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It was such a huge step, but one that she felt was necessary.

It was the kind of step a heroine in a rom-com might take. A small-town girl making it to the big city and finding new friends. Drinking martinis. Having a shopping montage. Meeting a man who thought she was different and interesting instead of a faded wallflower. She wanted that.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll drive up to greet him.”

It was strange because she wasn’t feeling nervous about it or anything; she did know him, after all. And also part of her job was talking to a lot of people she didn’t know.

It was her function on the ranch, and off. She made a lot of phone calls to people she’d never met, she had a lot of meetings with people she’d never met, and she was willingly jumping feet first into a job that would require more of the same.

Meeting people just didn’t fill her with a sense of anticipation or anxiety. Funny, because so many things did.

But for some reason, as she drew closer to the cabin, she felt a strange tightening of anticipation.

Maybe because he was kind of a legend. Maybe because she hadn’t seen him in so long.

The last time she’d seen them, he’d been headed off for basic training. He had been back since, but she hadn’t...visited with him.

She had collected a list of facts about Gideon over the years. Things she’d kept written secretly inside her own heart, and definitely not in a diary anywhere. If you didn’t learn from your mistakes, what was the point?

But she knew he’d been deployed to Afghanistan, that he’d gotten married. She knew he’d been to classified locations that Lydia wasn’t even allowed to know details about. He’d been injured in the line of duty. He’d gotten divorced.

Rory wondered if he would be different.

For some reason, that thought didn’t hit until right when she pulled up to the cabin. Because he was a legend. And legends felt fixed. Statues, plaques, immovable objects that stood as a testament to a moment.

He’d been injured. But in her mind she’d imagined him walking on crutches and waving bravely to a crowd of people. A man in a parade, like always.

How bad had it actually been?

She realized her own images of the whole thing had been cinematic. A man with an artful cut on his cheek bravely lying in a hospital bed with his family by his side before returning back home.

She got out of the car and took the basket with her, walked up to the front door and knocked. His truck was there, so she imagined that he was, too. She didn’t exactly know what he was doing with his time until the ranch was ready for him. Visiting his family, likely, but it was fairly early in the day.

The door opened, and she stood there, face to chest—until she tilted her chin up—with a stranger.

Because this was not Gideon Payne. Not as she remembered him.

This was the stranger from the woods.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Immediately, she felt like she was on fire. Like she might die from being this close to him. Or die if she didn’t get closer.

She could hardly see him for all the raw magnetism she felt just by standing in front of him, but when she took a breath, she took stock of all the differences.

He wasn’t the smiling boy with a loud laugh and an easy manner. Gone was that clean-cut look, that aggressively homegrown handsomeness.

He was big. Much bigger than he’d been back then. His chest was deep, heavily muscled. He was lean, but he was the kind of muscular that looked like he could effortlessly flip a tire. Or lift a car.

His hair was long, dark and shaggy, and he had a heavy beard.

She had to look, hard, for any feature that made him recognizable as the man he’d been. This wasn’t Captain America.

Those blue eyes, though.

They were familiar. But different somehow, too. There was no humor there. No warmth. No recognition as he looked at her.