Chapter 9 #2
I lean back against the couch, stalling.
Because the truth is, I don’t exactly have a track record that inspires a lot of self-confidence.
I’ve only ever had one real boyfriend. Ethan.
Met him at the Lucky Devil one night when I was twenty-three, when Sage dragged me out after work and swore I needed to “loosen up.”
He asked for my number, smiled like he actually found me interesting instead of hard to read.
And for a while, I believed it. Believed that maybe I wasn’t too blunt, too closed off, too much.
He worked at a bank downtown. Made decent money.
Had retirement accounts and a five-year life plan that he wasn’t shy about mentioning.
At first, he said he loved how honest I was.
He said it was refreshing. Then, little by little, the cracks started showing.
He’d joke about how I could “scare people off” if I wasn’t careful.
Suggest maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to say exactly what I was thinking.
Maybe I should dress “softer.” Maybe I should smile more.
Maybe I should just shrink a little. Take the edge off.
And I tried.
For a while, I tried so hard I barely recognized myself. Our sex life had the same kind of slow erosion. Mediocre from the start—mechanical, polite, at best. By the end, it was practically non-existent. Every time he touched me, it felt like he was grading me on some invisible scale.
Too quiet. Too still. Too detached.
I’d lie there thinking about how I must be the problem, how maybe if I were different—softer, sweeter—he’d want me more. Maybe if I were someone else entirely.
I stayed longer than I should have. Wanting to be loved can make you stick around long after the love is gone.
When I’d finally ended it, he said he hoped I’d “find someone who could handle me.” Like I was a job. A chore. And the worst part is, a small, broken part of me believed him.
It’s why I keep people at arm’s length now. Why I talk too sharp and move too fast and make sure no one gets the idea that I’m easy to hold onto. Because being wanted is nice—until you realize they don’t want you . They want the version of you they can manage.
Trimmed down. Polished up. Easier.
Before I can spiral any further, Miller snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Wren.”
I blink and shake my head. “I don’t know what to think about him yet,” I say, which is technically true, if you squint hard enough.
Miller stares at me. “What is there to think about, girl? He looks like Thor and he makes good money. You need to hop on that dick. Immediately.”
That sends the room into another round of laughter.
Even I’m laughing and watching the way Lark has to set her drink down before she spills it.
Miller’s not wrong. Anyone with two functioning eyes could tell you Sawyer Hart is hot.
Broad shoulders. Strong hands. And it’s not just the way he looks.
It’s the way he moves around animals, around people—steady, sure, patient.
The way he doesn’t flinch when I’m blunt, how he doesn’t try to file me down at the edges.
It’s the way he looks at me sometimes, like he sees everything I am—every cracked, stubborn piece of me. And he isn’t in a hurry to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad one. I like that he doesn’t back down. That when I push, he holds his ground.
But liking someone is dangerous territory for me. The second you start to want something, you give it the power to undo you. I’m not sure I have it in me to survive wanting someone again—only to find out I’m still too much, or not enough, or something in between.
So for now, I tell myself the truth I know how to live with: It’s easier not to want anything at all.
Miller nudges me with her foot. “Fine. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”
Lark snorts. “Please. You wouldn’t last one day as a ranch wife.”
Miller sighs, long and dramatic, like she’s just now realizing her tragic fate.
“This is true,” she says, flopping back against the cushions. “Can you imagine me in a chicken coop? I’d rather die.”
Sage grins from under her blanket. “You’d last exactly five minutes. And three of those would be you complaining about the smell.”
Miller points her wine glass at her like she’s proven some critical argument. “Exactly. I’m self-aware.”
She tips her head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Still. How’s a guy who looks like that single? There has to be a catch.”
Lark hums thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s emotionally unavailable.”
Sage adds, “Or married. That’s another popular option.”
And maybe it’s stupid, but it’s the first time I really stop to think about it. It is strange that a man who looks like Sawyer Hart—who carries himself the way he does—is still single.
He’s not some twenty-something kid either. He’s Boone’s age, maybe a little older. Thirty-five, thirty-six if I had to guess.
Or maybe he’s not single at all. Maybe he just hasn’t mentioned it. It’s not like I’d know. It’s not like I’m some expert when it comes to reading men.
