Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Wyatt
Maddy sat in the passenger seat with her knees pulled up, earbuds looped around her fingers but not in her ears, staring out the windshield.
Calgary was an hour out, the prairie stretching wide and pale under a sky that looked scrubbed clean, and I kept both hands on the wheel like I could hold the day steady if I gripped hard enough.
Two weeks.
That was all I’d had, and it hadn’t been enough.
It never was. She’d filled my house up just by existing in it, by leaving her shoes all over the place and humming to herself while she fed the chickens, by laughing at Holt’s terrible jokes and then pretending she hadn’t.
She’d ridden until her thighs ached and she’d smiled that fierce, hungry smile she got when she was doing something that made her feel capable.
She’d made the place feel like a home again.
And now I was bringing her back to the city, back to her mother, back to the life that didn’t include me.
Maddy glanced over at me, eyes sharp and too old for her age, then looked away again. She’d been doing that all morning, like she was checking on me in little stolen moments and deciding whether to push.
She finally did.
“Dad,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
“You’re doing the jaw thing.”
I breathed out through my nose, the sound rougher than I meant it to be. “Am I?”
“You are.” She tilted her head, studying me like I was one of her horses about to spook. “Are you mad?”
“No.”
She didn’t even pretend to believe that. “Are you sad?”
I swallowed. The road shimmered ahead, heat already rising off the pavement even though the sun wasn’t fully up. “I’m… thinking.”
Maddy made a small sound. “That’s worse.”
I glanced at her, despite myself. “How’s that worse?”
“Because when you think, you go quiet,” she said. “And when you go quiet, you decide things without telling anyone.”
That one landed clean.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my knuckles ached, then forced my fingers to loosen. “I’m not trying to decide things without telling anyone.”
“You kind of are,” she said gently, which was infuriating because she was right. “It's about Tessa, isn’t it?”
The name hit like a bruise pressed too hard.
My eyes stayed on the road. “Not just her, I’m thinking about you too. You’ve made the ranch feel like a home again, and I hate that you’re leaving.”
Maddy’s laugh was soft, without humor. “Dad.”
I didn’t answer, and silence stretched between us for a few miles, the kind that wasn’t empty. It was full of words I didn’t want to say because saying them made them real.
I swallowed again, jaw working even though I didn’t want it to. “I’m alright.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and her voice was steady, not accusing. Just certain. “You look like you did when I was little and you thought I didn’t notice.”
My chest went hot, then cold. The road blurred for a second, a white line stretching out like a thread I was holding onto with my teeth.
“You shouldn’t have had to notice,” I said quietly.
Maddy shrugged a little. “I did anyway.”
I nodded once, stiff. “Yeah.”
Her shoulders eased, like my admission loosened something in her, too. “Then why are you taking me back first? Let’s go get her.”
Because you’re the one thing I won’t drag into this, I thought.
“Because you come first.” I looked over at her, and she gave me a crooked smile. “I know you want to see Tessa, and if I knew what was going to happen, I’d take you with me, but kid, she’s not in a good place. So as soon as I know what’s happening, we’ll find you.”
Maddy’s expression softened, and for a second, she looked younger as she nodded. We drove in silence again, but it wasn’t the same silence.
When the city finally rose up on the horizon, glass and steel catching the sun, my stomach knotted.
Calgary always made me feel like I was wearing the wrong skin.
Too many people. Too many lanes. Too much noise.
The world pressed closer here, and it didn’t leave room for the kind of quiet you could hear a fence line in.
Maddy’s mother lived on the south end, wide streets. Neat yards. Houses that looked like they’d been designed to impress.
I pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. The sudden quiet rang.
Maddy didn’t move right away. She stared at the front door, then turned toward me. Her eyes were bright but stubborn, like she refused to cry even when she wanted to.
“Text me,” she said.
I smiled faintly. “I always do.”
“No,” she insisted. “Like, actually text me. Not just thumbs up my messages and pretend that counts as parenting.”
A laugh tried to come out of me and caught halfway. “Alright.”
She’d always hugged with her whole body, even when she was trying to act cool. I held her carefully at first, then tighter when her shoulders shook once against my chest.
“I love you, Dad,” she mumbled into my shirt.
My throat went thick immediately. “Love you too, sweetheart.”
