Page 18 of Wicked Cowboy
“You don’t have to fix this,” he says finally, gesturing at everything and nothing, the tractor, the quiet, the space between us. “You came to town for a retreat, not whatever this is.”
“What do you think it is?” I hear my voice and wince at the hope threaded through.
He looks past me to the open door. “You don’t know me,” he says, like he’s giving me a gift instead of pushing me away. “Not really.”
“Then tell me,” I say, stepping once into the half-foot he abandoned.
His jaw tightens. “I don’t do this.”
I give him a soft smile. “But apparently here we are.”
He exhales, long and slow, like the truth he’s about to say tastes like rain and old fear. “I had a girl once,” he says, eyes still on the field. “Good one. Smart. She lasted longer than most. But when it got hard, and this place asked too much, she left. I didn’t blame her. I still don’t. But I learned what happens when I forget that loving this land means losing other things.”
The words drop between us like live wire, bright, dangerous to handle, and somehow beautiful.
I don’t reach for him. I want to, fiercely, but that would be a promise I’m not ready to make. Instead, I set my palm on the nearest safe thing, the edge of the hitch, and use the metal to ground myself.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That sucks.”
He huffs a quiet laugh despite himself. “You make it sound simple.”
“No,” I say. “Just human.” I tip my head. “And now you’re trying not to want anything that reminds you of that, so you don’t have to go through it again.”
Silence. He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t confirm it either. The rag stills in his hands.
“You think you’re warning me off,” I say, voice low, careful. “But all I hear is that you were hurt. Those aren’t the same thing.”
He finally looks at me. “And what do you hear when I say I can’t do this?”
“That you’re scared,” I say. “Which is fair. Me too.”
The honesty hollows me out and steadies me in the same breath. “I didn’t come here to fall for a man who fixes fences and names his tractors and kisses like he will never want to do anything else for the rest of his life.” His mouth twitches at that, a small victory. “But I also didn’t come here to lie to myself.”
“I can’t prove anything with words,” I finish, softer now. “I know that, but I’m not afraid of hard. I’m good at it. I like it, actually. Hard things make sense to me.”
He swallows. It’s the only sign I get that the words land anywhere but the floor.
“You should go rest,” he says, back to soft and careful. “You’ve done enough.”
I nod because I don’t know how to do anything else without breaking my own rules. “Okay.”
I step back so he doesn’t have to.
“Thanks for telling me,” I add, at the door.
He doesn’t answer. But his shoulders ease the tiniest bit, and when I glance back, he’s watching me walk away.
It’s absurd that I feel lonely with all this beauty pressing at me from every side. But loneliness isn’t always about being alone. Sometimes it’s about standing at a door you want to open and realizing the knob turns from the other side.
I stop at the barn threshold and lean my shoulder against the jamb. Rhett’s silhouette moves across the light, steady, competent, a man in his element.
“Maybe you’re right,” I whisper to the morning, to the barn, to the man inside who won’t hear me yet. “Maybe I don’t know what I’m getting into, but I don’t I can stop.”
Chapter eight
Rhett
Work usually calms my mind. Fix the fence, move hay. Sweat into your shirt until the thoughts smooth out and the day shrinks back to chores and checklists. That’s the deal I’ve always made with myself: keep your head down, keep the land running, the rest will sort itself out.