Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
DAKOTA
Iwake before the sun.
For a second, I don’t remember where I am. The scent of hay and leather settles around me, and everything rushes back at once.
The storm. The barn. Levi’s hands on me. His mouth on mine. The way he said my name like it had weight.
Heat rises under my skin all over again. I turn my head, snuggling into the cool cotton sheets of my bedroom. I drift off again.
This time he’s there, a few feet away, already standing. He doesn’t close the distance or reach for me. Just stands there.
The air shifts immediately.
Last night feels close enough to touch, and somehow already gone.
Breakfast proves it. My eyes dart around the room, making out familiar faces. Carl and Lucinda, the owners of this place. The guys who work the ranch—Wes and Zeb, Carson and Garrett and other familiar faces whose names I can’t recall.
Until I see him, standing back in the corner. Face morose and guarded, arms crossed hard over his chest.
Impenetrable.
That’s the only word that fits this cowboy.
I head straight for him. Can’t say why, hands clutching a chipped white mug filled with coffee that warms my hands.
Levi drags a hand over the back of his neck and looks anywhere but at me. “Storm officially passed about an hour ago.”
My chest tightens, small and sharp.
It isn’t good morning. Or are you alright. It isn’t anything.
“Okay,” I say. My voice sounds steady enough.
He nods once, like that settles something. “Don’t usually come in here. No appetite before noon.”
“Plenty of appetite after noon,” I say before I can stop myself. Our eyes meet, then sizzle.
But his face is unreadable, his jaw tight and working.
“Told you it’d be once,” he says.
I lean closer, and his face darkens. I’m doing something to him, hovering close enough to feel his heat. “But you wanted more.”
“I did.” He says it flatly. Like that’s the end of it.
His eyes dart past me. “Back up or people will start talking.” His voice is steel, eyes narrow and cold.
“Since when did you care about what people think?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.
“Not my concern. Yours.” He removes his Stetson, swiping fingers through his hair. Fingers that pleased the hell out of me last night.
A throb settles between my legs.
“I’ll see you later… to work.” He grimaces after he says it, hand coming halfway up to my hip. But then he stills.
“Maybe,” I counter arching an eyebrow. Tired of begging for leftovers from men like him. “Either way, thanks for the romp in the hay, cowboy.”
He freezes, face unreadable.
I hold my breath, waiting for something. I don’t know what.
But then he straightens, saunters away—ass tight, thighs thick beneath fitted Wranglers.
I may not understand him. I may feel hurt… and confused. But he still steals my breath. And today, he’s not giving it back.
Outside, birds sing unending choruses. The world is slipping back into morning as if nothing happened. As if I didn’t let this man touch parts of me I’ve kept guarded for far too long. Like I didn’t walk into this wanting more than one reckless night and knowing better than to ask for it.
I head to the main house, checking the activities board. Hay ride in an hour. Horseback excursion into the foothills. Stargazing.
Enough ways to avoid him for the rest of my trip.
Excursion it is.
Six hours later, my legs ache, and I still feel like I’m bumping up and down in a saddle even when I’m standing still. I take a shower, blowdry my hair, and change into fresh clothes at my cabin.
Then, I go to the main house again, trying to convince myself all I want is a relaxing dinner with fellow travelers and some stargazing.
What I really want? Him.
That’s when I do it. I head straight for the barn because I know he doesn’t want me there, and I can’t stay away.
When I enter, Levi reaches for a bridle hanging on the wall and adjusts it without reason. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t register my presence.
Busy hands. Closed face.
He’s putting himself back together right in front of me.
I know what that looks like. I’m doing it, too.
Still, some foolish part of me waits for him to turn around and say something real.
He doesn’t.
I walk down the aisle, eyeing the horses, like I’m here to work. Who am I fooling? My eyes drop to the tack trunk, body throbbing and tightening. I can still hear the hollow thud of his knees hitting straw before he disappeared between my legs.
Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe he was too polite to stop, though he wanted to. Maybe he does this all the time, and I’m just the latest city-girl tourist to fall for it.
He finally looks at me. His expression gives me nothing. “You didn’t show earlier. Guess you’re done with me then. Done with Buddy and the other horses, too.”
The words come out like cold iron. Not stated as questions I can answer but as parts of the narrative he’s building about me.
I fold my arms loosely, not for comfort. To hold myself together.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
A line appears between his brows. “Do what?”
“Fight with me to make going easier.”
His jaw tightens.
“That’s not my intention.”
“No?” I ask quietly.
He looks past me toward the open barn doors, where sunset burns shades of gold, pink, indigo, and purple.
“City girl. Cowboy,” he says. “Never was nothing but a fantasy.”
There it is.
A neat sentence. Trimmed down. Controlled. Built to keep a person out.
I take a breath and let it settle before I answer. “Something could change. For me, it already has.” I feel more naked in front of him now than I did last night.
Levi’s hand closes around the bridle strap until the leather creaks. “That’s because you don’t know me better. You’d go eventually. Believe me, you would.”
It’s not you. It’s me.
My chest tightens. “Right,” I manage.
I move to step around him, but his hand catches lightly around my wrist. My pulse stumbles.
When I look up, his face is harder than his grip. “Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Make this into something it can’t be.”
The words land flat in the center of my chest.
For a second, I can’t speak. Then I look down at his hand around my wrist. He lets go immediately.
Too late.
I lift my gaze back to his. “You kissed me like it already was,” I say softly.
He goes still. Something in his expression cracks, just for a breath, before he seals it back up. “That was a mistake.”
I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because if I don’t, I might let him see too much.
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t a mistake. But you were a coward afterward.”