She pulled back, blinked fast, and then her voice went quieter. “Be nice.”
I stared at her, caught off guard. “Nice?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “To Tessa, give her a reason to come back to us.”
My chest tightened. “I promise.”
“Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“If you love her,” she said, voice steady but quiet, “you should tell her. Because people don’t always stay long enough for you to figure it out later.”
My breath caught so sharp it hurt.
Maddy climbed out before I could answer, closed the door carefully, and walked up the path toward her mother’s front steps. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to.
I sat in the truck and watched until the door opened, and her mother pulled her into a hug. I watched until Maddy disappeared inside, swallowed by a life that wasn’t mine.
Then I put my hands on the steering wheel and let my forehead drop against it.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
The thought of turning the truck around and driving away without doing what I’d come to do made my chest feel like it was collapsing.
The thought of going to Tessa’s building and knocking on that door made my palms sweat.
I could feel the memory of the last time too clearly, standing in a hallway that smelled like someone else’s cooking, delivering news that didn’t belong to me to deliver.
Tessa’s face had been so pale then.
Her eyes looked like they were trying to hold the world together by force.
I walked away from that door feeling like the villain.
I started the engine, put the truck in reverse, and backed out of the driveway.
My hands shook on the wheel, not enough to lose control, but enough that I noticed. My chest felt tight, my jaw clenched, my tongue pressed hard against the back of my teeth like I was holding words in.
Traffic picked up as I headed toward the core. I followed directions I memorized on the drive out, the turns, lights, and ramps that led to Tessa’s building. My pulse kept kicking hard against my ribs, impatient and angry and afraid all at once.
I shut the truck off and stepped out. The air smelled like exhaust and concrete warming in the sun. My boots hit the sidewalk too hard, each step heavy with intention I couldn’t pretend wasn’t there.
Inside, the lobby was clean and bright. Someone’s dog barked behind a door. A woman in workout gear carried a bag of groceries past me, her eyes sliding over my hat and work jacket with mild curiosity, then away.
I took the elevator up, my reflection staring back at me in the mirrored walls. I looked tired. Older than I felt. My eyes were bloodshot, my jaw unshaven enough to make me look rougher than usual.
When the doors opened on Tessa’s floor, the hallway felt too quiet. I stood outside her unit for a long moment with my fist raised, not touching the wood yet.
There were a hundred ways this could go wrong. Dani could tell me to get lost. Tessa could refuse to see me. Tessa could look at me like I was the last person she wanted in her life, and I’d have to swallow it.
Or she could look at me like she looked at me that night, hollow and shaking, and I’d have to resist the instinct to wrap her up and keep her there even if she hated it.
I knocked.
Footsteps sounded inside, quick and purposeful, and then the door swung open.
Dani stood there with her pink hair pulled into a messy knot, no eyeliner, no sharp jokes ready like knives. She wore a soft hoodie and leggings, barefoot, her face drawn tight with a kind of exhaustion I’d never seen on her before.
She looked at me and went still.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
Then Dani’s gaze flicked down the hall, like she was checking for someone behind me. Then back to my face. “Oh,” she said, and her voice was quiet this time. Flat. “It’s you.”
The echo of the last time hit me hard, like the hallway itself remembered.
I swallowed. “Morning.”
Dani blinked once, slowly. “It’s afternoon.”
“Yeah,” I said, because it was, and because I’d lost track of time somewhere between anger and fear.
She stared at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she stepped back half a pace and opened the door wider.
“Come in,” she said.
I hesitated. “Is she…”
Dani’s jaw tightened. “She’s in the bedroom. She’s been sleeping since she got here.”
My chest tightened. Relief and something heavier moved through me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
Dani’s eyes flashed. “Don’t thank me. You don’t get points for showing up. You get points for what you do next.”
The apartment felt warm, dimmer than the hallway, curtains drawn partway.
It smelled like coffee and laundry detergent and something floral that made me think of Dani, not Tessa.
There were blankets piled on the couch. A mug on the coffee table.
A letter, folded, sitting near the edge like a thing that had been handled too much.
Dani closed the door behind me, and the sound hit the same way it had that night, final and contained.
My pulse kicked harder.
Dani walked ahead of me toward the kitchen, then stopped and turned, arms crossing over her chest.