Chapter 1 #2
Around me, people are still throwing questions at Cassidy—legal challenges, hypothetical loopholes, half-baked protest plans.
But it’s all background noise now because all I can think about is January.
How fast it’s coming, and how the hell we’re supposed to fix something we didn’t break in the first place.
Sage leans in, her arm sliding against mine. Her voice is quiet, like she’s hoping no one else can hear it. “What are we gonna do?”
I look at her—really look at her. Her blue eyes are wide and scared. With me being the older sister, Sage looks to me to have all the answers. And right now, I don’t know what the hell to say.
So I just reach down and grab her hand, squeezing it like I’m not unraveling too. She doesn’t pull away. She just squeezes back.
I lift my gaze, scanning the room out of instinct, needing to know who else is listening. Who else is angry.
Vaughn Hart is standing toward the back, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He’s not yelling, but he looks like he wants to.
The Harts and the Wildings haven’t exactly been friendly over the years.
Too much history. Too much pride. Too many damn fences.
But even I can admit, Vaughn Hart looks just as pissed as the rest of us.
It doesn’t matter how many acres he owns or that he’s married to Estelle and has what feels like nine thousand children running around that ranch.
Because when one ranch loses access to water, it’s not just affecting one ranch.
As if to prove my point, a man near the front stands up, face red and voice booming.
“You think this only affects the folks pulling water from the aquifer? You cut one ranch off, it ripples out to the rest of us. Supply lines dry up. Markets shrink. Hay prices skyrocket. We’re all gonna go under, Grant. ”
And he’s right. The ranches drying out will, in turn, affect everything. The hay suppliers. The feed mills. The livestock auctions. The local mechanic. The vet clinic. The diesel delivery guy. When one of us gets hit, the rest of us bleed.
In other words, we’re all royally fucked.
The crowd erupts again—louder this time. Not just confusion now. Not just fear.
Rage.
Cassidy tries to calm the room again—his voice firm, but thinning around the edges now.
“If anyone has questions, complaints, or would like to file for preliminary exemption consideration, you can stop by the commissioner’s office during normal business hours.
We’ll have paperwork available by next week. ”
Nobody claps. Nobody thanks him. He just nods and steps back from the podium like he didn’t just lob a grenade into the room.
Voices rise. Coats rustle. The entire community center stands as one organism—loud, tired, bristling.
We file toward the exits like cattle through a chute.
“A damn mess, that’s what this is,” Ed Withers mutters as he pauses beside us. His cheeks are windburned, his hat too big for his head, and his voice is louder than it needs to be. “Fifty-five years of work and they’re tellin’ me I need a roommate or I can’t water my cows.”
Mom nods gently, offering a kind smile that I don’t have the energy to fake. “I know, Ed. It’s not right.”
“I’ve lived in the same house since 1965. You think I’m gonna sell it just to qualify for a goddamn well permit?” He shakes his head, the brim of his hat wobbling with it. “It’s all politics. That’s what this is. Not about the damn water. Never is.”
He tips his hat to my mom. “Anyway, it’s always good to see you, Miss Molly. Hopefully we can sort all this out soon.” Then he shuffles out into the cold.
By the time we get outside, Vaughn Hart’s already gone, which somehow feels more ominous than if he’d stayed to shout like everyone else.
I tug my coat tighter around me, wrap my scarf once, twice, and jam my gloves on. The snow’s picked up—thick, fat flakes clinging to the cuffs of my coat, my scarf, the ends of my hair. It’s cold enough that my gloves aren’t cutting it, and my fingers sting.
Sage huddles in beside me as we walk toward the truck. “We’re gonna be okay though, right? Because Boone owns the ranch. And he’s married. That counts as a shared household.”
Boone shakes his head. “It’s not mine yet. I’m just the foreman. It’s still under Mom’s name until she’s…well, you know.”
Until she’s gone.
Sage stops walking. “So? There has to be some kind of exemption, right? It’s not her fault she’s a widow.”
“There might be,” I say, my voice tighter than I mean it to be. “But we might not get it.”
Sage stares at me like she’s waiting for a better answer. When I don’t give one, she tries again. “But there has to be a work-around. They can’t—”
“Sage,” I snap. “As of right now, we’re fucked, okay? None of us know what we’re going to do, or how to get around it. So asking questions that no one has the answers to isn’t exactly helpful at the moment.”
She flinches, her lips pressed together and the guilt hits me hot and fast. Boone shoots me a look over Sage’s head—a silent reprimand—and I know I deserve it. I’m not trying to be a bitch. I just don’t see the point in freaking out about something we can’t fix yet.
Panic is loud and messy and circular. It makes people feel like they’re doing something when really they’re just wasting time. And time’s not something we get a lot of out here.
I’m not built for spiraling and never have been.
I compartmentalize. I plan. I get shit done.
I keep things moving because if I don’t, who will?
Falling apart isn’t on my to-do list. Feeling everything all at once is how you drown, and I’ve got too much riding on this land—on this family, on my training program—to go under now.
Mom links her arm through Sage’s and presses a kiss to the side of her head. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll figure it out. We always do, don’t we?”
It’s the kind of thing you say when you love someone. Not when you actually have a plan.
Sage leans into her. Boone’s already halfway to the truck, his head down against the wind.
Dad wouldn’t have let this happen.
He’d have walked into that room, listened for less than five minutes, and shut it down before Grant Cassidy even got through his opening remarks.
People respected Lane Wilding—even when they didn’t like him.
Which, to be fair, was often. He wasn’t warm.
He wasn’t diplomatic. But he didn’t need to be—he had a presence, a way of making you think twice without raising his voice.
He didn’t posture. He didn’t bluff. He just showed up and made it very clear he wasn’t someone you wanted to cross.
He’d have handled this already. Known exactly who to talk to, what strings to pull, what quiet threat to drop into the right conversation.
But Dad’s not here.
He had a stroke almost four years ago, and just like that, he was gone.
And now it’s just us, standing out in the cold, trying to figure out how to protect what’s his, what’s ours. And what feels like is slipping, inch by inch, through our fingers.
Boone unlocks the truck, and we pile in without a word. The heater kicks on with a low hum. Mom’s in the back with Sage, her hand resting on Sage’s knee. I sit up front, staring out the windshield like the answer to this giant clusterfuck might show up somewhere in the falling snow. It doesn’t.
No one talks. No one needs to.
And somehow, the quiet feels heavier than anything that was said inside that building.