Chapter Thirteen
I WAS THE GAMBLE
LOUISIANA
I open the door—and freeze.
A boy stands on the porch, glaring up at me like he’s already decided he hates everything about this place.
He’s small, but the attitude rolling off him could fill a room.
His expression is pure defiance—chin raised, jaw tight, blue eyes narrowed like he’s daring me to say the wrong thing.
There's a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas, and somehow, he wears it like armor.
He looks like he crawled out of a junkyard.
His shirt is stiff with dried mud, jeans sagging and torn, and his skin is a patchwork of grime and scrapes.
His hair is a wild, matted mess, curling around the tops of his shoulder blades like he’s been lost in the woods for months.
Honestly, he looks more like a dirty little yeti than a child.
From the scowl on his face, it’s clear—he doesn’t want to be here.
Yeah, well…join the fucking club, kid.
He gives me a slow once-over, starting at the ridiculous cow slippers on my feet, then dragging those cold blue eyes up my legs, pausing on the paint-splattered overalls, and finally settling on my face.
He doesn’t blink. Just stares. Like he’s trying to figure out exactly how fast he can make me crack.
Behind him, Henry shifts awkwardly. The kid doesn’t even glance his way when he speaks.
“What is this place?” Dallas mutters, voice gravelly for someone so young. “Some kinda shelter or some shit?”
Okay…so the kid had grit.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t cower or cling.
He just stands there, legs planted like roots, arms crossed like armor, eyes sharp and unflinching.
There’s something wild in him, something that’s already been scraped raw and calloused over.
A little boy who looks at the world like it owes him an apology he knows he’ll never get.
“Dallas, this is Louisiana Wright,” his caseworker says gently, trying to soften the air between us. “Sheriff Wilder’s fiancée.”
The title lands like a slap. My breath hitches, just for a second.
Fake, I whisper to myself. Fake fiancée. Like saying it again will keep it from cutting so deep.
But then my eyes drift—of course they do—to the bookshelf behind him.
To that photo. That long-ago birthday party.
Maggie front and center, hair wild and joy blazing in her smile.
Merc, half toothless and laughing like the world was still good.
Maddox, mid-eye roll. Henry with frosting smeared on his chin, cheeks still round with boyhood.
And wedged between them—me.
Pale hair, wide-eyed, that stupid soft smile like I didn’t know better. Like I didn’t know how fast things fall apart. Staring up at Henry like he was something permanent. Like the world made sense and love was something that stayed.
That girl…she didn’t know a damn thing.
She didn’t know how love could gut you. Didn’t know that sometimes it meant stepping back from the one thing you wanted most. That one day, she’d wake up with empty arms and an even emptier womb and learn to pretend it didn’t matter.
My hand drifts to my stomach. Automatically. Reflex. Like I’m checking to see if the hollow is still there.
It is.
Always is.
I press harder than I mean to—trying to ground myself, trying to breathe around the swell of grief that never really fades, just hides better on some days. This isn’t the time. Not now. Not in front of him.
Dallas is still watching me, eyes narrowed—not scared, not curious. Just…measuring. Like he’s already learned how to spot the bullshit. Like he’s wondering what kind of lie this is, and how long it’ll take to fall apart.
So I square my shoulders. Swallow everything that’s clawing its way up. And I give him what I’ve always given the world when it tries to look too close—
Nothing.
I can bleed later.
I turn my attention to his caseworker, and for a moment, I’m caught off guard by the warmth in her smile. It’s genuine—the kind that reaches her eyes—and somehow, that softens something in me.
She’s younger than I expected, probably not much younger than me.
Kind eyes, long black hair pulled into a loose braid that’s falling over her shoulder, and a figure that most women would kill for—full hips, soft curves, the kind of body that turns heads without even trying.
And yet, she’s wrapped up tight in a massive knit cardigan, like she’s hoping it might make her invisible.
I’ve never understood that.
Why hide something so beautiful? If I had curves like that, I wouldn’t bury them under layers—I’d wear them like armor.
Henry steps in like he always does, smoothing the edges of the moment without breaking it.
He gestures everyone toward the living room.
The shuffle that follows is quiet, stiff.
No one wants to sit too close. No one wants to be the first to speak.
