Chapter 26
WYATT
The water line on the north pasture has been leaking for three days, according to Colt, which roughly translates to it’s-been-leaking-for-five-and-he’s-only-just-noticed.
Normally, I’d give him hell for that.
Today, I crouch in the mud and dig around the coupling with my hands while my brother leans against the fence post, watching me work like he’s supervising.
“You gonna help or commentate?”
“Figured I’d let you have this one.” He pulls a blade of grass and chews the end of it. “You seem like you could use somethin’ to hit.”
He’s not wrong.
My hands are buried in cold mud but my head is still in the cab of my truck, with her voice in my ear and the softness of her skin under my thumb. I yank the cracked coupling free and toss it into the grass.
“Hand me the replacement.”
Colt digs through the toolbox and passes it over without comment. “West headed to Billings this morning. That mare he’s been after came available.”
I grunt in acknowledgment and thread the new coupling onto the line.
He lasts about thirty seconds, which I reckon might be a personal record.
“So.” He settles back against the post. “Town was productive, huh?”
“Daisy said that. Not me.”
“Yeah, I caught the direct quote. Also caught the part where you two looked like you’d been set on fire and somebody forgot to call the department.”
I thread the new coupling onto the line and tighten it with the wrench, giving it more force than it needs. “We were talking about the break-in.”
“Sure you were.” He’s quiet for a beat, which is never a good sign. Colt’s silence is louder than most people’s shouting. “Can I say one thing?”
“You’re going to regardless.”
“I don’t know what happened before she left. That’s your business. But I know what I’ve seen since she got back.”
His voice has dropped the lazy drawl, and when I glance up, the grin is gone.
“She watches you when you’re not looking. And you smile when she’s in the room. Actual smiles, Wyatt. Damn, I forgot your face knew how to do that.”
He chews the grass stem as he looks out over the land.
“You’ve spent your whole life showin’ up for everyone else.”
When he looks at me, his eyes are as serious as I’ve ever seen.
“When do you get to be the one who wants somethin’?”
My hands still on the wrench. The mud is cold against my knees, and somewhere beyond the tree line, a hawk calls and goes quiet.
“You done?” My voice comes out flatter than I intend.
“I’m done.”
I finish tightening the coupling and test the line. Water flows clean. No leak. I wipe my hands on my jeans and stand, and Colt is watching me with something that looks a lot like the expression Dad used to wear when he knew something the rest of us hadn’t figured out yet.
“Careful,” I mutter. “You’re startin’ to sound like him.”
Colt doesn’t smile. “Maybe that’s the problem.” And for a moment, he looks like he’s going to say more, but when he stays silent, I push myself off the ground and wipe my hands on my jeans.
“The line’s fixed. Let’s check the trough levels on the way back.”
Colt pushes off the fence and follows. He doesn’t say another word about it, and I spend the next hour checking water troughs and pretending every cell in my body isn’t counting down the minutes until I walk through my own front door.
* * *
It’s past dark by the time I get back. The sun didn’t quit till past nine. Dimly lit porch lights and silence greet me as I step inside the main house.
I pull my boots off at the door and leave them on the mat. The kitchen smells like garlic and rosemary, and there’s a dish wrapped in foil in the oven with a sticky note on top in June’s handwriting.
Saved you some dinner. Don’t you dare eat standing up.
Staying in town at Maggie’s tonight.
You’re welcome.
I stare at the last two words for a beat, then set the plate on the counter and eat standing up. Because I’m thirty-five years old and this is my kitchen.
It’s only when I’ve finished my beef stew that I notice the rest of it.
A notepad sits on the kitchen table, covered in Daisy’s handwriting with a pen tucked into the spiral.
There’s a coffee mug in the sink, rinsed but not washed, with a faint smudge of lipstick on the rim that she probably doesn’t know she leaves.
Her boots are by the back door, lined up neatly beside the mudroom wall, and when I hang my hat on the hook by the door, hers is already on the one next to it.
Side by side.
Like they belong together.
The domesticity of it lodges in my chest and doesn’t move because this is what it would look like. If she wasn’t just a guest in the house, or Tom Monroe’s daughter passing through.
This is what it would look like if she lived here. Her coffee mug next to mine every morning. Her handwriting on my kitchen table. Her things mixed in with my things until I couldn’t tell where mine ended and hers started.
