Chapter 16
WYATT
The post driver rings off the cap and the impact shudders up through my palms and into my shoulders. I drive it again before Rhett can tell me it’s already in, because the alternative is standing still, and standing still means thinking.
And thinking means her.
The warmth of her face against my palm.
The way she turned into it, just enough.
The sound she made when her fingers curled into my shirt…
Christ.
I drive it again, but my mind won’t fucking quit.
The damn inch of space between us that was about to become nothing at all before the world lit up in white and took it from me.
She got in the car with him.
Doesn’t matter what came before.
Motherfucker.
I drive the post again.
“I think it’s in, Boss.” Rhett’s voice comes from somewhere behind me.
I look down and notice the post is a solid four inches deeper than it needs to be.
“Good depth,” I mutter with a shrug.
He doesn’t answer that. Simply picks up the wire spool and moves to the next section without comment, which is the only response I need.
It’s also the precise reason I texted him from Dawson’s orchard at nine-thirty last night.
ME
Heading to Elk Creek to get an early start in the AM. You coming?
I walked out and kept walking, picked him up on the way. Rhett Cordova has never once in eight years asked me a question he knew I didn’t have an answer for, and right now I don’t have an answer for a damn thing.
Elk Creek runs loud beside us, fast with snowmelt off the upper ridge, filling the whole upper pasture with a low continuous roar that presses into the space between your ears and crowds everything else out.
My dad used to say anyone who could hear himself think over Elk Creek in May had something wrong with his hearing, and I came here counting on that.
It’s working for maybe thirty seconds at a stretch, which is twenty-nine seconds longer than the drive out here was giving me, so I’ll take it.
I pull the next flagging tape from my pocket and mark the post at the end of the section.
“Next section’s worse.” Rhett appears alongside me with the wire spool under one arm and the pliers in his hand as he squints up the line. “Wrong gauge wire, by my estimate.”
“I know.” I work the first staple free with a sigh. “Wrong order came in last fall and I didn’t check the delivery myself the way I should have.”
Rhett looks at the wire, then back up the line. “Supply budget’s been running short for a while.”
“Sure seems like it has.” I nod as I move to the next staple. “I need to carve out some time to sit down with the books and figure out where in the hell it’s going.”
He makes a sound of agreement and crouches at the nearest post, working the staples free with the methodical patience that makes him the best hand I’ve ever worked beside.
In all the time he’s been here, I’ve never seen him rush a job or cut a corner or complain about the kind of work that nobody thanks you for doing.
He just shows up, gets it done, and comes back the next morning for more of the same.
I move to the next post and we fall into the rhythm we’ve perfected over the years. The creek is loud, the sky is that particular blue shade of high elevation in late spring, and my shoulders burn in a way I’ve decided is better than the alternative.
It almost works.
Almost.
The weight of her hand against my chest. The smell of her hair. And that sound… that fucking sound that won’t leave me alone.
I’m starting to think there isn’t a fence post deep enough to drive it out.
Goddammit.
I move to the next one.
We work through the rest of the morning without talking much, which suits me fine. By the time the sun is high enough to warrant stopping for water, my hands are good and sore, and the creek’s still running hard beside us, and none of it is working even slightly.
My phone vibrates mid-afternoon, but I’m in a rhythm, so I let it go. It vibrates again immediately, which means it’s June, because she’s the only one who calls back inside ten seconds. Hastily, I pull it out and answer before she escalates to Colt.
Her face fills the screen, freckled and serious with the kitchen window lit up in gold behind her.
“Hey, Wy.” She sounds careful, her eyes roving over my face as though checking for damage. “How’s the fence situation?”
“Whole north line’s shot past Elk Creek.”
She takes a breath, and I know that breath the way I know my own hands. There’s a particular quality to it with a small deliberate pause before she says the thing she’s already decided to say, regardless of what I want to hear.
“Last night at the auction—”
“June.”
“Wyatt, just let me—”
“Whatever you’re building up to, I don’t need it.” I turn slightly away from where Rhett is working, not that it matters. “Say what you actually need from me.”
Her jaw sets. “You spent two thousand dollars in front of the entire town.”
“I’m aware of what I spent.”
“She’s—”
“She’s Tom’s daughter.” Quiet. Final. The kind of quiet that means I’m not moving from this. It’s the only version of her I can afford to see. “I was looking out for her. It’s not a conversation.”
