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23

Shiloh

Dawn creeps through broken windows, painting shadows across water-stained walls as I roll out of my sleeping bag. The ancient floorboards creak beneath me, protesting like my muscles after another night on the floor. But this is my house. My floor. My choice.

The thought steadies me as I pick my way through debris to my makeshift kitchen—a camp stove perched on what used to be Mama’s antique side table. The surface is ruined anyway. Just like everything else the storm touched two nights ago.

Including me.

I reach for the battered coffee pot, only to stop short. There, gleaming like some alien artifact among the wreckage, sits a ceramic cone to make pour-over coffee, a kettle, filters, and the sort of expensive beans I’d only dreamed of when I was struggling to make ends meet. A folded note leans against it, the handwriting on the heavy cream cardstock instantly recognizable.

The cheap stuff is criminal. -J

My first instinct is to throw it through the window. Instead, I trace the sharp edges of his handwriting, remembering how those hands felt on my skin, how his perfectionism controlled every aspect of his life. Of my life.

The rich scent of coffee fills the air as I pour hot water into the cone and listen to it drip into my favorite coffee mug. Some habits are harder to break than others.

Outside, the devastation stretches as far as I can see. The storm took twenty years of careful maintenance and tossed it aside like kindling. The barn roof sags dangerously. The corrals list at angles that make my stomach clench. The ranch house—Christ.

I force myself to catalog the damage with a ranch manager’s eye instead of a daughter’s heart. Water damage in the east wing. Structural concerns in the north corner.

An engine rumbles in the distance. My shoulders tense as a truck crests the rise, but it’s just Miguel’s ancient Ford. My relief lasts until I spot the heavy equipment trailer behind him.

Jackson’s foreman stops at a respectful distance, rolling down his window but not killing the engine. “Boss said you’d say no.” The lines around his eyes crinkle. “Also said we’re to ignore that.”

I stalk across the muddy yard, ignoring how the morning chill cuts through my worn flannel. “Miguel, I can’t?—”

“Can’t pay us?” His weathered face breaks into a grin. “Good thing we’re on Jackson’s clock then.” He cuts the engine, and the sudden silence amplifies the sound of more trucks approaching. “Brought some equipment that might help. Unless you and your crew planned to move those trees with your bare hands?”

Pride wars with practicality as I study the fallen timber blocking access to the barn. The massive trunk would take me days to clear alone. Behind Miguel’s truck, I recognize more of Jackson’s senior ranch hands arriving—each man with decades of experience, each one who’s taught me something over the years.

He sent his best. Not just hands, but mentors, friends, men I’d known my whole life, who’d watched me grow up, taught me what they knew about horses.

Tears pricked at my eyes. I was so fucking tired of not letting them fall. “I don’t need?—”

“Course you don’t.” Miguel’s already climbing down. “But that barn roof won’t fix itself. And Terry brought his welding rig for the corrals.” He doesn’t wait for my response, just starts directing the arriving trucks with the efficiency of someone who’s managed crisis repairs for thirty years.

I retreat to the porch, cradling my too-expensive coffee, and watch Jackson’s experienced crew with my own tackle tasks that would have taken us weeks alone. The men work with quiet competence, carefully avoiding my gaze. Giving me space to pretend this isn’t charity.

But it’s not charity, is it? The realization hits as I watch Miguel inspect the barn roof. Jackson sent a crew I’d respect, men whose expertise I trust. He’s not trying to control the repairs—he’s making sure they’re done right.

A flash of movement catches my eye—an unfamiliar truck crawling past on the access road. Something about the way it slows makes the hair on my neck rise. But before I can focus on it, Terry calls out about the corral supports.

Right. Focus on what I can control.

I set down my coffee and head toward the barn. Miguel’s right—that roof won’t fix itself.

By noon, my shoulders burn, and my hands are scraped raw, but we’ve made real progress. The barn has temporary supports, the worst of the debris is cleared, and Terry’s welding holds stronger than the original joints. I’m filthy, exhausted, and grimly satisfied.

Until I spot the feed delivery truck.

“Don’t need the whole load,” I call out, jogging toward the driver. “Just half?—”

He hands me an invoice marked PAID—standing arrangement with supplier. “Full delivery, ma’am. Weekly schedule’s already set up.”

My throat tightens. Weekly deliveries cost more than I can afford right now, but they’re the only way to ensure consistent quality. Jackson knows that. Just like he knows I won’t risk my horses’ health to spite him.

The driver’s already unloading, efficient and impersonal. Like Miguel’s crew, he’s allowing me to pretend this isn’t help I desperately need.

A door slams in the house—probably someone checking the water damage. But something about the sound sets me on edge. Feels wrong. When I glance at the windows, they’re empty.

Must be imagining things.

The rhythm of rebuilding settles into my bones. Each dawn brings Miguel’s crew, each night leaves me exhausted but another piece of my ranch secured. My muscles learn new patterns—directing instead of doing, accepting help without surrendering control.

Client calls trickle in. Caroline McKenzie’s difficult stallion. The Prichett’s new jumper. All solid opportunities, all with Jackson’s fingerprints just barely visible.