When do you get to be the one who wants somethin’?
I put my plate in the sink next to her mug and wash them both. Then I dry my hands on the towel and flick off the kitchen light.
The house is in complete darkness as I slowly take the stairs. Not because I’m tired, though I am. But because I know what’s waiting at the top, and I’ve spent six years believing I could never have it.
The only shred of light comes from underneath my door and I reach for the doorknob.
On the other side of this door is every reason I should have bunked in the barn tonight, and every reason I didn’t.
I turn the knob.
She’s sitting up against the headboard with her phone in her lap, and the light from the screen catches the amber in her eyes when she looks up.
She’s wearing my shirt, the gray flannel one with the snap buttons.
The sleeves are rolled past her wrists, and the collar is too wide, so it’s fallen off one side to display her bare shoulder.
She takes me in. The mud on my jeans and how my hair’s pressed flat from the hat I wore all afternoon. I probably smell like copper pipe and the north pasture.
“Hey.” The word lands softly.
“Hey.”
I close the door behind me and lean against it. She watches me from my bed in my shirt with her hair loose around her shoulders, and I don’t move.
“You just going to stand there all night?”
“Thinkin’ about it.”
“How’s the water line?”
“Fixed.”
She sets the phone on the nightstand and pulls her knees up, resting her chin on them. The shirt rides up her thighs, and I look at the ceiling because I need another second but she’s making it real damn hard to find one.
“Wyatt.”
“Yeah.”
“You said we’re not done.”
I look at her, taking in the resolution in her eyes and determination in the jut of her chin. Not a single nerve and no second-guessing. Just that Daisy directness that cuts through every wall I’ve ever built.
“I did say that.”
“Then come here.”
I cross the room in three steps. It feels like that’s all there’s ever been between us but I’ve been treating it like a goddamn canyon.
I stop at the edge of the bed and look down at her. She tilts her face up to me, and I push a strand of hair back from her jaw the way I did in the truck. My hand is rough and too big against her skin, and she turns into it the same way she did before, pressing her cheek into my palm.
“I need you to know something.” My voice is low and rough.
“Okay.” She nods, her cheek still cupped in my palm.
“If I get in that bed, I’m not getting back out. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not when this is over and you come to your senses about what you’re doing with a man like me.” My thumb traces her cheekbone and her breath catches, and I feel it in every part of my body. “You understand what I’m sayin’?”
“I’ve understood since I was twenty years old, Wyatt.”
The last thread of it snaps. Six years, a thousand reasons, the promise I made her father. All of it burns down to nothing because she’s looking at me the way Colt said she does and I can finally see it, and it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever let myself believe.
I lean down and kiss her slowly with one hand on her jaw, tilting her face up to mine. She tastes like the mint tea she drinks at night, and her fingers curl into the front of my shirt and pull me closer to deepen the kiss.
She tugs at my shirt and I pull back long enough to get rid of it. Her hands land flat on my chest and spread, and she goes quiet. Just looking. Her eyes tracing over me slow enough that I can feel the path of them moving along my skin.
“Take your time,” I tell her, and my voice comes out lower than I mean it to.
She leans forward and presses her mouth to the center of my chest, right over my heartbeat. I groan deep inside my chest, and she pulls back, looking at me with darkened eyes.
“Lie down,” she demands.
“Bossy.”
“Always.” She pushes at my chest with both hands and I let her tip me back against the mattress because this woman could steer me off a damn cliff and I’d thank her on the way down.
She swings a knee over me and settles in my lap, and the weight of her there, perched on top of me with her hair falling around her face, makes my heart feel like it’s trying to break out of my chest.
I run my hands up her thighs. The flannel rides up under my palms, and I falter when I realize there’s nothing underneath it. My brain processes that information in about half a second as my cock throbs painfully hard against my jeans.
“Sweet Jesus.”
She smiles, but it’s not sweet. It’s dangerous. “Problem?”
“You’ve been sittin’ up here in my shirt with nothing under it this whole time?”
She shrugs impishly. “Figured I’d save you a step.”
I sit up so fast she almost slides off my lap, but I catch her with one arm around her waist to pull her flush against me. Her hands go to my shoulders and her breathing stutters.
“Christ, woman, do you have any idea what you do to me?” I press the words into the hollow of her throat and feel her pulse hammering against my lips.
“Show me.”