Whatever happened last night, I won’t let that happen again.
The silence that comes back is the specific kind June deploys when she’s furious and has decided the most devastating thing she can do is give me exactly what I asked for.
“Right.” Her voice is sharp. One word and it lands like a closed door. “Fix your goddamn fence, Wyatt.”
The call ends.
I pocket the phone and pick up the wire spool and don’t check it again for three hours, by which point my pocket has been buzzing on and off long enough that I know exactly what it is before I look.
Rhett glances up from the wire he’s working. “Hellions?”
“Hellions.”
He nods once, mouth twitching. “Figured. Been countin’ the notifications comin’ through.”
COLT
So… Fundraiser. Good turnout.
MAGGIE
Don’t start.
COLT
I’m just saying! Great cause. Community spirit. Really came together.
MAGGIE
COLT!
COLT
Two thousand dollars though.
MAGGIE
I know what I witnessed. I was three feet away.
COLT
He moved like a man with a plan, Maggie.
MAGGIE
He moved like a man who forgot he was in public.
COLT
Same energy. Different optics.
MAGGIE
Dolly Briggs has called me twice today.
COLT
What did she say?
MAGGIE
I’m protecting the last shreds of his dignity so I can’t repeat it.
COLT
You’re a good sister, Magnolia.
MAGGIE
Call me that again, and I’ll sedate you.
COLT
Duly noted. Now back to the main event.
WEST
Leave him be.
COLT
And where’s the fun in that, Weston?
WEST
He did what he thought was right. That’s all.
COLT
That is a very generous interpretation of two thousand dollars, brother.
WEST
Where’s June?
COLT
… Good question.
MAGGIE
Haven’t seen her today.
COLT
Wyatt. Brother. Light of my life. What in the hell is going on with Daisy Monroe?
They’ve been at it for the better part of two hours.
I scroll to the bottom and notice that June hasn’t sent a single message.
The whole thread, not one contribution, and the silence where her voice should be tells me more than any of their messages do.
She’s furious, is what that silence means.
She called and I shut her down. Now she’s sitting in that kitchen reading every one of these and saying nothing, which is the June Hartley equivalent of a controlled detonation.
I type.
ME
She’s Tom’s daughter. I was looking out for her. Drop it.
Then I mute the chat for forty-eight hours, put my phone away and go back to the fence line, because I have sixteen posts to reset and three days of work ahead of me and not a single spare minute for this particular conversation.
Rhett is at the next post when I get back, tamping gravel at the base to pack it solid. He glances up once when I crouch alongside him and hands me the tamping bar without being asked. He doesn’t ask what the chat said. Just moves to the next post, without making it a thing.
And that’s exactly why he’s my best friend.
We work until the light goes long and orange across the upper pasture, and my hands are good and sore, and my shoulders are finally done in a way that has nothing to do with anything except fence posts and hard work.
When we finally sit on the tailgate with the cold dregs of the thermos between us and the stars beginning to come through thick and close above the ridge, the silence between us is the easy kind. The kind that doesn’t need filling.
Rhett stares out across the darkening valley for a long moment before he murmurs, “Some things you can’t fence out.”
I know he’s not talking about the property line.
Inhaling slowly, I turn the thermos cap in my hands. The creek has quieted some with the drop in temperature, and the ridge is dark against a sky that’s shifted from orange to deep blue on its way toward something closer to black.
South of here, past the lower pasture, the ranch house will have its kitchen light on. And in the cabin beside it is Tom Monroe’s daughter—the woman who walked back into my life a week ago and hasn’t stopped making everything harder and better and goddamn impossible in equal measure.
But I don’t say any of that to Rhett. I just sit with it.
And in the quiet, the question I’ve been driving fence posts through all day finally catches up with me.
What if I read it all wrong?
Maybe the orchard was just relief and adrenaline. A moment that meant something different to both of us.
Maybe I leaned in and she was already pulling back and I was too far gone to see it.
She got in the car with her friend.
He reached for her like she was his.
That’s not a question. That’s an answer.
Thinking otherwise is all on me.
Then Rhett says, without preamble, the way he says most things that matter, “Your dad would’ve bid three thousand.”
The ache of it settles behind my ribs, familiar and heavy and completely without remedy.
“At least,” I murmur, tipping my head back to take in the canopy of stars above my head.
Still wouldn’t have been enough.