“Jackson sent more lumber for the east barn,” Miguel mentions casually one morning, as if he hasn’t just detonated a bomb in my chest.

The name alone shouldn’t have the power to rob me of breath. Shouldn’t make my skin flush hot, then cold. Shouldn’t send my heart racing like I’d sprinted across the pasture.

“I didn’t ask for it.” I force my voice to remain steady.

Miguel shrugs. “He knows you need it.”

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Jackson always knows what I need—sometimes before I do. Because he’s been watching. Learning. Collecting data on me like I was a prize mare he planned to break.

Later, alone in my bedroom, I scan the corners for cameras, and I hate the hollow ache that follows when I’m certain I’m truly alone.

I miss him. Despite everything—the contract, the surveillance, the manipulation—my body still craves his touch, and my heart?—

I grab my phone, his number already pulled up before I realize what I’m doing. My thumb hovers over the screen for one wavering moment before I throw the phone across the room like it burned me.

I’m not pathetic. I’m not broken. I won’t crawl back to a man who’s violated every fucking boundary I tried to set.

Even if a broken part of me wants to.

Day by day, I piece together my father’s financial records once night falls and the work of repairing the storm damage ends. Each revelation hits harder than the last. Behind every desperate loan, every risky deal my father made, I find Jackson’s careful intervention. The dates tell a story I’m not ready to face—his years of obsession came along with protection, too.

Nights are the hardest. The house creaks with memories and new threats. That truck keeps driving past, slower each time. Strange noises in the dark that Miguel’s overnight crew pretends not to investigate.

The ranch comes back to life under my hands, but the house holds darker revelations. Each file folder I sort shows my father’s increasing desperation. Bank statements with negative balances. Meeting notes with men whose names I only heard whispered in the dark. A systematic dismantling of everything he built, piece by mortgaged piece. And over and over again, Matt Walsh’s name, damn him.

“Getting closer to livable,” Miguel observes after a week, bringing me fresh coffee in the study. His weathered eyes take in the scattered papers, the growing pattern of my father’s desperation. “Roof’s nearly done.”

I grunt acknowledgment, trying to make sense of dates and signatures. The coffee is still perfect—damn Jackson to hell.

Fuck. I want to pick up the phone and ask if he knows anything about my father’s other debts. If he knows how much my father owed Matt.

But then he’d do something about it, and Ryder’s words at the ball come back to me. Jackson’s had enough violence in his life. He doesn’t need any more from me.

The sound of trucks on the access road makes me tense, but it’s just the lumber delivery. More premium materials, exactly what we need for the next phase of repairs. The ranch hands drift casually toward the driveway as that other truck—the threatening one—slows to watch the delivery.

The next morning, I find boot prints in the mud behind the house. Not my crew, nor Miguel’s. The cowboys begin an overnight watch “to keep an eye on the horses.” Sweet, kind liars.

A text breaks my concentration.

Jackson

There’s a problem stallion at River Break. Owner asked for you specifically.

The next message has a phone number. I hate how he’s opening doors for me and hate how it’s giving me the means to run my ranch on my own—to make payroll again. Except I don’t hate it. Not really. Not at all.

The afternoon brings new sounds—boots on the back porch, whispered voices, a car door slamming too close to the house. I find Miguel doing a perimeter check, his rifle casual but visible.

“Just keeping an eye on things,” he says mildly. But we both know what kind of men my father borrowed from. What kind of collection methods they prefer.

Just before sunset, I spot that threatening truck again. The driver stops at the end of the drive this time, studying the house through binoculars. One of Miguel’s crew casually starts target practice in the fenced in yard. The truck leaves.

Jackson

Everything okay out there?

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. But something shifts in my understanding as I watch the good-natured jostling of the crews as they get ready for another night watch.

Soon, dawn light filters through newly-repaired windows, and I realize the house feels different now—less a memorial to my father’s failures, more a testament to what can be rebuilt. Even the creaks sound stronger, purposeful.

The smell of fresh coffee pulls me from sleep earlier than usual. I pad downstairs in borrowed flannel, stopping short at the sight that greets me in my makeshift kitchen.

Jackson Hawkins stands at my counter, his massive frame making the space feel smaller. Two takeout cups from my favorite cafe in town steam beside him. A bakery box from the artisan place an hour away sits unopened. His expression as he turns is carefully neutral, but his knuckles whiten on the counter edge.

“Brought real breakfast,” he says quietly. “Thought you might be tired of camp food.”

The scent of fresh pastries mingles with his cologne—cedar and leather and something darker that makes my pulse skip. He’s wearing casual ranch clothes, but power radiates off him just the same.

“You shouldn’t be here.” But I’m already reaching for the coffee, my body betraying me like it always does around him.

“No.” His eyes track my movement, hungry but controlled. “I shouldn’t be.”

The silence stretches between us, thick with everything we’re not saying. Beyond the windows, Miguel’s crew is arriving for another day of rebuilding what the storm destroyed.

I’m not ready. Not for him, not for this, not for the weight of everything I’ve discovered in my father’s files. But as I lift the coffee to my lips and catch him watching the movement of my throat, I realize something else.

I’m not running either.