His eyes flash, then. The first real thing I’ve seen in his face since I woke.
Good. Let him feel some of this, too.
“And I was foolish. Stupid.” My voice shakes, though I fight to control it. I step past him before he can answer and walk out of the barn into evening air that feels too cool on my skin.
I don’t stop until I reach my cabin.
Only then do I let myself sit on the edge of the bed and press both hands flat against my thighs, anchoring myself there.
My pride is intact. That matters. Even if the rest of me feels scraped raw.
I avoid the barn for the rest of the night and then the next day.
Wild Vista Ranch is big enough to disappear in if you want to.
Trails winding through scrub oak and bluebonnet patches.
Guest cabins tucked far enough apart to feel private.
Open fields where horses graze under the sun like they’ve never known fear.
Usually, I’d love a place like this. Today, though, it feels too full of him.
Every fence line reminds me of his hands. Every low rustle in the wind takes me back to the sound of his voice in the dark.
By late afternoon, I give up pretending a long walk is going to fix anything and head toward the paddocks instead.
Buddy is out. The same one from the barn. The half-broken, half-healed one with wary eyes and a body that still expects pain before kindness.
He stands near the fence, ears twitching when I approach. “Hey, sweetheart,” I murmur.
I rest my arms on the top rail and watch him for a minute.
He doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t bolt either. That feels about right.
“You and I are having a week,” I tell him.
He flicks an ear in my direction. A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. Small. Thin. Real enough.
“I should’ve known better,” I say. “That’s the worst part. I did know better.”
The horse lowers his head to nose at the grass, unconcerned.
Lucky him.
Boots sound on the dirt behind me. I know who it is before I turn.
Levi stops a few feet away, hat low, shoulders set. Every line of him says distance even standing this close.
I face the paddock again. “Do you always sneak up on people?” I ask.
“You heard me.”
“I heard boots.”
Silence.
He clears his throat, Adam’s apple working. “You didn’t come by this afternoon.”
I close my eyes for a second.
That’s what he came to say?
“No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
Another stretch of quiet. The gelding glances up, then goes back to grazing. Lucky him again.
“You were helping with him,” Levi says finally.
I nod once. “I know.”
It takes effort not to turn around. Not to make it easier for him.
If he wants this conversation, he can stand in it.
“I can help from somewhere else,” I say.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I let silence do the talking.
The breeze lifts my hair off my shoulders. Somewhere beyond the paddock, a gate clangs shut.
Levi steps closer. “I shouldn’t have said it like that,” he says.
My throat tightens. Because there it is.
Not much.
Still more than I expected. Crumb-collecting again. Always been a habit of mine… along with finding men who don’t want to be found.
I turn then, slowly, and look at him.
His face is unreadable if you don’t know where to look. But I do now.
The tension in his jaw. The strain around his eyes. The way he holds himself too rigid when something matters.
“You shouldn’t have said any of it,” I reply.
His gaze drops for a second, then comes back to mine. “I know.”
I study him. “You don’t get to keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Feeling something and then punishing me for it.”
The words land between us, clean and sharp. He doesn’t deny them. It’s answer enough.
I look back toward the horse because it’s easier than looking at Levi when he’s this close and finally, finally honest in the smallest possible ways.
“I’m leaving early,” I say.
The second the words are out, the space changes.
Levi goes still. Not subtle stillness. The kind that happens when a body absorbs impact before the mind catches up.
“Early?” he repeats.
“There’s no reason to drag it out.”
“Because of me.” Not a question.
I don’t bother softening it. “Yes.”
He exhales once, rough and low.
Buddy wanders a little closer to the fence, not enough to touch, but near enough to notice. Trust, in small pieces.
I swallow hard and keep my eyes on the horse. “For the record, I didn’t come here looking for this,” I say. “I came here because I wanted something honest for once.”
Levi says nothing.
So I keep going. “And for a minute, I thought maybe that’s what you were, too.” Those words hurt to say. I hear it in the waver of my voice.
He hears it too. I know he does. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than before. “Dakota.”
I shake my head.
“No. You don’t get to say my name like that and leave the rest unsaid.”
He takes another step closer.
The air changes with it.
“If I let myself—” he starts, then stops. The unfinished sentence hangs there.
I turn and face him fully. “If you let yourself what?”
His expression locks down again. The wall rising back into place brick by brick.
I feel something inside me settle then. I’ve had enough of this.
I step back from the fence. “My bag’s mostly packed already,” I say. “I’ll be out tomorrow.”
His eyes sharpen. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“That fast.”
I almost smile. It wants to come out bitter, so I let it die. “You’ve been in a hurry to say goodbye ever since… you know. Figured I should follow your lead.”
He flinches. A small but real gesture.
It shouldn’t satisfy me. It does.
I brush past him before he can stop me. This time he doesn’t reach for me. Maybe he knows better now. Maybe I do, too.
By the time I make it back to my cabin, the sky has gone pink at the edges, evening settling soft over the ranch.
Inside, I zip the side pocket of my luggage closed, setting it at the foot of the bed.
Tomorrow.
The word aches. But there’s relief in it, too. A clean edge.
A way out before I give more of myself to a man who only knows how to want things he thinks might leave him anyway.
Outside my window, I hear horses moving in the distance and the faint, familiar sound of the barn door opening, then closing again. Like a heartbeat I’ve learned to listen for.
I sit on the bed and stare at my packed bag. Then I say it out loud, just to hear how it sounds. “Go home, Dakota.”
My voice doesn’t shake. That feels like a victory.
Even if it doesn’t feel anything like winning.