Chapter 8
Wyatt
Rain had been building all afternoon, the kind of slow, heavy pressure that made the cattle restless and old-timers swear their bones could predict the weather. The kind of storm that crept under your skin and sat there, waiting.
Thunder rolled low across the hills. Still distant, but close enough to feel in my chest.
I was in the chute barn, checking the pregnant heifers, doing my best to focus on anything but her. But it was useless. Everything smelled like Ivy now.
Her shampoo lingered in the hallway of the main house—something soft and expensive, all citrus and rain and memory.
The tack room still held the ghost of her perfume, mixed with the damp scent of leather where she’d passed through yesterday.
Even the damn air felt charged, humming with the same electricity that used to spark between us just from standing too close.
I ran a hand down the flank of a restless heifer, more for something to do than anything else. She shifted beneath my touch, unsettled by the weather—or maybe by me. Hell, I was unsettled by me.
Yesterday, I did the right thing. Gave her the tour. Showed her the barns, the lab, the land. Played polite, professional, steady. Then we’d ridden past the house.
The one I’d built for her.
The one that had sat alone for ten years because I couldn’t bring myself to live in it until Mom and Maggie finally wore me down and convinced me to move in last year.
I’d seen Ivy's face when she realized what it was. The way her eyes had gone glassy. The way her chin quivered. The way she’d looked at that porch like she could see the ghosts of the life we were supposed to have. How her voice broke on my name.
And I’d felt something break open all over again.
My carefully constructed walls, gone in one look.
So yeah, I was pissed. Pissed at her for coming back. Pissed at myself for still wanting her like oxygen. It was why I made that childish, stupid jab at her in the barn.
I told myself it didn’t matter. She was here for work, nothing more. I had a ranch to run. But then I woke up this morning and imagined her scent in my goddamn sheets because I’d dreamed of her—again—and I knew I was lying to myself.
Lightning flashed outside, bright enough to bleach the world white for a heartbeat. I counted—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—before thunder cracked hard enough to rattle the rafters. The sky was breaking open, same as me.
I bent to check the last heifer, muttering to myself, Focus, Blackwood.
And that’s when the barn door slammed open.
Ivy stood there, soaked to the bone, her hair clinging to her face, a clipboard raised like a weapon. Water ran down her neck, slipping beneath her shirt, and I felt my pulse hit like a hammer.
She looked furious. Beautiful. Alive in a way that made the rest of the world feel pale.
“You changed my embryo schedules,” she growled, voice tight and cutting, waving that clipboard like she meant to take my head off with it.
I straightened slowly, deliberately, taking my time. “I adjusted them.”
Her eyes sparked like lightning in a bottle. “You had no right—”
“I had every right.” My tone came out rougher than I intended. “This is my ranch. These are my cattle.”
She took a step closer, rain still clinging to her jeans, jaw set, eyes blazing—and for half a second, the anger in me faltered, knocked sideways by something else entirely.
Christ.
I’d forgotten how gorgeous she was when that wild temper got going.
That fire in her had always wrecked me. It still did.
She looked ready to tear into me, chest rising fast, mouth soft and furious all at once—and all I could think about was the way that mouth used to taste when she got like this.
I shoved the thought down hard, jaw locking tight.
Focus. Stay mad. Stay in control.
"Your father hired me to implement a program.
A program that requires precise timing." She moved closer, and I could smell the rain on her, mixing with that expensive shampoo.
She smelled like my Ivy and not my Ivy, a confusing mix that had me leaning in closer.
"You can't just arbitrarily change protocols because you feel like it. "
"I didn't arbitrarily change anything. I know these cows better than any chart or computer program. Number forty-seven always cycles late. Number twenty-three needs an extra day between doses, or she gets aggressive."
Her jaw tightened. “That's anecdotal evidence, not science."
"That's experience, which is worth more than your textbooks."
Her eyes flashed. “You can’t stand it, can you? Someone else walking in with ideas that might actually improve your precious operation.”
Something in her tone—possessive, challenging, like she thought she still knew how this place ran—snapped my control.
