's just the closest broken thing."
Griffin doesn't respond for a long beat. "Is she right?"
"No."
"You sure about that? Because I've watched you pour five years into that property the same way some men pour themselves into a bottle. You fix fence because you don't know how to sit still. And sitting still is where the feelings live."
I stare at the tree line. My brother is an idiot sometimes, but right now he's not wrong about a single word.
"She's not a fence, Cade. You can't show up with wire cutters and make this right. You're gonna have to use actual words."
"I know."
"Do you? Because in thirty-four years I've never heard you string together more than six at a time about anything that matters."
"Seven," I say. "I told her goodnight and used her name."
He laughs. Once, short, then goes quiet. "Go talk to her. Not with your hands. With your mouth. Tell her what she is to you. And for God's sake, don't bring tools."
The truck keys sit on the kitchen counter. Next to them, the bandana. The blue one I gave her the first day. She left it on my nightstand last week, folded into a neat square, smelling like her shampoo.
I don't bring tools. I don't bring firewood. I don't bring a board or a gasket or a plan.
I bring myself. The part of me that's bad at words and worse at feelings and has spent five years talking to cattle because they don't require explanations.
Her cabin at four. The porch step holds. I knock.
She opens the door. Red-rimmed eyes. Messy hair. One of my flannels over her t-shirt. She looks wrecked and beautiful and terrified, and every sentence I practiced in the truck disappears.
"I'm not here to fix anything."
Her mouth opens.
"Let me talk. Please."
She nods. Steps back. I stand on her porch because this isn't a conversation for inside. This is a conversation for the open air where there's nowhere to hide.
"I've spent my whole life being useful. You're right about that. Fixing things is how I show people I care because I've never been good at saying it. My brother just told me I've never strung together more than six words about anything that matters. He's right."
Shelby wraps her arms around herself. The flannel tightens across her chest.
"But you're not a thing I'm fixing. You are the first person in five years who made this mountain feel less empty. You made me coffee that tasted like punishment and I drank it because you were standing across from me in my kitchen and I didn't want the morning to end."
Her chin trembles.
"You're not broken. You're not a project. And you're not the closest anything to my property line. You're the only reason I look past it."
Her breath hitches.
"I'm in love with you, Shelby. Not because you need help.
Because you brought me a turkey sandwich in the middle of a field and told me not to make it weird.
Because you installed that porch board yourself with crooked nails and it holds better than anything I could've done.
Because you laugh and it's the first sound on this mountain that ever made me want to stay inside and listen instead of heading out to find something to repair. "
Tears roll down her face. She doesn't wipe them.
"I know your ex found your property. I know you're scared. And I know yesterday I should've stayed instead of walking out. But you told me to go, and I'm a man who listens when a woman says she needs space. Even when leaving is the last thing I want."
"Cade."
"I'm not done." My voice cracks on the word and I let it. "I don't need you to need me. I need you to want me. And I'd rather have that than fix another thing on this property as long as I live."
She comes through the door. Her hands find my chest, then slide up to my jaw. Palms on both sides of my face, pulling me down. Forehead against mine.
"I'm sorry." Her voice breaks. "I'm so sorry. I did the thing he used to do. Took the best part of you and turned it into a weapon. That's not who I want to be."
"You're not him."
"I was yesterday."
"Yesterday was fear. Today is this." My hands settle on her waist. Steady. Holding, not pulling. "We're not the worst thing we said on our worst day."
She exhales against my mouth. A sound that's half sob, half laugh, entirely Shelby.
"I love you." The words come out raw. Unpolished.
"I love you and I should've said it weeks ago instead of letting you guess from turkey sandwiches and crooked nails.
I love you, Cade Holloway, because you never once tried to be louder than my own voice.
You just stood there being quiet until I could hear myself again. "
I kiss her. Slow, deep, thorough. My hands on her face, thumbs wiping tears. Her fingers twisted in my flannel collar. The October wind cold against our skin and neither of us caring.
When we pull apart, her eyes are clear. Red, swollen, tear-streaked. But clear.
"Kevin can't take the cabin," she says. "My lawyer confirmed it. The money was mine."
"Good."
"If he could, I'd still stay. Because the cabin isn't why I'm here anymore."
My chest expands. Five years of holding my breath and this woman just cracked it loose with eleven words.
"You're staying."
"I'm staying." She grips my flannel tighter. "But I need you to understand something. I'm going to mess up again. I'm going to get scared and say things I don't mean. I'm going to push you away because that's what I learned to do when someone gets close."
"I know."
"And you'll come back?"
"Shelby." My thumb traces her jaw. "I came back today without tools. That's the most vulnerable I've been in my entire life."
She laughs. Watery, full, real. The sound rolls through my chest.
"Stay for dinner," she says.
"Stay for longer than that."
Her eyes hold mine. "Yeah. That too."
Inside, the cabin is warm. The fire is banked.
Two plates on the counter. She cooked, even through the red eyes and the bad night.
Because that's who she is. A woman who handles things, who makes dinner even when the world is falling apart, who fights her way through with crooked nails and yellow mustard and a stubborn refusal to quit.
She's not a fence. She's not a project.
She's home.
And I'm done being patient about it.