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She smells like hay and sweetness and hard work.

He wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck, and never be anywhere else.

Ruin is trying to kill me.

Not literally—at least not today, he isn’t. Figuratively. Spiritually . He’s trying to wear me down, make me give up, piss me off enough that I do.

I’ve been driving him in circles for what feels like hours, trying to get him to join-up, begging him to.

He keeps dancing towards me, teasing me with success before darting away, and I’m almost more amused than I am exasperated because it’s almost like he’s playing. I swear he’s even smirking at me.

As frustration bubbles in my gut, I huff, and he huffs right back. Hands landing on my hips, I wonder if I have the authority to call time on this useless exercise. Gaze wandering to Carmen so I can ask, I find her otherwise occupied.

My teeth sink into the inside of my cheek. Listen, I have no problem if Finn wants to lay the moves on the trainer. Really, I don’t. But he can do it on his own fucking time. And not in front of me. Somewhere, anywhere, else.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, they lean against the paddock gate, arms stacked on the same rung, heads dipped in each other’s directions as they talk about… I don't know. Whatever nice, happy people talk about. Butterflies? Kittens? Christmas?

Arrest records or loner tendencies or familial strife do not come up, I bet.

They look good together, I have to admit, and I don’t like how admitting that makes me feel. I’m no stranger to jealousy—I’m kind of an inherently jealous person—so I know what it feels like, I know that’s what the knot in my gut is. The cause, though, is a little unclear.

Carmen, probably. Pretty, bubbly, unwaveringly patient Carmen who I keep waiting to slip up, to show some sliver of a less-than-perfect personality, but over the past week, I’ve learned she really is just that nice. All the time. Naturally.

How annoying .

Yeah. I’m done.

Keeping one eye on the demon trotting nearby, I make my way to the fence and, with my exit blocked, find no choice but to scramble up and over it.

As I hit the ground, I take a single moment to remark on my ankle feeling kind of, in some realm of the word, okay before marching towards the barn.

I need to be in a presence that doesn’t irritate or infuriate me, and that’s exactly what I find as I lean against Daphne’s stall.

For all of five seconds, that is.

The dust has barely settled behind me before someone else is kicking it up, intruding, irritating, infuriating. “You wanna go for a ride?”

Excellent idea. Stepping around the man standing disconcertingly close, I head for the equipment wall. “If anyone asks, I’ll be back in an hour.”

“I meant with me.”

Ask Carmen, I almost sneer, mentally slapping myself in the face for it.

What the fuck? Get a grip, woman.

“Or not.” With a huff that’s equal parts confused, amused, and concerned, Finn smoothes one hand down the back of his head, the other looping around my bicep. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” his mouth says, but his face calls bullshit.

And what am I going to say? That I’m unreasonably, inexplicably irritated by him exchanging googly eyes with another woman for the past few hours? That I’m referring to another woman as another woman ? Fuck no. I’d rather chew my own foot off. I’d rather fall in a manure pile.

I’d rather admit, “I’m just frustrated. I thought…” Sighing, I rake my hands through my hair, linking my fingers at my crown as I tilt my head back to stare at the rafters. “I thought this would be easier. Since he already let me ride him once.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Yeah, I know.” I cluck my tongue, wishing I could spit out the sour taste of defeat. “Just hoped, I guess.”

Sympathy softens Finn’s features. His grip becoming featherlight, his thumb strokes the horseshoe inked on my inner arm, just above the crook of my elbow. “You’re still doing real good, Lot.”

“How would you know?” I blurt without meaning to, wincing internally and praying he takes it as a joke.

Eyes going wide, Finn grins, pure fucking goofy. “You think I got a twin that’s been watching you all morning?”

I snort. “You’ve been flirting all morning, cowboy.”

That grin drops. Blinking slowly, Finn pins me with incredulity. “Who, exactly, was I flirting with?”

“ Uh .” I pretend to think about it, pursing my lips. “The hot blonde, maybe.”

“Bowie?” he jokes, deadpan, and the Palomino knickers loudly from a couple stalls over.

I roll my eyes. “The other hot blonde.”

“You think,” Finn clarifies slowly, still looking at me all wide-eyed and baffled, “that I was flirting with Carmen?”

“Well, I don’t think you were flirting with me.”

That makes him laugh. Like, really laugh.

Head dropping backward, shoulders shaking, free hand going to his gut kind of laughing.

He pauses long enough to smile, soft and dopey and implying that I’ve done something so unfathomably dumb.