Still. When I catch him watching me from across the round pen, when his mouth pulls into that crooked half-smile like he knows exactly how much I’m pretending not to notice him—it feels like something .
Or maybe I’m just imagining it. Maybe he looks at everyone like that. Maybe he’s not even thinking about me at all.
Surely if he were married, he wouldn’t—
I cut the thought off before it can finish.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to come of it, anyway.
It’s almost funny, though. If the universe had a sense of humor, a Wilding marrying a Hart would fix this whole damn water crisis in one clean sweep.
I shift a little on the couch, sitting up straighter without meaning to.
The idea tumbles around in my head, ridiculous and impossible—but still, it’s there .
I pretend to listen while the girls chatter around me, but my mind is somewhere else entirely, picking the thought apart and putting it back together.
Marrying Sawyer Hart.
God. It sounds insane when I say it like that.
It is insane.
But the longer I sit with it, the less far-fetched it starts to feel.
Because if we got married—just on paper—the Wilding Ranch would keep its water.
It would tether me, and by extension the ranch, to the Hart family’s water rights.
And in the eyes of the county, that would probably be enough.
It would be messy to challenge. Too many tangled threads of ownership, too many blurred household lines.
And small-town governments love clean answers. A Wilding married to a Hart would be a clean enough answer for them.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would buy us time. It would give us the breathing room that we don’t have right now.
The knot in my stomach tightens. This isn’t just about me, either.
It’s about the horses and cattle that rely on our land, the training program I’ve poured the better part of my twenties into.
It’s about Hudson, Jack, and Lainey never knowing what it feels like to run through those fields with the mountains on their backs as they grow up.
It’s about my father’s hands in the soil, my family’s name carved into this place in a way you can’t erase, no matter how many times you change the deed.
It’s about the Wilding name meaning something twenty years from now instead of being a footnote in someone else’s land survey. Without water, none of it survives. Without water, there is no Wilding Ranch left to save.
And the ugly truth is, I would do it. I would sign my name next to someone else’s for the sake of a pipeline and a ranch deed. I would wear the ring and keep my life exactly the way it is now. I would call it survival and find a way to live with it.
But then there’s Sawyer.
It’s easy to say you could marry a stranger when you picture a stranger. It’s harder when the stranger is someone you can’t stop noticing. Someone whose steadiness makes you wonder if you’ve been bracing against the wrong things your whole life.
There’s no way he’d agree to this. No way he’d look at me and see a good enough reason to sign away his name and his future on some desperate, half-baked idea.
If anything, he’d think I was batshit crazy. And maybe he’d be right.
Still, some stubborn part of me can’t help but wonder.
What if he didn’t think it was crazy?
What if he said yes?
We could stay exactly as we are, living our separate lives, crossing paths only when we had to, moving forward the way people do when they have a silent agreement not to ask for more.
Our names would be tied together on paper, nothing more, a technicality no one outside the courthouse would even have to know about.
And maybe it wouldn’t just save the Wilding Ranch. Maybe it could help the Harts, too.
The county isn’t just coming for us anymore.
They’re coming for anyone still lucky enough to have private access to the aquifer, picking apart old claims and family deeds, looking for any excuse to re-draw the lines and tell us what no one wants to hear—that history doesn’t matter, that legacy isn’t enough, that survival has new rules now.
And the truth is, it won’t matter that Sawyer doesn’t own the Hart Ranch himself. It matters that he’s a Hart, that he still works the land, that he’s tied to it in the way that matters here—not just in paperwork, but in blood and sweat and years spent showing up.
The fewer family members the Harts have actively connected to the ranch, the easier it will be for the county to chip away at their standing, to argue that the land has outlived its purpose, that it belongs to newer, more “efficient” hands.
But if Sawyer was married—if he could show a growing household, another layer of permanence stitched into the fabric of the ranch—it would make it harder for them to be pushed off the map.
Marrying me wouldn’t just keep my family afloat. It would reinforce his, too. It would give the Harts another argument, another line of defense, another reason to be left alone.
My mind is spinning so fast I almost forget where I am. It’s not a perfect plan. It’s barely a plan at all. But when you’re drowning, you don’t wait around for the perfect solution. You grab whatever’s floating close enough to reach.
And maybe—if Sawyer Hart is as stubborn about holding onto what matters as I think he is—he might be willing to grab onto it, too.