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Matty claps. “Do it again!”

“It’s someone else’s turn now,” she laughs, flopping back beside me.

I kiss the top of her head and pull her tighter against my side. “You’re a menace.”

“I’m a Disney princess,” she corrects, eyes twinkling.

“My princess,” I whisper against her ear. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s glowing.

When she came to Cooper Hill, something was missing from this woman that being here has given back to her. If even a small part of me thought we were being selfish for wanting her to stay, that alone makes me confident that this setup is as good for her as it is for us.

We need each other like we need air.

The kids rally, the cookies disappear, and the fire crackles steadily in the hearth. Music hums low on the stereo now with some old country tune Levi queued up, probably to annoy Corbin. And all around me is warmth and light and mess I used to try to fix.

Now? Now I want to lasso it and grip onto it with both hands.

This is the peace I’ve been looking for. This mess of love and laughter and the warm press of a woman at my side who sees it all and loves it, too.

I breathe it in like I’ve been trapped underground, and I’m finally free to come up for air in the warm afternoon sun.

44

GRACE

I wake to the sound of my phone vibrating relentlessly against the nightstand. For a second, I think it’s my alarm and fumble to silence it, but when I blink at the screen, there are no fewer than forty notifications waiting for me.

Texts. Missed calls. Emails. Mentions.

A bad feeling settles in my gut like sour milk.

I sit up, Beau’s weight shifting at the foot of the bed as I pull the phone to my face. The first message is from Rianna.

“Article’s up. Numbers are already climbing. You’re trending, Grace. Wild. Story’s getting picked up all over.”

What? My stomach twists. I know my article was good, but it wasn’t clickbait. Unless it’s a dead news day, I know reader reactions, and nothing I wrote would have driven this kind of response.

I tap the link, dread beginning to unfurl in my stomach. I didn’t sign this off.

My name is there. My byline. My photo. And next to it, Rianna’s.

But the words underneath? They aren’t mine.

The title hits me like a slap:

“The Rancher’s Bride: Eleven Men, One Bed, and a Whole Lot of Sexy Secrets.”

What follows is a grotesque distortion of everything I wrote. My carefully balanced observations about polyamory and non-traditional family structures have been twisted into cheap spectacle. The deeply personal stories shared with me—Corbin’s grief, Dylan’s kids, what they want from the sex, what we did—is all there, exaggerated and exploited for clicks.

They named Nora and described her alcoholism, dragged up Levi and his experience with the older woman, and quoted me out of context using lines I said in passing, in private, via texts or phone calls, or in my private notes. Worst of all, she’s planted me at the center of the story. It’s built around things I never, ever intended for print.

I start to tremble, pressing one hand to my mouth as I scroll, bile rising. This isn’t only a misstep. This is betrayal. It’s not only my name on the line, it’s theirs.

It’s theirlives.

Beau whines and nudges my hand, sensing something’s wrong.

I push the covers back and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The wooden floor is cold beneath my feet, but I barely feel it. My pulse is a roar in my ears.