“No,” I said, voice low and dangerous. “It’s better. Because I built it from the pieces you left behind.”
Lightning split the sky directly overhead, the flash and thunder simultaneous, making us both jump. The lights flickered but held. Rain started hammering the tin roof like bullets.
She was trembling, but not with fear. With fury. "You don't get to say that to me."
I laughed, harsh and bitter. "I don't get to? You don't get to walk in here after all this time and act like you know better than me about my own fucking ranch!”
"I'm not acting. I do know better. That's why your father hired me."
"My father hired you because he's sentimental. Because Mom probably pushed him into it."
Her chin lifted, smug. ”He hired me because I'm the best at what I do."
“What? Leaving?" The words came out before I could stop them.
Her face went white, then red. "The best at genetics and breeding programs. This isn't personal."
"Bullshit. Everything about this is personal."
"The schedule I created will increase conception rates by—"
"I don't give a fuck about your percentages!" I stepped closer, and she backed up until she hit the stall door. "You think you can just waltz back in here with your city clothes and your fancy equipment and tell us how to run our ranch?"
"I'm trying to help!"
"We didn't need your help. We were doing just fine without you."
"Fine isn't excellent. Fine isn't reaching your potential. Fine is settling for mediocrity because you're too stubborn to accept that someone else might know something you don't."
"You don't know anything about this place anymore."
"I know plenty. I know you're so caught up in tradition that you're missing opportunities. I know you're letting your pride get in the way of progress."
"My pride?" I laughed again, darker this time. "That's rich, coming from you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're the one who was too proud to ask for help. Too proud to stay and fight. Too proud to trust anyone with whatever was really going on."
The anger in her eyes ebbed, her voice softening, but still kept that edge. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Because you never told me! You just left!"
"This isn't about that!"
"Everything is about that!" The words exploded out of me. "Every conversation, every look, every damn minute you're here is about that!"
She shoved me then, both hands against my chest, hard enough to make me step back. "You arrogant ass! You think everything revolves around you and your hurt feelings? I'm here to do a job. If you can't handle that professionally—"
"Professionally?" I caught her wrists before she could shove me again. "There's nothing professional about any of this. You're standing in my barn, telling me how to run my ranch, wearing clothes that cost more than my hands make in a month, pretending like you belong here."
She lifted her chin, refusing to back down. “I did belong here once."
"And whose fault is it that you don't anymore?"
She tried to yank her wrists free, but I held on, and suddenly we were closer than we'd been since that night by the creek. Close enough that I could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes. Close enough to feel her breath on my face. Close enough to see her pulse racing at the base of her throat.
"Let go," she said, but her voice had gone breathless.
"Make me," I challenged, not sure what demon had possessed me.
She went still, staring up at me, and the air between us changed. The anger was still there, but underneath it was something else. Something that had always been there, no matter how many years or miles separated us.
Lightning flashed again, and in that stark white moment, I saw it in her eyes—the same recognition, the same want, the same terrible realization that this was about to happen even though it absolutely shouldn’t.
The air snapped.
We collided.
I didn't know who moved first. Maybe we both did.
One second, we were standing there in a furious deadlock, and the next, we were kissing like the world was ending.
Like we were trying to devour each other.
Like all the years of anger and hurt had transformed into something physical that demanded release.
It wasn't gentle. It was war—hot and brutal, fourteen years of pain turned to hunger. She made a sound against my mouth that went straight through me, then her hands were in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, and I pressed her back against the stall door.
The kiss deepened, turned savage, all teeth and tongue and desperate need. She tasted like rain and regret and home, and I was drowning in her. My hands tangled in her wet hair, and she arched against me, eliminating any space between us.
Thunder shook the barn, or maybe that was just my heartbeat. I couldn't tell anymore. All I knew was that she was here, in my arms, kissing me like she was trying to crawl inside my skin, and nothing else mattered.
I was furious. With her. With myself. With everything. But I was too pathetic to save my pride and push her away. Too desperate to have her like this again to stop.
“I hate you for leaving me,” I confessed against her lips, the words raw and broken.