Something hilarious that makes him laugh some more as he socks me gently on the shoulder before cupping the nape of my neck, fingers applying gentle pressure that make the knotted muscles beneath them moan. “I was not flirting with Carmen .”

He says her name weirdly. Putting emphasis on it. Like he was flirting, just not with her, but how the fuck does that make sense?

And why does his hand feel so damn nice?

I’m almost—no, I am —disappointed when it disappears.

“Saddle up,” he orders, halfway out the barn before my brain catches up with the command, before I realize I’m cupping the back of my neck now, savoring the warm, tingling imprint he left behind. “I’m gonna go get some snacks for our ride.”

Quickly recovering from my malfunction, I holler after him, “I didn’t say you could come.”

Finn pivots to walk backwards, his mouth stretched wide. “I’m not asking permission, baby.”

A late fall breeze rustles my hair, my body gently rocking as Daphne plods along an endless stretch of green.

Beside me, Finn sits astride Gaia, and I absently wonder if it’s something of a relief for her, accommodating a rider that’s about four inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than her true owner.

“Y’know, I met Hunter.”

Lifting my gaze from Gaia, I find Finn staring at me—reading my mind, apparently. “Really?”

He hums. “Worked on his ranch for a while.”

“Huh.” Talk about a small world. Kind of freaky, really. “How’d you end up in Georgia?”

“Same way I ended up here,” Finn says with a shrug. “Dumb luck. That’s where I met your sister. She was visiting, we got to talking. She offered me a job, I took it.”

Yeah, that sounds about right. Sounds simple . Lux has never been one to beat around the bush. She saw Finn, she liked something about him, she kept him—easy. “Why’d you take the job?”

He counters, “Why’d you come back?”

I consider lying. Settle on being vague instead. “Didn’t have a choice.”

“Yeah, kinda felt that way for me too.”

“And now?”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

As my eyes scan the horizon, I can understand that.

More than he knows, more than anyone probably knows.

When I was younger—shit, when I was not-that-younger too—I never wanted to leave this place.

I felt safe here in a way I just didn’t anywhere else.

But that’s mostly because it was my home, my first home.

Something Finn already has. “Not even your family’s place? ”

“The Akello ranch is nothing like Serenity.”

“What’s it like?”

“Busier. Dustier. Only green if we’re lucky.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Oh, I love it. It’s just not like here.” He pauses briefly, then adds, “We’re just not like you.”

“Me?”

“Jacksons.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Y’all are like one person in five bodies, Lot.

I love my parents, I love my sisters, but we’re not like that.

We’re close, but we’re not close . And I guess I…

” He drags the hand not clutching Gaia’s reins over the bottom half of his face before cupping his neck, shrugging.

“I feel guilty, alright? Because I love where I grew up, but I love being here too. I love my family, but I’m still jealous of yours. ”

That word. Like a damn pinball, it rackets around my brain, tickling a memory to life. “So when you called me jealous, you were projecting.”

His smile is soft. Rue and mirth. “You caught me. I wanna be a Jackson.”

My smile is… not soft. Not entirely a smile. An odd, panicked slash as I’m struck with the grim truth of him probably being more Jackson than I am these days. “So you’re staying here? Forever?”

“Guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“Lots of things.”

“Name one.”

Finn purses his lips, thoughtful again. Or maybe he’s just pretending to think. Maybe he’s actually just stalling, something I suspect more and more the longer his silence lasts—a suspicion that’s all but confirmed when he abruptly changes the subject entirely. “What’s that?”

I kiss my teeth, but I let the distraction attempt slide. Admittedly, I do actually get a little distracted as I squint into the distance. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Finn eyes me sideways. “This is your land, Jackson.”

“Don’t call me that.” I grimace as I click my tongue, digging my heels into Daphne’s sides to increase her pace. “It looks like… a trailer?”

“You got tenants I don’t know about?”

“No. Unless I don’t know about them either.”

Which, honestly, isn’t all that far-fetched of a concept, but something tells me it’s not the case.

Something tells me that that trailer isn’t supposed to be here—perhaps it’s because it’s tucked away in the middle of nowhere, hiding in plain sight on a patch of land we clearly don’t venture onto a lot.

While I slip out of my saddle, Finn stays firmly rooted in his. “What’re you doing?”

Looping Daphne’s reins around her neck so they don’t drag, I blink up at him. “Checking it out. Obviously.”