The whole room hums with the kind of nervous energy you only get when you know someone’s about to lie to themselves.
Then she clears her throat. Offers a practiced smile and says her name—Rue.
There’s a calmness in the way she speaks, but it’s not the kind that comes easy.
It’s the kind you earn. The kind you build up brick by brick after too many highways and too many houses with broken locks and shut windows.
There’s weight behind her eyes—like she’s seen too much and still believes trying matters.
She pulls a thick folder from her oversized bag and sets it on her lap like it’s something sacred.
When she begins to speak, her voice is even, professional—but there's something underneath it. A quiet urgency, the kind that says she’s been here before, too many times, and she’s praying this time will be different.
That maybe if she gets the words just right, maybe if she hits the right note, this boy won’t slip through the cracks like the rest.
“Since this is an emergency placement,” she says carefully, “you’ll still need to complete a home study. Background checks for anyone in regular contact with Dallas. He’ll need to be enrolled in school right away, and we’ll set up a follow-up to assess how things are going in the next few weeks.”
Her eyes flick from Dallas to me and back again, gauging the damage. Trying to figure out if we’re already burning or just waiting for the match.
Emergency placement. Like he’s a fire they’re trying to contain.
And us? We’re just the last door that wasn’t locked.
Dallas scowls like he'd rather eat soap. His eyes flick between us, sharp and watchful, like he’s cataloging every weakness, every crack in the walls we’ve built around ourselves.
“I need to check a few things around the house before I leave,” Rue says softly, already rising to her feet, “but I do have this for you.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a binder—thick, overstuffed, the plastic cover warped from too many car rides and too many desperate placements.
The second it hits her lap, I watch Dallas recoil like it’s something alive.
His small body sinks further into the couch, spine curling in, chin tucking toward his chest. He doesn’t say a word, but everything about him screams: Not again. Please not again.
And damn it if it doesn’t hit me like a punch to the ribs.
That binder—what’s inside it—it’s everything he’s been forced to carry before anyone ever asked if he could.
A documented history of heartbreak. Paper-clipped trauma.
A life someone tried to reduce to bullet points and court dates and signatures on dotted lines.
I don’t even know what’s in there yet, but I can feel the weight of it in my chest like it’s my own.
Worse, I see it in him—how he braces for it. How he steels himself without flinching, like he’s done this a hundred times and knows better than to hope.
He doesn’t look like a little boy.
He looks like something carved down to the bone just to survive. Like someone who’s never been asked what he wants, only told what comes next. And I hate—hate—how deeply I recognize that look. That instinct to disappear before someone decides you’re too much.
The silence thickens. Rue’s voice drones gently on, but I can’t hear it anymore. All I see is the way Dallas is trying to make himself smaller, as if this couch might open up and let him vanish if he just holds still long enough.
Beside me, Henry shifts.
His leg tenses under my hand. A hand I don’t even realize I’ve placed there until he turns to look at me, brows pulled together in that familiar, silent What the hell are you doing expression he’s perfected over the years.
I keep my eyes forward, voice light.
“Honey, why don’t you go show Dallas his room? Maybe give him the grand tour?”
Henry stares at me, searching my face for some kind of signal. I feel the hesitation in him, the uncertainty. His gaze flicks from me to Dallas and back again, that cautious Are you sure about this? written clear in the furrow of his brow.
I squeeze his knee gently, then dig my nails into the fabric of his jeans—not out of spite, but urgency. A grounding touch. A message only he will understand. I’m not asking. Move.
And because God blessed him with as much brain as cock, he does. He just gives me the smallest nod and turns toward the boy still folded into the couch. He doesn’t crouch or lower his voice, doesn’t try to force friendliness. He just offers it plain and simple, like a door left open.
“Your room’s down the hall,” Henry says, voice low but even. “You want to come see it?”
Dallas doesn’t answer. Doesn’t look at him. But I see the way his fingers tighten on the edge of the cushion, the way his shoulders stiffen like he’s bracing for the worst.
Henry doesn’t press. Just stands and takes a few measured steps toward the hall.
“It’s yours either way,” he says quietly. “Come see it when you’re ready.”
For a moment, nothing moves. The whole room holds its breath.
Then Dallas slides off the couch, silent and cautious, and follows.